I think the joke is the `getDOWNum` call: `getDayOfWeek` takes a string as its argument, so presumably this is already something like "Monday", thus rendering t

I think the joke is the `getDOWNum` call: `getDayOfWeek` takes a string as its argument, so presumably this is already something like "Monday", thus rendering the function redundant (i.e., equivalent to the identity). However, there's no implication of this anywhere in the code; the input string could be "2014-02-24", for example. Maybe that's a bit of a long shot. Perhaps there's some standard library function -- I don't know Java, but the author seems to assume the reader does throughout the article -- to turn dates/whatever into day number. Maybe his joke is therefore, "OMFG! What a noob!" In short: I don't get it, either...