Category Archives: Programmer Folklore

Toilet Break

Title: Toilet Break

General Information about Item:

  • Joke
  • Not language specific.

Informant Data:

  • Anthony Addo is a senior at Dartmouth College studying Computer Science. He was born in Connecticut but has lived in Ohio and Ghana, and currently lives in Ghana.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context
    • The joke was collected on November 6th, 2017. Anthony first encountered the joke as it was told by his friend Sam when they were both in CS 31, Dartmouth’s class on algorithms. Anthony noted that CS 31 is a “very tough course,” and that jokes were shared between students in this course as a way to relieve stress.
  • Cultural Context
    • The CS 31 Algorithms course is known to be one of the more difficult courses in the Computer Science department, and taking the course can be considered a rite of passage for students of Computer Science. The joke’s somewhat taboo toilet humor adds some levity and fun to a stressful term for students of the course. The joke also references some popular stereotypes of tech companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Apple, reducing and parodying their programming practices and policies into a punchline centered around bathroom etiquette. This sort of toilet humor can be enjoyed not only by computer scientists and students of computer science, but anyone in the world with knowledge of the stereotypes associated with Microsoft, IBM, and Apple in terms of how they approach writing code and how these companies view each other.

Item:

Three programmers meet accidentally at the urinal while attending a technical conference. The first programmer finishes up his business, washes his hands with loads of water, walks over to the towels and uses almost the entire roll to dry his hands. He turns to the other two and says “At Microsoft, we are trained to be extremely thorough.”

The second programmer finishes up, walks over to the sink and washes his hands with much less water, then uses a single towel to dry his hands. He remarks to the other two “At IBM, we are trained not only to be very thorough, but also very efficient.”

The third programmer finishes his business, walks right past the sink and towel rack and lauds over his shoulder as he walks over the door: “At Apple we don’t piss in our hands!”

Transcript:

  • Stephanie: Can you tell me your name and background please?
  • Anthony: My name is Anthony Addo. I was born in Connecticut but I’ve lived my life in Ohio and Ghana. I currently live in Ghana. I’m a Computer Science major, uh, and I’m a senior at Dartmouth College, an ’18.
  • Stephanie: Wonderful. Can you tell me the joke you have?
  • Anthony: Yes. Alright, listen closely. Three programmers meet accidentally at the urinal while attending a technical conference. The first programmer finishes up his business, washes his hands with loads of water, walks over to the towels and uses almost the entire roll to dry his hands. He turns to the other two and says “At Microsoft, we are trained to be extremely thorough.” The second programmer finishes up, walks over to the sink and washes his hands with much less water, then uses a single towel to dry his hands. He remarks to the other two “At IBM, we are trained not only to be very thorough, but also very efficient.” The third programmer finishes his business, walks right past the sink and towel rack and lauds over his shoulder as he walks over the door: “At Apple we don’t piss in our hands!”
  • Stephanie: Ah, alright. Could you tell me where you first heard the joke please?
  • Anthony: I first heard the joke from my friend Sam, at this CS — I think it was CS31 — uh, very tough course, but we were just trying to loss some steam doing a joke, it was really good.
  • Stephanie: Alright, and can you explain why the joke is funny?
  • Anthony: It’s funny because… it’s interesting, because um… the first programmer mentions that he is extremely thorough with how he does his work. He’s a programmer, and he makes sure he gets all the loopholes, and makes sure he goes through every single one. As for the second programmer from IBM, who only uses one towel to wash his hands, or to dry his hands, uh… He’s simply very efficient with his code, he makes sure his code is, it’s simple and clean… As for the Apple programmer, he just does the job. He simply streamlines it,  and does it perfectly every single time.
  • Stephanie: Thank you very much!

 

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

 

Collector’s Name: Stephanie Guo

Tags/Keywords:

  • Joke. Tech company. Microsoft. IBM. Apple. Toilet.

Eye Doctor

Title: Eye Doctor

General Information about Item:

  • Joke
  • English
  • United States

Informant Data:

  • Anthony Addo is a senior at Dartmouth College studying Computer Science. He was born in Connecticut but has lived in Ohio and Ghana, and currently lives in Ghana.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context
    • The joke was collected on November 6th, 2017. Anthony first encountered the joke as it was told to him by a friend in his CS 1 class. His friend introduced this joke to Anthony to help “ease his nerves” since he was struggling with an assignment, and its relative simplicity  makes it accessible to any English speaker who has heard of the programming languages Java and C#.
  • Cultural Context
    • The CS 1 course is the introductory computer science course at Dartmouth, and is often the first time students are exposed to the world of computer programming. This pun in particular makes use of the homonymous relationship between the name of the programming language C# (pronounced see-sharp) and the phrase “see sharp,” as in “seeing clearly.” It derives humor from an English pun on the letter “C” and the word “see” and doesn’t require any programming knowledge besides the fact that a language called C# exists, and is a properly simplistic and funny joke to share with an English-speaking student programmer feeling discouraged with an assignment.

Item: 

Q: Why did the Java programmer go see the eye doctor?

A: Because he didn’t C#!

Transcript:

  • Stephanie: Alright, could you give me your name and background please?
  • Anthony: My name is Anthony Addo. I’m a Dartmouth ’18. Born in Hartford, Connecticut but also have lived in Ohio and Ghana.
  • Stephanie: Alright, what’s your joke?
  • Anthony: My joke, as a computer science is this joke. Why did the Java programmer go see the eye doctor? Because he didn’t C#! Badun tsss!
  • Stephanie: Alright. Um, can you tell me where you first heard the joke, or who told it to you?
  • Anthony: I first heard the joke in my CS1 class. I was doing some really really um, hard, Python, I was trying to make some sort of, um, planetary , motion. And it was really wracking my brain, so I asked my friend, just to help me out. The first thing he did was try to ease my nerves by telling me this joke. I laughed. Well, I chuckled. But it was good.
  • Stephanie: Alright, and can you explain why it’s funny?
  • Anthony: Absolutely. So in computer science you have many languages. Java isn’t coffee, its actually a language. So java is one language, and C# is also a language as well. So “C#” is actually a pun on “seeing sharp”!

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

 

Collector’s Name: Stephanie Guo

Tags/Keywords:

  • Joke. English. Eye Doctor. Java. C#.

COBOL++

Title: COBOL++

General Information about Item:

  • Joke
  • Programming knowledge / not English-language specific
  • United States

Informant Data:

  • Professor Tom Cormen has taught in the Computer Science department for 26 years. He’s well known as a coauthor of Introduction to Algorithms and author of Algorithms Unlocked.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context
    • The joke was collected on November 6th, 2017. Professor Cormen encountered this joke many years ago on the internet, and it would generally have shared between computer scientists who had encountered the languages C, C++, and COBOL in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
  • Cultural Context
    • This joke is one of the least accessible in our collection, requiring knowledge of the relationship between programming languages not named in the actual text of the joke (C and C++) and understanding of the plus-plus operator. The procedural programming language COBOL was created in 1959 and has mostly fallen out of general use; additionally, the newer version of COBOL (updated in 2002) was made to already be object-oriented, defeating the premise of the joke. (An object-oriented programming language is one in which we define objects that can hold data and perform certain functions, and the relationships between these objects.) Thus, the fact that COBOL was not an object-oriented language before 2002, compounded by its relative obscurity as a “legacy” language, would be lost to most computer scientists today. This particular joke was widely shared on the internet years ago between computer scientists who were familiar with all the references. The “improved” version of COBOL in the joke has a ridiculously long name (“Add one to COBOL given COBOL”), and undergraduate students who know that C++ is the object-oriented version of C will still find the joke funny, but less so than if they had known about COBOL’s reputation for excessive verbosity.

Item:

Q: Did you hear about the object-oriented version of COBOL?

A: It’s called “add one to COBOL given COBOL”!

Transcript:

  • Stephanie: Um, could you say your name and background please?
  • Prof Cormen: Yeah, Tom Cormen, I’m a computer science professor at Dartmouth, I’m in my 26th year here.
  • Stephanie: Could you tell me the joke that you have prepared today?
  • Prof Cormen: The joke is, did you hear about the object-oriented version of COBOL? It’s called “add one to COBOL given COBOL”.
  • Stephanie: And where did you first hear this joke?
  • Prof Cormen: I’m sure I saw it on the internet years ago.
  • Stephanie: Alright. And could you explain the joke very briefly?
  • Prof Cormen: So the joke requires understanding a few things. First of all that, the language C++ is supposed to be an object oriented version of C. that the plus-plus operator means add one to something, so that’s C++, the joke in just the name of that language is it’s one better than C. In the language COBOL, it’s much more verbose, and the way that you would say add — take a variable and add one to it and store that back into the variable is, you say “add one to the name of the variable given the name of the variable”. So in this case it’s COBOL, add one to COBOL given COBOL, meaning that it’s one more than what it was.

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

 

 

Collector’s Name: Stephanie Guo

Tags/Keywords:

  • Joke. COBOL. Programming.

Infinitely Many Mathematicians…

Item:

“Infinitely many mathematicians walk into a bar.The first says, ‘I’ll have a beer.’ The second says, ‘I’ll have half a beer.’ The third says, ‘I’ll have a quarter of a beer.’ The barman pulls out just two beers. The mathematicians are all like. ‘That’s all you’re giving us? How drunk do you expect us to get on that?’ The bartender says, ‘Come on guys. Know your limits.'”

  • Oral Folklore: joke
  • English
  • USA
  • Collector: Agastya Gupta

Informant Data:

Kevin Li is an Econ/Government/Mathematical Finance Major in the Dartmouth College Class of 2017. He is from Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania.

Contextual Data:

The informant found this math joke online, but reports that he has not had much occasion to use it in class or other social contexts.

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

Kevin’s Interview:

Informant’s Comments:

The informant later stated that the joke is based on the understanding of converging limits in mathematics, an idea also important in Computer Science.

Collector’s Comments:

This joke plays on the double entendre of ‘limits,’ a term that relates to both calculus and alcohol. This joke contributes to the stereotypes of programmers/mathematicians as being overly logical. The participants find a logical but absurd solution in the face of an everyday challenge. Other variations of this joke have been told with the mathematicians themselves making the suggestion to just get two beers, instead of the bartender. The stereotype classification makes more sense from this perspective.

Tags/Keywords:

jokes, math, stereotypes, calculus, limits

Java and JavaScript

Item:

Java and JavaScript are about the same as ham and hamster.

General Information about Item:

  • Oral Folklore: joke
  • English
  • USA

Informant Data:

Azhar Hussain is a CS/Econ Double Major in the Class of 2019 from Dallas, TX.

Contextual Data:

Java and JavaScript are two programming languages. Java was created by James Gosling and his team in 1991. They modeled it after the C++ programming language. JavaScript was created by Brendan Eich in 1993 as a Web scripting language. Even though the two languages share a common prefix, there is no relation between the creators of the languages. There is also no relation between the purposes of both languages as explained below.

Transcript of Associated File:

Java vs JavaScript

Informant’s Comments:

Java and JavaScript are sometimes confused by novice programmers because they sound the same. In reality, they are very different in syntax and intended use. The parallel comparison is ham and hamster because although they share a common prefix, they are wholly different (Who would eat a hamster?)

Collector’s Comments:

These could be classified as proverbs because they are providing advice to novice programmers who may not know about the intricacies of languages such as Java and JavaScript.

Collector’s Name: Weiliang (Michael) Li

Tags/Keywords:

  • java, javascript, language, syntax, novice, programmer

The Ballmer Peak

Item:

There is an optimal Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) at which one gains superhuman programming skills.. This is known as as the Ballmer peak.

General Information about Item:

  • Oral Folklore: joke, superstition
  • English
  • USA

Informant Data:

Ahsan Azim is a Dartmouth computer science major in the class of 2018, from Lahore, Pakistan. He has three years of experience in computer science and is strongly interested in web development. 

Contextual Data:

This joke/ritual was said to have originated at Microsoft in the 80s when Steve Ballmer was CEO. Steve Ballmer is a highly accomplished technology executive who is best known for his tenure as CEO of Microsoft. Although Ballmer is generally not considered to be the creator of this joke, Ballmer was a very humorous and fun-loving guy who was a big fan of beer and other alcoholic beverages. He was known for outlandish behavior and high-enery outbursts in public, as if he was intoxicated. This may have been the reason why the Ballmer Peak was named after him.

The Ballmer Peak is considered to be a parody of the Balmer Peak, which are peaks in the emission spectrum of hydrogen. While completely unrelated to Ballmer, coding and alcohol, the similarity between the names may have been another reason behind how the Ballmer Peak got its moniker.

Later studies did seem to suggest that consumption of alcohol up to a point did increase creative problem solving speed and ability. Some researchers found that a BAC of 0.075 did have effect on programming ability. Psychologists view the Ballmer peak as a parody of the Yerkes-Dodson law in learning psychology which states that optimal learning occurs at a certain level of stimulation. 

See the famous xkcd comic on the Ballmer Peak here: xkcd Ballmer Peak

Transcript of Associated File:

Ballmer Peak

Informant’s Comments:

It [the Ballmer peak] has remained popular until today because many programmers are big fans of beer and/or other drinks such as vodka. At many hackathons [coding competitions] and computer programming events there is often free-flowing beer and wine. Programmers in general tend to be very fun-loving people as well.

Collector’s Comments:

This could be classified as either a joke (as a comic parody that is initially hard to believe) or a ritual (a process that programmers go through before they start programming). It is often thrown around by programmers who try to find the location of the Ballmer peak with their other programmer friends when they are bored of working on something. In a way, finding the Ballmer peak is like finding one of the Holy Grails of computer science.

Collector’s Name: Weiliang (Michael) Li

Tags/Keywords:

  • ballmer, peak, alcohol, programming, microsoft, joke, ritual

Erdos Number

Item:

Finding your Erdos Number.

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Folklore: game
  • English

Informant Data:

Wes Kendrick ‘19 ; CS Major, Caucasian, 20 years old from Bethesda, Maryland

Contextual Data:

Paul Erdos was a Hungarian mathematician and was one of the most prolific and famous mathematicians of the 20th century. He published around 1500 papers in his lifetime. It is said that his number of publication is 0, and someone who collaborated directly with him is number 1. Someone who collaborated with a person who is a 1 is automatically 2. This way, through collaborations it shows you how close you are to Paul Erdos. A game that is often time played is when a computer science student gets published or is added as a collaborator on a paper, they try to find the shortest amount of connections it takes to get to Paul Erdos and from however many people or connections they have to do to, they get their Erdos Number.

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

Erdos Number

Informant’s Comments:

The interviewee first heard this game here while taking Computer Science 010 at Dartmouth College. His professor first mentioned the Bacon number based on the actor Kevin Bacon. The professor explained how actors who played a part with Kevin Bacon were given the number 1 while Kevin Bacon himself was number 0. Each interaction/connection added a number similar to how it is with Paul Erdos. The Professor then explained how the Erdos number can be found by looking at connections amongst publications.

Collector’s Comments:

This could be classified as a game because computer science students often times after getting published compete with their friends and peers to see who has the lower Erdos number. The student with the lowest number of connections and thus lower Erdos number ends up winning the game and is considered smarter because he or she is closer to Paul Erdos.

Tags/Keywords:

  • Insert Tags/Keywords Here

“Why did the programmer quit his job?”

Item:

Why did the programmer quit his job?

Because he didn’t get arrays.

General Information about Item:

  • Oral Folklore: joke
  • English
  • USA

Informant Data:

George Hito is a Caucasian, 20 year old, Dartmouth CS and engineering double major in the class of 2018, from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Contextual Data:

Computer Science has many different data structures and an array is a very common one. A data structure is a convenient way to organize large amounts of data or information. It makes things easier to retrieve and process.

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

“Why did the programmer quit his job?”

Informant’s Comments:

The interviewee first heard this joke when he was researching for a computer science project he had in middle school. He was looking for a way to start the presentation so he could lighten up the audience and perhaps get them a little more involved during the presentation. He thought a joke was a good way to do this.

Collector’s Comments:

This joke can be classified as verbal folklore. This could be classified as a joke because it is uses wordplay when the audience expects a different answer. People commonly quit their job because they don’t get a “raise”, or an increase in the money they get paid from their job. In this joke however, humor is used when the word “arrays” is used instead. Both words sound similar but an array is a way to organize data structures while a raise is something completely different but similar sounding.

Tags/Keywords:

  • Insert Tags/Keywords Here

A Million Monkeys

Item:

If you put a million monkeys on a million keyboards, one of them will eventually write a Java Program. The rest of them will write Perl Programs.

General Information about Item:

  • Oral Folklore: joke
  • English
  • USA

Informant Data:

Nathan Yu is a 19 year old Asian Dartmouth CS major in the class of 2019 from Norman, Oklahoma.

Contextual Data:

In computer science there are many different programming languages, some of which are more difficult than others. Java is known as one of the more elite languages that is often times very challenging to code in. On the other hand, Perl Programs are relatively easy to write. Many beginner computer science students start by coding in Perl.

Transcript of Associated File:

Ketav: “Hey Nathan, hope your day is going well. I understand that you are a computer science major here at Dartmouth and was wondering if you are familiar with any computer science folklore?”

Nathan: “I think there is this one joke that I’ve heard, not sure if that qualifies. ‘If you put a million monkeys on a million keyboards, one of them will eventually write a Java Program. The rest of them will write Perl Programs’.”

Ketav: “Hmm, not exactly sure what that means, would you mind explaining it?”

Nathan: “Sure! So essentially what the joke is saying is that it is sort of making fun of Perl Programs since it’s a common thing for many computer science students and professors to know that Java is a very difficult program to code in when compared to Perl. Often times many beginners start coding in Perl”

Ketav: “I see, and when did you first hear this joke?”

Nathan: “The first time I’ve heard this joke was in my 11th grade computer science course. My professor at the time was teaching us the difference between Java and Perl programs before we familiarized ourselves with Java programming. I heard the joke a few times after from a few of my older friends who found out we learned how to use Perl Programming first”

Ketav: Great, thanks Nathan!

Nathan: Anytime, feel free to let me know if you have any questions!

Informant’s Comments:

The interviewer first heard this joke in his 11th grade computer science course. The professor was guiding them onto the path of learning Java and was comparing them to Perl programs since they had been learning about Perl Programs beforehand. The professor wanted to accentuate to them the extent of difficulty of learning Java compared to Perl.

Collector’s Comments:

This joke can be classified as verbal folklore. This could be classified as a joke because it is saying that if a million monkeys, animals that obviously have no coding experience, were to be given a keyboard and randomly type letters, only one would create a Java code while the others would all create a Perl code. Of course, the monkeys probably would not create either version of the code but what the joke is saying is it is instilling humor while also explaining how difficult a Java code is.

Tags/Keywords:

  • Insert Tags/Keywords Here

“Knock knock…”

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:

“Knock Knock” transcript

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