this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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Programmer Humor

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[–] sxan@midwest.social 96 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (8 children)

Go is like snakes: you're hatched from an egg and pretty much effective from the get-go. The older you get, the bigger prey you can eat, but otherwise things don't change much since you were hatched. Your species can thrive in almost any environment, you're effective, you have all the tools you need straight out of the egg.

Rust is like humans. There's a huge incubation period, and you're mostly helpless when you're born, but the older you get, the more effective you become with the tools nature graced you with. And you, like Thanos, are inevitable, even if it does mean the death of billions.

Python is like beaver. Everyone has an opinion about you: some think you're cute, some think you're wierd. You're perfectly suited to your environment, but things get awkward outside of your natural habitat - you can function, but not as well as when you're in your comfort zone. And when people encounter you where they're not expecting, they can be unpeasantly surprised, and you can cause them trouble.

C++ is like platypus. You resemble some other more simple, some might say sane, animal, but developed into a sort of frankenstein monster creature made from a jumble of parts and a stinger that, when it kills someone, comes as a shock. Every part of you serves some purpose, even if it seems tacked-on and out of place.

Then there's Node. You are everywhere. You are legion. You fill up ecosystems. People try to defend you, claiming that you serve some purpose in the foodchain, but there's scant evidence. Attempts to eradicate you fail. You often spread deadly disease. You breed, rapidly, persistently, relentlessly. You are widely hated, and yet everwhere.

Edit: typo

[–] odium@programming.dev 22 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

In other words, node = mosquitoes or invasive ant species?

[–] rushaction@programming.dev 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] CanadaPlus@futurology.today 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Roaches don't spread nearly as much disease as 'squiters, and IIRC are actually important in some ecosystems.

[–] rushaction@programming.dev 3 points 9 months ago

For sure! I was just thinking of a species that'll outlive humanity. :D

[–] firelizzard@programming.dev 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Did I find another Sanderfan in the wild?

[–] odium@programming.dev 1 points 9 months ago

Yes you did

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

These are excellent.

I need to add Perl.

Perl is a honey bee. You are unassuming and pragmatic. You fill every niche. Your buzzing carries meaning, but only to other bees. In theory, your ecosystem niche is filled by many competing solutions that are more fit to purpose. But somehow we all know in our hearts that if you disappear, all life on the planet will probably die soon after.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

May I acquaint you with the Evil Mangler, historically used by GHC to compile Haskell via C. It would go through the assembly gcc generates and rearrange whole blocks and deletes instructions, such as function prologues and epilogues.

[–] sxan@midwest.social 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Holy shit. This thing sounds insanely awesome, but also quintessentially Perl. Like, the perfect holotype for Perl.

And, damn, but I'm impressed. I've seen code that I admired; elegant, inspired, wise code... but the Evil Mangler leaves me in awe.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

There is a very strange, and maybe unexpected, cultural overlap between Perl and Haskell: It's definitely possible to produce write-only Haskell, and once you get good enough writing Haskell it becomes very inviting to do so. It's generally going to be a tiny bit more robust, probably a bit slower, and do dirty things with syb regexen could never dream of. While Perl will rip a DFA through a html file while hoping for the best, Haskell will respect the tree structure and then bend it into eldritch knots, leaving you with a file that's like 50 lines of parser combinators ("it works on my files") and then five lines of completely inscrutable magic doing the actual processing.

[–] CanadaPlus@futurology.today 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

So then I guess C is salamander. Also lays eggs and lives by a pool, but doesn't do anything extra, and is a necessary step before most of the other modern languages.

COBOL is a coelacanth. To everyone's surprise, they're still out there. We thought they were an old, very extinct example of a non-terrestrial lobe-finned fish, but they actually hung on in some odd environments. They cause massive indigestion to anyone that has to consume them.

If Node is a mosquito, Javascript itself is another hymenopteran: the yellow jacket wasp. Just as hated, and with a tendency to injure handlers, but widely successful and defended as filling an actual useful role in nature. They build delicate, arguably pretty nests.

[–] sxan@midwest.social 5 points 9 months ago

I especially enjoyed your COBOL metaphor. Nicely done!

[–] wischi@programming.dev 4 points 9 months ago

Node: You fill up ~~ecosystems~~ hard drives.

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[–] MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 60 points 9 months ago
[–] magic_lobster_party@kbin.social 53 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

I would swap Python with C++. Constantly dealing with stupid runtime errors that could’ve been easily captured during compile time.

Did you forget to rename this one use of the variable at the end of the program? Sucks for you, because I won’t tell you about it until after 30 minutes into the execution.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 14 points 9 months ago (3 children)

My brother. That's why you do unit tests.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 21 points 9 months ago
[–] milkjug@lemmy.wildfyre.dev 7 points 9 months ago

But are you even a real programmer if you don’t test in production?

[–] magic_lobster_party@kbin.social 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I shouldn’t need to do unit tests for quick one off scripts

[–] Kache@lemm.ee 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What kind of quick one off scripts have large complex scopes where variable renames are difficult to track?

Besides, these days Python has great LSPs and typing features that can even surpass the traditional typed langs

[–] magic_lobster_party@kbin.social 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Mostly number crunching and data exploration tasks. Just so I can make informed decisions about the data I got. I do this rarely enough so it hasn’t been worth for me to install all these extra third party support wheels.

[–] potustheplant@feddit.nl 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Those support wheels are for your own (and apparently systematic) errors...

[–] nxdefiant@startrek.website 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

You can solve this with git:

git gud

Seriously though, writing a monolith of a function and not testing anything until you run it the first time isn't the way to go. Even with a compiler you're only going to catch syntactical and type issues. No compiler in the world is going to tell you you forgot to store your data in the correct variable, although it or a a linter may have helped you realize you weren't using it anywhere else.

[–] Johanno@feddit.de 6 points 9 months ago

Python was typeless. And it was common to reuse variables with different types of content.

So you at some point never knew what actually is within the variable you are using.

Using typing in python solve 95% of your problems of having runtime errors instead of compile errors

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeesh. I mean, perl would tell you about that immediately, I'm just saying... :-P

[–] Avg@lemm.ee 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but then you have to use perl

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 11 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Using perl is not the problem, now trying to read perl code later? That's the challenge! :-P

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[–] wyrmroot@programming.dev 28 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Rust: “Oh honey you aren’t ready to compile that yet”

[–] Empathy 4 points 9 months ago

I think your comment embodies Rust more than any I've seen before

[–] glibg10b@lemmy.ml 6 points 9 months ago

Why are you using fprintf in C++ anyway?

[–] imPastaSyndrome@lemm.ee 5 points 9 months ago

How does Python at all help? I don't understand

[–] CatChucks@mastodon.social 4 points 9 months ago

@stsquad
— Is my program about 1,000 lines complex?
— Yes, sure!
— Here you are my about 1,000 lines of 'printf("Hello, World\n");'.

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

as a non programmer, but someone involved in fields intimately similar in fundamental manners.

Honestly i get the feeling that languages and compilers are going to stop babying the user and go RISC-V at some point.

Who needs complex structures and tons of rules when you can just use a turing machine instead!

[–] nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

As a non-surgeon I think doing a heart transplant without bypass shouldn't be that hard if you're fast enough. I mean you can cut arteries quickly with bolt cutters right?

depends on how precise those bolt cutters are. Knipex? Yeah probably.

[–] Adanisi@lemmy.zip 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

a language with all the good parts of something like assembly, and without all the bad parts of more modern, complex, and "safe" languages.

One major rule for designed functionality is simplicity. The second you add another rule, the amount of things that can happen grows immensely. And that only scales worse the farther you go. The simpler something is, the easier it is to be intimately familiar with it. Which is what allows people to make proper use of something.

[–] Adanisi@lemmy.zip 2 points 9 months ago

Okay, I get it. It makes a lot more sense now. Honestly your first comment was word salad.

[–] fl42v@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You can certainty do this, yet it's not time- (and hence cost-) efficient.

yes, that's the problem though. There's a solution somewhere in there.

[–] QuazarOmega@lemy.lol 1 points 9 months ago