Title: If Eggs

General Information about Item:

• Joke
• English
• United States

Informant Data:

• Alisha is a Dartmouth ’19 who majors in Government. Her familiarity with computer science comes from a course she took in high school.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • This joke would make sense to anybody familiar with any standard coding language. The “if statement” syntax is both basic and fairly universal between languages so there are no restrictions on specializing in particular coding language or expertise  beyond the beginner level. Therefore this could appear even in an introductory course. This joke does not depend on the specifics of a language, computer or otherwise, so translated versions would make just as much sense. Therefore this joke is not restricted to English speakers.

• Cultural Context
  • This joke illustrates the differences between normal languages and programming languages. Computer languages are very literal and will always follow a defined set of rules and even the slightest deviation from said rules prevents it from working correctly. Normal languages on the other hand would factor things such as common sense or social norms into the interpretation itself. This gives more leniency to syntax but still gets the desired result. This creates the humorous situation in which interpreting statements made in a human language with the logic of a computer language leads to an absurd result. This joke is meant to make fun of the precise and inflexible nature of computer languages. Even a slight mistake can result in an entirely different result. Since most programmers have had at least a few, but most likely a very large amount, times when relatively minor errors created by writing code according to human logic has resulted in many hours trying to find and fix the issue. Thus most programmers would be very familiar with the phenomenon.

Item:

A programmer is at work when his wife calls him and asks him to go to the store. She says she need a gallon of milk and if they have fresh eggs, buy a dozen. He comes home with twelve gallons of milk.

Transcript:

• Robert: Could you please give your name and background?
• Alisha: My name is Alisha. I am a ’19. I am a government major and I took a programming course back in high school.
• Robert: Could you please tell your joke?
• Alisha: A programmer is at work when his wife calls him and asks him to go to the store. She says she need a gallon of milk and if they have fresh eggs, buy a dozen. He comes home with twelve gallons of milk.
• Robert: Could you please tell me where you heard this joke?
• Alisha: I heard it in class.
• Robert: Could you please give a brief explanation of the joke?
• Alisha: Basically it is a play on the common syntax of something called an “if statement” in programming. Almost all programming languages would interpret the wife’s request as “if there are fresh eggs, buy a dozen gallons of milk” as opposed to the more common interpretation.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Collector’s Name: Robert Sylvia

Tags/Keywords:

• Joke. If statement. Code structure. Syntax. Hyperbole.