Item:

“Why do programmers always mix up Halloween and Christmas?”

“Because Oct 31 = Dec 25.”

General Information about Item:

• Oral folklore: joke
• English/binary
• USA

Informant Data:

Nitasha Kochar is a Dartmouth computer science major, in the class of 2019, from Jericho, New York.

Contextual Data:

The informant said that she first heard the joke from a fellow classmate in her CS10 class during her freshman year.

Transcript of Associated File:

“Why do programmers always mix up Halloween and Christmas?”

Informant’s Comments:

The basis of this joke lies within the two different number systems, octal and decimal, as Halloween is represented by Oct 31 and Christmas is represented by Dec 25. In computer science terms, Octal 31 and Decimal 25 are equivalent. To get into a little more detail, decimal is the base-10 number system with 10 digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). After you surpass the highest digit 9, then you add another column to the left; therefore, the sequence goes as follows: 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, etc. On the other hand, octal is the base-8 number system, which has 8 digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). Thus, when you surpass the highest digit 7, then you add another column to the left; as a result, the sequence would go as follows: 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, etc. To test if octal 31 and decimal 25 are equal, we can convert octal 31 into decimal form by using the equation: 3 x 81 + 1 x 80 = 3 x 8 + 1 x 1 = 24 + 1 = decimal 25. This joke emphasizes the different number systems used in coding, which can help programmers remember the fundamentals.

Collector’s Comments:

• This can be classified as a type of verbal folklore. Also, this joke uses elements of a riddle by incorporating the comparison of the dates, October 31 and December 25, with the system based numbers Octal 31 and Decimal 25 in computer programming.

Tags/Keywords:

• jokes, programming, Halloween, Christmas