ADVERTISEMENT

When people think about programmers, the image that pops into their head is probably a person who is hunched over a computer in a dark corner, relentlessly tapping away on the keyboard with no contact with the outside world. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, just like in any other industry, developers come from various backgrounds and have different personalities, making them a diverse group.  

To learn more about the day-to-day lives of programmers, we are once again visiting the Programmer Humor subreddit, which is full of jokes and memes perfectly capturing the chaos and struggles of this profession. Scroll down to find them, and don’t forget to check out a conversation with software engineers Evgeny Klimenchenko and Ben Grimwade from the UK, who kindly agreed to tell us more about programming humor.

RELATED:
    #2

    Thestruggleisreal

    Thestruggleisreal

    Green____cat Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Beeps
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Last week I fixed a monitor in the office that had been “broken” for a week and that several people had already tried to fix. And yes, you guessed it how I “fixed” it. And I don’t even work in IT.

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu
    #3

    Programmercooks

    Programmercooks

    rkoutnik Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    LuckyL
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    but then you find out that your pot no longer works on your new induction stove, the carrot is moldy and the peeler is in the dishwasher anyway.

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu

    Software engineer Evgeny Klimenchenko from the UK believes that the stereotype of programmers being antisocial and dull is quite misleading. 

    “Programmers often have a rich sense of humour that's often related to their line of work. Their jokes might be technical, but they're definitely there and can be quite witty. Because programmers' humour is quite technical and full of industry jargon, a lot of people don't understand it, and that leads to them believing that we don't have a sense of humour.”

    #4

    Breakingnews

    Breakingnews

    JustSpaceExperiment Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Savahax
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Oh man I f*****g HATE scrum. The concept has insanely good potential. We used this when I was still a software engineer at Mercedes. But what it does is the following: Force a team of brilliant programmers to attend meetings and guess arbitrary numbers before they're *ALLOWED* to work, losing 3 hours of time. Then when they're ALLOWED to go back to work there's only 40 minutes left till lunch so no one f*****g does anything, even though only 2 points were relevant to them. So a team of n programmers lost 4 hours * n of work to this nonsense. It's horrible. A "Sprint" is called work. no need to f*****g quantise it into arbitrary blocks

    Load More Replies...
    JoinMeZoe
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Workers: What should we do manager? Parrot: How's the project going? How's the project going? Good night. Hello.

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu
    #5

    Fastfollow

    Fastfollow

    taylorbuley Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Savahax
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    There's a lot of information available about this. ANY software that goes to space is insanely safe. There are so many rules about this. For instance, none of the devices have an "off" instruction. Just to make sure no one can hit it on accident. The code that goes up to space is horrible by human standards and for a reason, it's designed to be terrible. It's designed to be fixable by sending lines of HEX or Binary to fix it. There's an encryption obviously which is the only thing stopping ME from altering the code on those satellites and rovers. But the reason it can keep working without a dead chip is called "Fault tolerance". CD's have it too. It's really clever. Check this: ------ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8jsijhllIA

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu
    ADVERTISEMENT
    #6

    Guyswehaveanenemy

    Guyswehaveanenemy

    tenderlove Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Beeps
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Oh this is evil. I’m stealing this, but only for badly designed surveys.

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu

    Meanwhile, software engineer Ben Grimwade says, “As with any other group or industry, there are those that joke more and those that joke less. I personally feel that if you aren’t having fun and making jokes at work, you are missing out on life. We spend more time at work than with our families, so have fun doing it.”

    #8

    Everyprojectmanagerever

    Everyprojectmanagerever

    LakesideNorth Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    JoinMeZoe
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    They cut the baby in to nine, each spend a month raising it, then build it back. Simple!

    View more commentsArrow down menu
    ADVERTISEMENT

    As Klimenchenko already mentioned, programming humor is quite niche, overflowing with industry jargon. “It often revolves around different programming languages, algorithms, and software quirks. Programmers love to poke fun at their own challenges and the absurdities they are faced with on a day-to-day basis. We also love our puns,” he fondly shares.

    ADVERTISEMENT

    Grimwade adds that programming humor is generally quite dry and leans toward being more sarcastic than what you would find in other areas of life or even professions. 

    Klimenchenko shares that the most popular ongoing inside joke among developers that reflects their struggles perfectly is “It works on my machine." He explains that it’s a good way to deflect a code that doesn’t run elsewhere. “Everyone understands that this is just a joke, and if it works on one machine, it should work on most.”

    #13

    Stillbetterthanlibreoffice

    Stillbetterthanlibreoffice

    ellewasamistake Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Robert T
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    They were going to cancel it, but someone laid the schedule out in a table... ;-)

    View more commentsArrow down menu
    ADVERTISEMENT
    #14

    Googling

    Googling

    SufficientMark3344 Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Jon Steensen
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    googleling is an artform - especially when you don't even know the name of the thing you are looking for. Furthermore the internet has now become so poluted with all kinds of made up nonsense, that knowing how to filter it out, so you only get the usefull parts, is a great skill.

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu
    #15

    Oddlyspecific

    Oddlyspecific

    general_452 Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Robert T
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    They wanted a bigger byte of the market! I'd laugh even louder if the previous limit was 16, as that's just a nibble!!!

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu

    “Another one is we love our "Infinite Loops" jokes—jokes about code that never stops running. Or similarly jokes about "recursions," that one might be hard to explain, haha,” adds Klimenchenko.

    #16

    Icanseewhereistheissue

    Icanseewhereistheissue

    vinceflibustier Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Jrog
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    This refers to the July 19, 2024 outage of all Crowdstrike services, that caused $5.4 billion in losses in what might be considered "the largest IT outage in history", all stemming from a single faulty software update pushed on a Friday afternoon (a big no-no). CrowdStrike supplies a security software called Falcon to thousand of companies. The software embeds itself into the Windows kernel, and the update made impossible to boot the PCs affected.

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu
    #17

    Chadrecursioncode

    Chadrecursioncode

    Asleep-Television-24 Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Savahax
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    here;s this infinite paradox loop in Python: def process_wishes(wishes): wish1 = lambda: not wishes[1]() # Do opposite of next wish wish2 = lambda: not wishes[2]() # Don't fulfill third wish wish3 = lambda: not wishes[0]() # Ignore first wish wishes = [wish1, wish2, wish3] try: result = wishes[0]() print("Wishes processed successfully") return result except RecursionError: print("Stack overflow: Infinite wish loop detected") raise except Exception as e: print(f"Critical error: {str(e)}") raise

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu

    Grimwade additionally tells us that programmers love a good pun and often joke about the plethora of misunderstandings that happen with other departments. “Like the sales teams that sell software to clients telling the clients that we already have it (when we don’t), and then tell us to write it by the next day, or the product team who tell customers how the system should work and then tell us something different.”

    ADVERTISEMENT
    #19

    Leadershipmindset

    Leadershipmindset

    CuriousNewbie101 Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    BeesEelsAndPups
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Awww. I do try to be a good senior dev. I hope I make the junior devs feel good about their work.

    View more commentsArrow down menu
    #20

    Thoughtyouwereinvisiblehuhthinkagain

    Thoughtyouwereinvisiblehuhthinkagain

    JhinMoriarty Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Robert T
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Incognito browsing only prevents your browser from recording your actions, not the servers you interact with. So if you Google something whilst in incognito mode, Google still records it.

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu
    #21

    Wardeclaration

    Wardeclaration

    Medmaksi Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Savahax
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    "function peace() { // TODO: Implement world peace throw new Error('Not implemented yet'); }"

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu

    If you’re interested in knowing even more about the tech world or are a beginner looking for guidance, both engineers have written various articles helping others navigate the industry more easily. For instance, Grimwade has published a post on how to ace a software engineering interview where he shares various tips and tricks. On Klimenchenko’s blog, you can find how to build an app only using Copilot and an article explaining that front-end testing is for everyone.

    #22

    Humorprogrammingadvancethisis

    Humorprogrammingadvancethisis

    ashevat Report

    #23

    Betyourlifeonmycode

    Betyourlifeonmycode

    FelchingLegend Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Savahax
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Several people were killed because of it, but honestly if you look at the numbers; kilometres driven by humans divided by accidents still exceeds the same equation driven by "AI". And George Hotz absolutely f*****g SMASHED this with a piece of software he wrote for phones and obliterates anything written by multi-trillion dollar companies

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu
    ADVERTISEMENT
    See Also on Bored Panda
    #24

    Techstartupsbelike

    Techstartupsbelike

    bmacabeus Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    BeesEelsAndPups
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    That is the valuation if the startup is in San Fransisco. The exact same company with the exact same product and same developers started in New York is worth $200 million. Started in Chicago it's worth $100 million. Started in Philadelphia it's worth $500 thousand. Company valuations are purely based on perception, and not on reality. It's why Tesla is worth more than every other car manufacturer on Earth put together.

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu

    Klimenchenko signed off by saying, “It's wonderful to see programming humour getting the spotlight! It's a great way to bring the community together and make the field more approachable to others.”

    #25

    Whatversionareyouusing

    Whatversionareyouusing

    debugger_life Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Marianne
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    I don't know about Java, but some programs can only be used in old versions, because all the updates just make them worse and worse. (Here in Germany, we call that "verschlimmbessern".)

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu
    #26

    Geniedislikescloud

    Geniedislikescloud

    venzann Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Makenzie McNeal
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

    Well I'd buy a lot of things like multiple plot of land in good places with that money then I'd use most of the billion dollars building houses on them to sell or rent out :)

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu
    #27

    Itsmostlybussinesspeopleoverthere

    Itsmostlybussinesspeopleoverthere

    GodSpeedLove345 Report

    #30

    Stilljunior

    Stilljunior

    TopCitySoftware Report

    Add photo comments
    POST
    Savahax
    Community Member
    4 weeks ago

    This comment is hidden. Click here to view.

    This comment has been deleted.

    View More Replies...
    View more commentsArrow down menu

    Note: this post originally had 90 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.

    ADVERTISEMENT
    See Also on Bored Panda