Title: What am I Coding
General Information about Item:
- Genre and Sub Genre: Verbal Folklore: Joke
- Language: English
- Country where Item is from: United States
Informant Data:
- The informant is Kyle Hollorman ’19, who is a current Junior at Dartmouth College majoring in computer science. The informant has developed many programs, leading him to have a large exposure with computer science community. He actively participates in many programming forums and events leading to him having been immersed in the culture of computer science. I interviewed Kyle in his residence on 10/26/17.
Contextual Data:
- Social Context/Cultural Context: The joke uses self-deprecation to make fun of the knowledge of computer scientists. Computer Scientists are often regarded as very smart people, but often programmers build an application without fully understanding how the process behind the application actually work. The joke brings this to light and makes fun of the fact that computer scientists often do not often full understand their programs. The joke continues on and says that “hardware is something that you can kick”. This references computer scientists lack of involvement with machinery as they just write the code for the hardware.
Item:
- The Joke is an item that computer scientists frequently tell each other due to the seriousness that is associated with their high level of knowledge that is required. The joke is more simplistic in nature, compared to many other computer science jokes, but runs off of a theme of lack of control that is conveyed through self-deprecation The joke then continues to remove computer scientists from a separate group of engineerings that build the platforms a computer scientist’s code is run on.
Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):
Transcript of Joke:
- “An algorithm is a word that programmers use to explain when they don’t know how to explain what they did and that hardware is something you can kick”
Informant’s Comments:
- Kyle said he obtained this joke via a Hackathon conference when their program was not working and they thought it was due to the computer.
Collector’s Comments:
- This is a self-deprecating joke which is very common among other computer science and engineering jokes. Self-deprecation is used as a means to evade the serious work environment and shine light on the often weird nature of computer science.
Collector’s Name: Scott Magnuson
Tags/Keywords:
- Verbal Lore, Joke