this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Programmer Humor
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I always think this joke is more of a linguistics/grammar joke than programming. The kid resolves the ambiguity in the ellipsis incorrectly, but why is this a programmer joke?
Yes the joke is definitely on human language and not on programming but I think programmer can be relate here. At least I feel this joke is made in every computer science ground class ever.
I suppose it demonstrates the ambiguity of human language and need to formalize things for computers
I heard this joke in Spanish, but the meaning is a bit different. Eggs is a colloquial/slang term for testicles (like balls in English), so "if you have eggs" means "if you dare".
I love having a joke that works in two languages but for different reasons.
The joke lies in interpreting human languages as if it was a computer algorithm. Remove any computer language context, and it is hard to even find a joke or logic in this. Any human would not do this interpretation since we can understand context, this would only be seen as a very strange attempt at a joke. However, computers don't understand context, so adding that component and the joke makes sense. So, even if it really is a grammar joke, it needs the programming context to work as a joke.