Item:
“Knock Knock…
Who’s there?
…. (long pause)
Java”
General Information about Item:
- Oral folklore: joke
- English
- USA
Informant Data:
Shashwat Chaturvedi is a 20 year old Indian male Dartmouth CS/Econ double major, from Texas.
Contextual Data:
Shashwat heard this for the first time on the internet, and heard it again from Professor Cormen once. He doesn’t necessarily use the joke that often, but keeps it in mind as a reminder of the properties of Java. He might use it to lighten the mood if he was with a group of Java programmers who were frustrated with the speed of their code. As far as variations go, Shash felt like it would be quite straightforward to make variations for other languages that make fun of issues with those languages. As to whether the joke illustrates a divide among programmers, Shashwat said, “Yeah, It does show whether you like Java or not, and how there are polarizing reactions about the language… about every language… but a lot of people have strong opinions about Java.”
Transcript of Associated File:
Informant’s Comments:
“A lot of people have issues with Java, and one of their main issues with the language is its slow compilation time. Once you write the code, the computer has to prepare to actually be run. It has to go through the code, check if there are any errors… Once it has been prepared the computer can run it. And so preparing Java code takes more time than other languages.”
Collector’s Comments:
This joke is verbal folklore, and more specifically a riddle. It compares Java’s slow compile time with a person who takes a long time to respond after knocking on a door.
Tags/Keywords:
- knock knock, java, joke