4 ms·

Some funny engineering/programmer jokes

49 points by nvahalik 5y ago

Exuma 5y ago
Youll never be as lazy as the person who named the fireplace
- gryn 5y ago
  it a good name that's semantically transparent, if all things were named like that NLP would be much easier.
- dylan604 5y ago
  at least it's accurate as that is the place to put fire. compare that to say 'driveway' where you park your car while the 'parkway' is where you drive your car.
  - xref 5y ago
    Was that a Carlin bit? Think he also said “why is it a ‘pair’ of underwear but only one bra?”
  - ziml77 5y ago
    I know this is a joke, but the "park" in parkway is meant to refer to a common area with neatly kept greenery.
    - xtiansimon 5y ago
      I’m from NorCal and this would be lost on me, save for the fact I’ve been living on Long Island the past 14 years and driving on the Southern State Parkway (1925) and the Meadowbrook Parkway (1924). Though I’ve not been there, the Southern Boulevard Parkway (1904) in PA sounds like the real deal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_State_Parkway?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_State_Parkway?wprov=s... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadowbrook_State_Parkway?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadowbrook_State_Parkway?wpro... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Boulevard_Parkway?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Boulevard_Parkway?wpr...
- fisherjeff 5y ago
  Now this is a joke. Concise, evocative, hilarious, perfect.
- sieste 5y ago
  Haha, such "lazy" naming of things is super common in German: toys = Spielzeug (play stuff), fridge = Kühlschrank (cooling cupboard), ferris wheel = Riesenrad (giant wheel), etc
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
For me, the whole 2005 looking page was summed up with the last joke parody lyrics to “Who let the dogs out”. Thanks, Mark Lund, I wasn’t sure what this was for a second, but yea, it’s that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
code_duck 5y ago
This is really HN content? Anyway, I like that he feels the need to specify "This joke is in the public domain"
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  I don't want to know what jokes dwell in the private domain.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
This Mark Lund guy must be somebody's dad.
jbandela1 5y ago
Teacher: Name an influential German philosopher. Student: I can't. Teacher: Correct!
sneak 5y ago
In the first minute reading, it managed to be both racist and sexist, but not funny once. :(
- brigandish 5y ago
  I detected no sexism nor racism, but also not many funny jokes.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  I was pretty underwhelming as well. The jokes in the comments here were much funnier. The first one from the "article" I really liked was: New engineer: "How do you estimate how long a project will take?" Seasoned engineer: "I add up the time required for each task, then multiply the sum by pi." New engineer: "Why pi?" Seasoned engineer: "It ensures that all my budgets are irrational."
  - travisgriggs 5y ago
    I always heard the punchline as "...to account for running around in circles." The little tau angel on my shoulder always whispers "but it's only half circles!"
tonteldoos 5y ago
The 'walking off' prevention tags are brilliant. At a previous company I worked at in a niche field, we had several field specific control units used for development and debugging (you pretty much couldn't work without these). They were just expensive enough to have to jump through hoops to buy them, and just cheap enough that all hell didn't break loose if one got lost, loaned (permanently) to a client, etc. Consequently, we were always short, and people tended to furiously guard 'their' equipment (to the point of lying about having one on hand, when asked). Due to testing during development the units were also quite prone to being blown (usually easily repaired, but enough of a nuisance for a pile of broken ones to be around, in case of absolute emergency). How did one of my co-workers solve the problem? Labeled all his equipment as 'Broken' in his handwriting...
BeetleB 5y ago
A priest, a doctor, and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, “What’s with those guys? We must have been waiting for fifteen minutes.” The doctor chimed in, “I don’t know, but I’ve never seen such inept golf.” The priest said, “Here comes the greenkeeper. Let’s have a word with him.” The priest said, “Hello George, what’s wrong with the group ahead of us? They’re rather slow, aren’t they?.” The greenkeeper replied, “Oh yes, thats a group of blind firemen. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year so we always let them play for free at any time.” The group fell silent for a moment. The priest said, “That’s so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight.,” The doctor said, “Good idea. I’m gonna contact my optomologist colleague and see if there’s anything he can do for them.” The engineer said, “Why can’t they play at night?” Stolen from https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/folklorearchive/2017/11/13/golfing-engineer/ https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/folklorearchive/2017/11/13/go...
waterhouse 5y ago
SICP [1] has a good one in a footnote: Numbers that fool the Fermat test are called Carmichael numbers, and little is known about them other than that they are extremely rare. There are 255 Carmichael numbers below 100,000,000. The smallest few are 561, 1105, 1729, 2465, 2821, and 6601. In testing primality of very large numbers chosen at random, the chance of stumbling upon a value that fools the Fermat test is less than the chance that cosmic radiation will cause the computer to make an error in carrying out a ``correct'' algorithm. Considering an algorithm to be inadequate for the first reason but not for the second illustrates the difference between mathematics and engineering. One that I'm rather fond of is: "An engineer thinks his equations approximate reality. A physicist thinks reality approximates his equations. A mathematician doesn't care." [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-11.html#footnote_Temp_80 https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/...
FridgeSeal 5y ago
> Chief engineer: You told me that you would finish the layout in three days. Engineer: Sure, but not threeconsecutive days! Putting aside the humour for a moment, this is actually pretty good.
DonHopkins 5y ago
Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious. Marvin Minsky. AI memo No. 603. November, 1980. https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/jokes.cognitive.txt https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/jokes.cognitive.txt >JOKES and the Logic of the Cognitive Unconscious >Marvin Minsky, MIT >Abstract: Freud's theory of jokes explains how they overcome the mental "censors" that make it hard for us to think "forbidden" thoughts. But his theory did not work so well for humorous nonsense as for other comical subjects. In this essay I argue that the different forms of humor can be seen as much more similar, once we recognize the importance of knowledge about knowledge and, particularly, aspects of thinking concerned with recognizing and suppressing bugs -- ineffective or destructive thought processes. When seen in this light, much humor that at first seems pointless, or mysterious, becomes more understandable. >Introduction >A gentleman entered a pastry-cook's shop and ordered a cake; but he soon brought it back and asked for a glass of liqueur instead. He drank it and began to leave without having paid. The proprietor detained him. "You've not paid for the liqueur." "But I gave you the cake in exchange for it." "You didn't pay for that either." "But I hadn't eaten it". --- from Freud (1905). [...] >In the 1912 edition Freud, still perplexed about the purpose of nonsense, recounts a joke of this form: {11} >"A man at the dinner table dipped his hands in the mayonnaise and then ran them through his hair. When his neighbor looked astonished, the man apologized: "I'm so sorry. I thought it was spinach." [...]
- schwartzworld 5y ago
  Any jokes in there about grandpa-aged men and underage girls?
ryzvonusef 5y ago
Flu A new disease is hitting the US, the Chinese Flu. The biggest symptom is that you wake up in the morning with the urge to manufacture a smart phone. © Copyright 2014 Mark W. Lund Ah the good year 2014, where a Chinese origin pandemic was simply a joke Also, Lund means penis in my language, so there is that for a two-fer
bosky101 5y ago
Immutable, functional programming joke. X country can never join the G5. Because if it did, it would become G6.
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  Create a new typeclass G that contains the cardinality of countries. Copy all of the elements into the new value and append X. Oh wait, G5 is incompatible with G6. Can't we just use an imperative, dynamic language and have a type G?
theandrewbailey 5y ago
> Everything in product development these days is about connectivity. One company just came out with a new silent smoke alarm. When it detects smoke it sends you a text, tweets your friends, and posts a picture of the fire on facebook. I must be too cynical to believe that's not a joke, but real.
failwhaleshark 5y ago
A resistor is a rebel. A capacitor is one who doesn't let anything flow unless things change or lets everything out all at once. An inductor is like a conductor without the trains. Keep your [thing] in a vise. -AvE
failwhaleshark 5y ago
A wife asks her software engineer husband, "Honey, can you please go to the store, buy a gallon of milk and if they have eggs, get a dozen." He leaves for the store. An hour later, he returns with 12 gallons of milk. His wife stares at him furiously and said "Why on Earth did you get 12 gallons of milk!?" "Well... they had eggs." he said.
DonHopkins 5y ago
I was interviewing somebody for a Prolog programming position. I asked them what was the difference between call by reference and call by value. They answered: Yes. So I hired them.

49 points by nvahalik 5y ago

Exuma 5y ago

Youll never be as lazy as the person who named the fireplace

gryn 5y ago
it a good name that's semantically transparent, if all things were named like that NLP would be much easier.
dylan604 5y ago
at least it's accurate as that is the place to put fire. compare that to say 'driveway' where you park your car while the 'parkway' is where you drive your car.
- xref 5y ago
  Was that a Carlin bit? Think he also said “why is it a ‘pair’ of underwear but only one bra?”
- ziml77 5y ago
  I know this is a joke, but the "park" in parkway is meant to refer to a common area with neatly kept greenery.
  - xtiansimon 5y ago
    I’m from NorCal and this would be lost on me, save for the fact I’ve been living on Long Island the past 14 years and driving on the Southern State Parkway (1925) and the Meadowbrook Parkway (1924). Though I’ve not been there, the Southern Boulevard Parkway (1904) in PA sounds like the real deal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_State_Parkway?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_State_Parkway?wprov=s... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadowbrook_State_Parkway?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadowbrook_State_Parkway?wpro... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Boulevard_Parkway?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Boulevard_Parkway?wpr...
fisherjeff 5y ago
Now this is a joke. Concise, evocative, hilarious, perfect.
sieste 5y ago
Haha, such "lazy" naming of things is super common in German: toys = Spielzeug (play stuff), fridge = Kühlschrank (cooling cupboard), ferris wheel = Riesenrad (giant wheel), etc

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

For me, the whole 2005 looking page was summed up with the last joke parody lyrics to “Who let the dogs out”. Thanks, Mark Lund, I wasn’t sure what this was for a second, but yea, it’s that.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

code_duck 5y ago

This is really HN content? Anyway, I like that he feels the need to specify "This joke is in the public domain"

failwhaleshark 5y ago
I don't want to know what jokes dwell in the private domain.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

This Mark Lund guy must be somebody's dad.

jbandela1 5y ago

Teacher: Name an influential German philosopher. Student: I can't. Teacher: Correct!

sneak 5y ago

In the first minute reading, it managed to be both racist and sexist, but not funny once. :(

brigandish 5y ago
I detected no sexism nor racism, but also not many funny jokes.
shkkmo 5y ago
I was pretty underwhelming as well. The jokes in the comments here were much funnier. The first one from the "article" I really liked was: New engineer: "How do you estimate how long a project will take?" Seasoned engineer: "I add up the time required for each task, then multiply the sum by pi." New engineer: "Why pi?" Seasoned engineer: "It ensures that all my budgets are irrational."
- travisgriggs 5y ago
  I always heard the punchline as "...to account for running around in circles." The little tau angel on my shoulder always whispers "but it's only half circles!"

tonteldoos 5y ago

The 'walking off' prevention tags are brilliant. At a previous company I worked at in a niche field, we had several field specific control units used for development and debugging (you pretty much couldn't work without these). They were just expensive enough to have to jump through hoops to buy them, and just cheap enough that all hell didn't break loose if one got lost, loaned (permanently) to a client, etc. Consequently, we were always short, and people tended to furiously guard 'their' equipment (to the point of lying about having one on hand, when asked). Due to testing during development the units were also quite prone to being blown (usually easily repaired, but enough of a nuisance for a pile of broken ones to be around, in case of absolute emergency). How did one of my co-workers solve the problem? Labeled all his equipment as 'Broken' in his handwriting...

BeetleB 5y ago

A priest, a doctor, and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, “What’s with those guys? We must have been waiting for fifteen minutes.” The doctor chimed in, “I don’t know, but I’ve never seen such inept golf.” The priest said, “Here comes the greenkeeper. Let’s have a word with him.” The priest said, “Hello George, what’s wrong with the group ahead of us? They’re rather slow, aren’t they?.” The greenkeeper replied, “Oh yes, thats a group of blind firemen. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year so we always let them play for free at any time.” The group fell silent for a moment. The priest said, “That’s so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight.,” The doctor said, “Good idea. I’m gonna contact my optomologist colleague and see if there’s anything he can do for them.” The engineer said, “Why can’t they play at night?” Stolen from https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/folklorearchive/2017/11/13/golfing-engineer/ https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/folklorearchive/2017/11/13/go...

waterhouse 5y ago

SICP [1] has a good one in a footnote: Numbers that fool the Fermat test are called Carmichael numbers, and little is known about them other than that they are extremely rare. There are 255 Carmichael numbers below 100,000,000. The smallest few are 561, 1105, 1729, 2465, 2821, and 6601. In testing primality of very large numbers chosen at random, the chance of stumbling upon a value that fools the Fermat test is less than the chance that cosmic radiation will cause the computer to make an error in carrying out a ``correct'' algorithm. Considering an algorithm to be inadequate for the first reason but not for the second illustrates the difference between mathematics and engineering. One that I'm rather fond of is: "An engineer thinks his equations approximate reality. A physicist thinks reality approximates his equations. A mathematician doesn't care." [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-11.html#footnote_Temp_80 https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/...

FridgeSeal 5y ago

> Chief engineer: You told me that you would finish the layout in three days. Engineer: Sure, but not threeconsecutive days! Putting aside the humour for a moment, this is actually pretty good.

DonHopkins 5y ago

Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious. Marvin Minsky. AI memo No. 603. November, 1980. https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/jokes.cognitive.txt https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/jokes.cognitive.txt >JOKES and the Logic of the Cognitive Unconscious >Marvin Minsky, MIT >Abstract: Freud's theory of jokes explains how they overcome the mental "censors" that make it hard for us to think "forbidden" thoughts. But his theory did not work so well for humorous nonsense as for other comical subjects. In this essay I argue that the different forms of humor can be seen as much more similar, once we recognize the importance of knowledge about knowledge and, particularly, aspects of thinking concerned with recognizing and suppressing bugs -- ineffective or destructive thought processes. When seen in this light, much humor that at first seems pointless, or mysterious, becomes more understandable. >Introduction >A gentleman entered a pastry-cook's shop and ordered a cake; but he soon brought it back and asked for a glass of liqueur instead. He drank it and began to leave without having paid. The proprietor detained him. "You've not paid for the liqueur." "But I gave you the cake in exchange for it." "You didn't pay for that either." "But I hadn't eaten it". --- from Freud (1905). [...] >In the 1912 edition Freud, still perplexed about the purpose of nonsense, recounts a joke of this form: {11} >"A man at the dinner table dipped his hands in the mayonnaise and then ran them through his hair. When his neighbor looked astonished, the man apologized: "I'm so sorry. I thought it was spinach." [...]

schwartzworld 5y ago
Any jokes in there about grandpa-aged men and underage girls?

ryzvonusef 5y ago

Flu A new disease is hitting the US, the Chinese Flu. The biggest symptom is that you wake up in the morning with the urge to manufacture a smart phone. © Copyright 2014 Mark W. Lund Ah the good year 2014, where a Chinese origin pandemic was simply a joke Also, Lund means penis in my language, so there is that for a two-fer

bosky101 5y ago

Immutable, functional programming joke. X country can never join the G5. Because if it did, it would become G6.

failwhaleshark 5y ago
Create a new typeclass G that contains the cardinality of countries. Copy all of the elements into the new value and append X. Oh wait, G5 is incompatible with G6. Can't we just use an imperative, dynamic language and have a type G?

theandrewbailey 5y ago

> Everything in product development these days is about connectivity. One company just came out with a new silent smoke alarm. When it detects smoke it sends you a text, tweets your friends, and posts a picture of the fire on facebook. I must be too cynical to believe that's not a joke, but real.

failwhaleshark 5y ago

A resistor is a rebel. A capacitor is one who doesn't let anything flow unless things change or lets everything out all at once. An inductor is like a conductor without the trains. Keep your [thing] in a vise. -AvE

failwhaleshark 5y ago

A wife asks her software engineer husband, "Honey, can you please go to the store, buy a gallon of milk and if they have eggs, get a dozen." He leaves for the store. An hour later, he returns with 12 gallons of milk. His wife stares at him furiously and said "Why on Earth did you get 12 gallons of milk!?" "Well... they had eggs." he said.

DonHopkins 5y ago

I was interviewing somebody for a Prolog programming position. I asked them what was the difference between call by reference and call by value. They answered: Yes. So I hired them.