4 ms·

The crucial detail that is a little buried in the piece is that the original 'explanation' was posted in /r/ProgrammerHumor so it said right on the tin it was a

by pvg 5y ago

The crucial detail that is a little buried in the piece is that the original 'explanation' was posted in /r/ProgrammerHumor so it said right on the tin it was a joke. But the (seemingly clearly intended as a joke) details temporarily nerd-sniped a lot of people's senses of humor right out of their brains. The HN discussion discussion from back then is still fun reading with a number of commenters very invested in the notion that it wasn't really a joke. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21566921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21566921

mdoms 5y ago
I don't think something presented as fact in the comments to a joke is always going to be taken as a joke. Lots of people post their (supposedly) factual war stories in the comments of The Daily WTF and similar websites.
- pvg 5y ago
  Right but this is called 'programmer humor'. Plus it's obviously not serious if you think about it for more than 60 seconds.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    I just took a very quick look at the subreddit (absolutely awful stuff BTW, who finds this crap funny?) and already found 2 instances of people sharing "real" stories in the comments to joke posts. Should both of these be taken as jokes? They are not presented as such. https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/u0elnq/comment/i45dvh8/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/u0elnq/com... > I completely forget the example problem we were doing, but back when I was learning C, we were given sample code to fix. Everything was perfectly formatted, and the program ran without issue like be 99% of the time, but every once in a while, it’d give a totally incorrect value, or throw an error, and it was to teach us all about concurrency and race conditions and how even when we know we have done everything right, there might be something wrong that takes a deeper understanding to idntify. My professor was awesome. https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/u0ibli/comment/i46vaik/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/u0ibli/com... > In my old team, every line above 400 was considered an error. 2000 lines was a cause to put the development on hold until the end of refactoring.
    - pvg 5y ago
      The point isn't that there aren't 'real' stories. It's that it makes a lot of sense to evaluate it as a joke, given that it's in a joke forum. And when you do that, it's not that hard to tell it's a joke or at least suspect that it is as likely to be a joke as anything else.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      The second one is quite obviously a joke.
      - Nasrudith 5y ago
        It is a bit Poe's law really. There are plenty of companies with dumb software policies and practices, cargo culting legitimate approaches by treating them as axioms.
    - irrational 5y ago
      > who finds this crap funny? Apparently 1.9 million people (the number of subscribers).
      - saagarjha 5y ago
        The quality went way down after most of them joined.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  I don't think something presented by a clown dressed up like a ballerina is always going to be taken as a joke. If you based a actual news story around an anonymous DailyWTF comment, that would be strange.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  >Lots of people post their (supposedly) factual war stories in the comments of The Daily WTF [...] // I've always assumed they're apocryphal, ie based on the truth but considerably dramatised to be more "Daily WTF" material, somewhat like The Onion articles. Basically, if your best source is an internet comment in a joke-y forum, just like if your best source is "Rob from accounts said at the water-cooler", then some corroboration before you promulgate that information would be absolutely in order.
causality0 5y ago
If it was a post in the subreddit that would make sense. But it was a comment, not a post, and thus not labeled as humor.
- pvg 5y ago
  I don't think that's how joke forums work, really.
  - bentcorner 5y ago
    /r/programmerhumor will ban you if you post a joke in the comments. All jokes must be top level posts.
    - lubujackson 5y ago
      Do not threaten Happy Fun Ball.
hotpotamus 5y ago
In defense of the gullible, I have a hard time telling the difference between reality and a prank these days too.
- pvg 5y ago
  I think misreading something like this is a perfectly understandable thing. It's definitely a 'had me going there for a second' type of joke. The unusual thing about this one is its spread and the (seemingly ongoing!) insistence by some of the taken that it was diabolically difficult to tell it was a joke. I suppose the latter contributed to the former.
davesque 5y ago
Just looked into this and yeah, the original post to which the comment was responding was a programmer humor post. However, it looked as if the comment in question may have been an actual, legit attempt to explain the phenomenon. I don't think it's obvious or assumed that the comments responding to programmer humor posts are always intended to be jokes as well. I'm also just asking myself what's more likely here. Think of the demographic of that forum. It seems to me like some up and coming nerd kid fancied themself an expert and cooked up a half baked theory about what was happening.
- stevage 5y ago
  Yeah it's totally plausible that someone would reply with genuine facts about a humourous situation. Still, one should do extra double checking before taking anything there literally.
- athrowaway3z 5y ago
  I think a little overconfident trolling is a vital experience to have this day and age. Once you see dozens or more people jump on a made-up bandwagon you're a little bit better prepared and alert for the cumulative stupidity we collectively produce.
blenderdt 5y ago
The subreddit has 'Humor' in the name, not 'Joke'. So to me it is not obvious it is a joke because programmers can also laugh at very silly real world bugs. But the main story here is that news outlets don't bother to fact check. And that's another reason you should avoid news.
- pvg 5y ago
  The subreddit has 'Humor' in the name, not 'Joke'. At that point it's probably best to avoid human language altogether

by pvg 5y ago

mdoms 5y ago

I don't think something presented as fact in the comments to a joke is always going to be taken as a joke. Lots of people post their (supposedly) factual war stories in the comments of The Daily WTF and similar websites.

pvg 5y ago
Right but this is called 'programmer humor'. Plus it's obviously not serious if you think about it for more than 60 seconds.
- mdoms 5y ago
  I just took a very quick look at the subreddit (absolutely awful stuff BTW, who finds this crap funny?) and already found 2 instances of people sharing "real" stories in the comments to joke posts. Should both of these be taken as jokes? They are not presented as such. https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/u0elnq/comment/i45dvh8/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/u0elnq/com... > I completely forget the example problem we were doing, but back when I was learning C, we were given sample code to fix. Everything was perfectly formatted, and the program ran without issue like be 99% of the time, but every once in a while, it’d give a totally incorrect value, or throw an error, and it was to teach us all about concurrency and race conditions and how even when we know we have done everything right, there might be something wrong that takes a deeper understanding to idntify. My professor was awesome. https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/u0ibli/comment/i46vaik/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/u0ibli/com... > In my old team, every line above 400 was considered an error. 2000 lines was a cause to put the development on hold until the end of refactoring.
  - pvg 5y ago
    The point isn't that there aren't 'real' stories. It's that it makes a lot of sense to evaluate it as a joke, given that it's in a joke forum. And when you do that, it's not that hard to tell it's a joke or at least suspect that it is as likely to be a joke as anything else.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    The second one is quite obviously a joke.
    - Nasrudith 5y ago
      It is a bit Poe's law really. There are plenty of companies with dumb software policies and practices, cargo culting legitimate approaches by treating them as axioms.
  - irrational 5y ago
    > who finds this crap funny? Apparently 1.9 million people (the number of subscribers).
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      The quality went way down after most of them joined.
pessimizer 5y ago
I don't think something presented by a clown dressed up like a ballerina is always going to be taken as a joke. If you based a actual news story around an anonymous DailyWTF comment, that would be strange.
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
>Lots of people post their (supposedly) factual war stories in the comments of The Daily WTF [...] // I've always assumed they're apocryphal, ie based on the truth but considerably dramatised to be more "Daily WTF" material, somewhat like The Onion articles. Basically, if your best source is an internet comment in a joke-y forum, just like if your best source is "Rob from accounts said at the water-cooler", then some corroboration before you promulgate that information would be absolutely in order.

causality0 5y ago

If it was a post in the subreddit that would make sense. But it was a comment, not a post, and thus not labeled as humor.

pvg 5y ago
I don't think that's how joke forums work, really.
- bentcorner 5y ago
  /r/programmerhumor will ban you if you post a joke in the comments. All jokes must be top level posts.
  - lubujackson 5y ago
    Do not threaten Happy Fun Ball.

hotpotamus 5y ago

In defense of the gullible, I have a hard time telling the difference between reality and a prank these days too.

pvg 5y ago
I think misreading something like this is a perfectly understandable thing. It's definitely a 'had me going there for a second' type of joke. The unusual thing about this one is its spread and the (seemingly ongoing!) insistence by some of the taken that it was diabolically difficult to tell it was a joke. I suppose the latter contributed to the former.

davesque 5y ago

Just looked into this and yeah, the original post to which the comment was responding was a programmer humor post. However, it looked as if the comment in question may have been an actual, legit attempt to explain the phenomenon. I don't think it's obvious or assumed that the comments responding to programmer humor posts are always intended to be jokes as well. I'm also just asking myself what's more likely here. Think of the demographic of that forum. It seems to me like some up and coming nerd kid fancied themself an expert and cooked up a half baked theory about what was happening.

stevage 5y ago
Yeah it's totally plausible that someone would reply with genuine facts about a humourous situation. Still, one should do extra double checking before taking anything there literally.
athrowaway3z 5y ago
I think a little overconfident trolling is a vital experience to have this day and age. Once you see dozens or more people jump on a made-up bandwagon you're a little bit better prepared and alert for the cumulative stupidity we collectively produce.

blenderdt 5y ago

The subreddit has 'Humor' in the name, not 'Joke'. So to me it is not obvious it is a joke because programmers can also laugh at very silly real world bugs. But the main story here is that news outlets don't bother to fact check. And that's another reason you should avoid news.

pvg 5y ago
The subreddit has 'Humor' in the name, not 'Joke'. At that point it's probably best to avoid human language altogether