Debugging Humor

To its credit, the jargon dictionary mentions several obscure forms of debugging. "Organic debugging" was the practice of setting a plant on a program listing; the idea was that bugs would crawl out of the code and into the plant. "Wave a dead chicken over it" was the term for a last, forlorn effort at diagnosing a problem, when the effort is more ritual than reality. There was also a description of hardware running in "casters-up mode.

The Twelve Bugs of Christmas

Brian Kernighan Law of Debugging Difficulty

Important programming truths

This page contains a number of important programming truths that every budding programmer should know about. These truths are self-evident, and need no explanations.

The Bug Count Also Rises by John Browne (Imitation Hemingway Contest Winner).

In the fall of that year the rains fell as usual and washed the leaves of the dust and dripped from the leaves onto the ground. The shuttles drove through the rainy streets and took the people to meetings, then later brought them back, their tires spraying the mist into the air.

Many days he stood for a long time and watched the rain and the shuttles and drank his double-tall mochas. With the mochas he was strong.

Hernando who worked down the hall and who was large with microbrews came to him and told him that the ship day was upon them but the bugs were not yet out. The bugs which were always there even when you were in Cafes late at night sipping a Redhook or a double-tall mocha and you thought you were safe but they were there and although Enrico kept the floor swept clean and the mochas were hot the bugs were there and they ate at you.

When Hernando told him this he asked how many bugs. "The RAID is huge with bugs," Hernando said. "The bugs are infinite."

"Why do you ask me? You know I cannot do this thing anymore with the bugs."

"Once you were great with the bugs," Hernando said. "No one was greater," he said again. "Even Prado."

"Prado? What of Prado? Let Prado fix the bugs."

Hernando shrugged. "Prado is finished. He was gored by three Sev 2's on Chicago. All he does now is drink herb tea and play with his screensavers."

"Herb tea?"

"It is true, my friend." Hernando shrugged again. Later he went to his office and sat in the dark for a long time. Then he sent e-mail to Michaels.

Michaels came to him while he was sipping a mocha. They sat silently for awhile, then he asked Michaels, "I need you to triage for me."

Michaels looked down. "I don't do that anymore," he said.

"This is different. The bugs are enormous. There are an infinity of bugs."

"I'm finished with that," Michaels said again. "I just want to live quietly."

"Have you heard Prado is finished? He was badly gored. Now he can only drink herb tea."

"Herb tea?" Michaels said.

"It is true," he said sorrowfully.

Michaels stood up. "Then I will do it, my friend," he said formally. "I will do it for Prado, who was once great with the bugs. I will do it for the time we filled Prado's office with bouncy balls, and for the time Prado wore his nerf weapons in the marketing hall and slew all of them with no fear and only a great joy at the combat. I will do it for all the pizza we ate and the bottles of Coke we drank."

Together they walked slowly back, knowing it would be good. As they walked the rain dripped softly from the leaves, and the shuttles carried the bodies back from the meetings.

Todd's Humor Archive The Charge of the Code Brigade

Softpanorama collection of debugging quotes:

reverend fun artchives cartoon display -- debugging

HUMOR User debugging session

NOVELL AppNotes Fifty Ways to Hose Your Code

Programmer Song by tlode%[email protected] (trygve lode)

Etc

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Softpanorama May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)	Home	Switchboard	Unix Administration	Red Hat	TCP/IP Networks	Neoliberalism	Toxic Managers
	(slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and bastardization of classic Unix

Humor Chronicle	RMS	Linus Torvalds	Larry Wall & Perl	Top 10 Classic Unix Humor	Softpanorama Humor Archive	GPL
C	C++	Assembler	Perl	Shell	Java	Debugging
Admin	Algorithms	Networking	Solaris	Windows	Linux	Editors
skeptical humor	OFM Humor	SE	vi	Viruses	Eric Raymond	Outsourcing