Computer Science and Engineering Lingo

Introduction:

  • Our group decided to focus on an academic/professional group of people: engineers and computer programmers. We primarily collected jokes, but also came across legends, debates, and rites of passage from members of this community. As we compiled jokes, we noticed that almost all of the jokes that we collected fell into one of two categories. The first category is any joke where the humorous part could only be understood with knowledge of a specific STEM topic. The second category of jokes we found to be commonly shared amongst engineers and computer programmers were those making fun of themselves, using stereotypes or common outside perceptions. Also, in comparing computer science jokes and engineering jokes, we found that there was a lot of overlap, likely the result of spreading through interaction between the two groups.  After looking at these jokes, along with the other types of collected folklore, our group has concluded that engineers and computer programmers each have a rich folklore tradition, and there is a great deal of overlap between the two fields.  In total, our group collected 14 jokes, a debate, a rite of passage, and an urban legend.  We split up the collection task evenly, and you can see who collected each item by looking at the collector’s name in each individual entry.  Each group member was responsible for compiling the data and doing the write-up for each item they collected, and responsibilities for the presentation were distributed evenly.

Presentation:

Items:

Jokes:

Debate

Rite of Passage:

Urban Legend

Collectors:

  • 💡 Jonah Deykin
  • Marwan Zelmat
  • Scott Magnuson
  • Juan Garcia
  • Alexander Sullivan

Tags/Keywords

  • Verbal Lore, Customary Lore, Jokes