4 ms·

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 st

by 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.

by mdoms 5y ago

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.