Item:

“A computer scientist wakes up in the middle of the night and he notices the building is on fire.  There is a bucket next to the faucet, and he fills up the bucket and pours it on the fire and the fire goes out.  A few months later he wakes up and same thing, the room is on fire.  He finds the bucket next to the fire and the bucket is full of water.  So what does he do? He empties the bucket on the ground to reduce to the base case, fills the bucket up from the faucet, and dumps it on the fire”

• Oral Folklore: Joke
• English
• USA
• Collector: Jonah Deykin

Informant Data:

Trevor Davis is a Computer Science major in the Dartmouth class of 2018.  He is from Raleigh, North Carolina.

Contextual Data:

Social Context:

The informant heard this joke while at a Microsoft interview.  It was used to make something that is stressful and very formal, an interview, slightly more fun.

Cultural Context:

The joke is not accessible to those who are not computer scientists.  It would be funny in the context of an interview between two computer scientists as they would both understand the joke.  It makes fun of the absurdity of some things code does.

Item:

            Trevor Davis interview

Associated File:

Informants Comments:

The informant noted that the joke plays on the fact that whenever one does something in computer science, the first step is to reduce the process to the absolute starting position, even if that means repeating a step that has already been completed.

Collectors Comments:

The joke would most likely be interpreted differently by people not familiar with computer science.  It may seem to be a joke about computer science majors being stupid.

Collectors Name:

Jonah Deykin

Item:

“there are only two hard things in computer science: number 0, cache invalidation, number 1, naming things, number 7, asynchronous callbacks, and number 2, off by one errors”

• Oral Folklore: Joke
• English
• USA
• Collector: Jonah Deykin

Informant Data:

Trevor Davis is a Computer Science major in the Dartmouth class of 2018.  He is from Raleigh, North Carolina.

Contextual Data:

Social Context:

The informant heard this joke from some friends of his in a computer science class last year.  It was used both to add humor but also as a way of complaining about annoying problems encountered in computer science.

Cultural Context:

The joke is not accessible to those who are not computer scientists.  It relies on understanding technical problems that are common in computer code.  This joke allows the audience to gripe about problems many of them face often in a humorous way.

Item:

            Trevor Davis interview

Associated File:

Informants Comments:

The informant noted that the joke plays on different strange conventions and errors that are common in computer programming. For example, the list starts at 0, as all lists in computer science start with index 0.  The insertion of number 7 into the middle of the list plays on the fact that sometimes multiple processes are running at once so strange things can be inserted into the middle of the output.  The number 2 being an off by one error is joking that there were expected to only be two things listed

Collectors Comments:

The joke is very technical and requires more than a passing knowledge of computer science to understand

Collectors Name:

Jonah Deykin

Item:

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

“Because Oct31 == Dec25”

• Oral Folklore: Joke
• English
• USA
• Collector: Jonah Deykin

Informant Data:

Brian Keare is a Computer Science major in the Dartmouth class of 2018.  He is from Menlo Park California.

Contextual Data:

Social Context:

The informant heard this joke in algorithms class at Dartmouth.  It was told to him by a professor.  It is a joke that would only be understood by programmers, hence building a sense of community

Cultural Context:

The Joke plays on the commonly used programming shorthand for different base counting systems.  Oct is the Octal base system and Dec is the Decimal Base system.  31 in octal is 25 in decimal.

Item:

            Brian Keare interview

Associated File:

Informants Comments:

The informant noted that the joke relies on the fact that Oct and Dec can refer either to months or in a computer science context, base systems of counting.

Collectors Comments:

The joke is very specific to computer scientists and would not be understood by others.

Collectors Name:

Jonah Deykin

Item:

“How do you tell an introverted computer scientist from an extroverted computer scientist?”

“An extroverted computer scientist looks at your shoes while he talks to you”

• Oral Folklore: Joke
• English
• USA
• Collector: Jonah Deykin

Informant Data:

Brian Keare is a Computer Science major in the Dartmouth class of 2018.  He is from Menlo Park California.

Contextual Data:

Social Context:

The informant heard this joke in his AP computer science class his sophomore year of high school.  It was used to inject humor into a class that is generally rather humor free

Cultural Context:

The Joke plays on the commonly accepted stereotype that programmers are generally introverted and shy.

Item:

            Brian Keare interview

Associated File:

Informants Comments:

The informant noted that the joke plays on the fact that all computer science professionals are thought of as introverted and therefore unlikely to meet ones gaze when talking to you, although they may look in your general direction if they are “extroverted”

Collectors Comments:

The joke is a well-known one in the computer science field.  It has been told by many CS professors over the years.

Collectors Name:

Jonah Deykin