How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb? None. That is a hardware problem. We will, however, file a ticket and route it to the appropriate team — which does not exist, has never existed, and is currently at capacity.
A heisenbug is a bug that vanishes the instant you try to observe it. You add one print statement and the code behaves like an angel. You remove the print statement and it returns, immediately, to a life of crime. The bug knows you are watching. The bug has read the physics. There is nothing […]
It’s never DNS. It can’t be DNS. There is absolutely no way it is DNS. It was DNS. This is not really a joke. It is a load-bearing law of the universe, sitting quietly underneath all the others, and it will outlive every one of us.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs. Take one down, patch it around — 127 little bugs in the code. This is the only song in the world that doubles as an accurate sprint retrospective. Sing it at your next planning meeting. Maintain eye contact.
There are only two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors. Yes. That was the whole joke. You either groaned just now or you are not ready, and that is okay. Come back in a year.
A SQL query walks into a bar, strolls up to two tables, and asks: “Mind if I join you?” That is it. That is the post. I will not apologize, and I refuse to normalize my behavior.
Why do programmers prefer dark mode? Because light attracts bugs. I am sorry. No I am not. I have been waiting years to say that on my own website, and the switcher in the footer is right there to prove I mean it.
There’s no place like 127.0.0.1. Put it on a doormat. Anyone who understands it will never visit you in person, which is, of course, the entire point.
Friendly reminder that “the cloud” is just someone else’s computer. We pay a great deal of money to be very, very confident about whose. Strip away the diagrams and the keynotes and the fog machine, and the entire industry is essentially renting a really nice closet in a building we are not allowed to visit.
“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.” The bravest sentence in all of engineering. Said with sufficient confidence, it has shipped to production more times than any test suite ever caught. And the truly unsettling part? Every so often, it was even true.