My Jokes and Other Such Things

This is a venue for listing jokes and other pieces I've written, updated as I write more.


A UDP joke:
A man asks a bartender for a drink.
The bartender is unsure if he heard something, so he asks ``What?''.
But the man was already dead.

A poem about CONSes:
CONS me to the front of a list,
or any other element, if you wish.
If I'm circular, then I'm not to blame,
but do not worry, as I'll MAP the same.
When you don't know, I'm here to play,
as I'm here to add to, in any way.
When GC gets me, I won't be gone,
I'll just be reused, for another CONS.

A C joke:
It's said that only optimists kill themselves,  as pessimists have no reason to.   From this, we can
conclude  that C is an optimistic language;  if enough things go wrong,  a C program will  generally
think ``Oh well, I guess I'll kill myself now.''

On UNIX:
If operating systems were college students, UNIX would be the school shooter.

Concerning Architectures:
What did the register machine say to the stack machine?
Move.

On Centralization:
It's  interesting to me,  how there is all of this talk  about how large  some of these  centralized
services are.   You'll read something such as ``Yeah, we're dealing with so much stuff every second.
It takes  a lot of  specialized software  just to make it manageable.''   Very rarely  will you read
that, perhaps, this is proof that this is a bad idea.

A minimalism joke:

Another UNIX joke:
One programmer is arguing with another,  a proponent of C and UNIX,  about some contested topic, say
garbage collection,  but any will do for this template.   The UNIX programmer  thinks about  garbage
collection.   His mind mirrors how UNIX operates.   His mind launches a sh program.  That sh program
launches twenty different processes,  all with stacks and large buffers, since they're written in C.
Over a megabyte  of data is passed through  costly reads and writes  from pipes.   Fifteen temporary
files are created.  ``I don't know,'' he starts, ``don't you think that's inefficient?''

Say this one aloud:
What is the pride and joy of German computer engineering?
Not C.

Another UNIX joke:
A UNIX fanatic  ventures to a  computing museum.   He stands in awe  at the PDP-11  running an early
version of UNIX, along with the VAX running BSD and the IBM PC running GNU/Linux.   He claps when he
sees the Linux kernel kill a random process  to reclaim its memory,  since this is the only recovery
strategy  that can exist.   He takes note of the beauty of  RISC machines  that can't multiply in  a
single instruction  and require many bytes  to  load and store  a value.   He passes by the  Multics
machine,  having many  privilege levels and  advanced memory management.   He ignores the  Burroughs
machines,  having  type and bounds checking  in the hardware.   He  completely disregards  the  Lisp
machines,  with advanced  math routines  and the ability to have  a single language  for the  system
software and user programs alike.   He stops at an  IBM PC running Windows  near  the gift shop  and
remarks  on how great it is that we have UNIX,  as otherwise we'd be using Windows and that would be
just awful.

Concerning Ada:
If you want to kill people on purpose, use Ada.  If you want to kill people by accident, use C.

Concerning the Abrahamic god:
How do we know God likes cryptography?
He always has plausible deniability.

On the ``UNIX philosophy'':
If you wanted to design a weapon according to the ``UNIX philosophy'', it should clearly do only one
thing  and do it well  and that thing should  be killing,  so you should use poison.   If the  enemy
refuses to take it, just teach the enemy C and wait for them to kill themselves.

A haiku for Firefox:
Firefox starts up
I bring up my tabs again.
Then, a crash anew.

Again concerning UNIX:
Surely  you're familiar with the common sayings  about the quality of code  written by scientists of
other fields?  Dennis Ritchie was originally a physicist.
That explains some things, doesn't it?

With regards to how many software companies operate:
Business up front, open source in the back.

A C poem:
Look at me, my name is C,
And you will soon know why.
Whenever I run out of stack space,
I fall down and cry.

For APL:
What did the function say to the mixed array?
I don't serve your kind.

With regards to Internet ``Services''(I suppose I recalled this more than independently created it):
What do you call a service that requires a proprietary client, isn't documented, spies on its users,
and more?
It's a disservice.

This is from a serious conversation concerning the WWW:
The WWW is a textual protocol with misspelled words.

Concerning the aptly-named git:
Git's bisect command is intended to find bugs.   The algorithm used is for hunting a wolf in Alaska:
Wait for  the wolf to howl and then search on which half you heard it from,  recursively.   This may
seem profound, but is actually an exceedingly unintelligent method no human would use in general and
is  obvious if the wolf  actually can be heard  at a point.   It is how a retard would hunt  a wolf.
Clearly,  a human  would use a  more intelligent  tracking method.   That git uses  this method  for
determining bugs shows how unintelligent it is and,  just as with hunting animals, there are clearly
better methods for finding bugs, but try explaining that to someone convinced of their method.

With regards to Linux kernel development practices:
The Linux kernel, due to C, is a monument to convention.

With regards to the current state of cyberspace:
Most hypermedia would better be called hypertedium.

Concerning how many write their software:
The only way to write good software  is to have it be correct  and able to be fast  and then have it
made to actually be fast.   Most software isn't correct, but is able to be fast, and is then made to
be slow in an infinitesimal stepping towards correctness.

Concerning economic systems:
What do communists and capitalists have in common?
They both describe their chosen systems in terms of theoretical models that don't actually exist.

Concerning UNIX yet again:
What is one of the most important qualities of interface design in UNIX?
It  should be allowed to fail  and it should have  intractable failure cases  solved by a  different
interface that features its own intractable failure cases.

A poem dedicated to UNIX:
Oh, UNIX, with partitions so far and wide.
There your unused space will hide.
That process over there just died.
Oh, UNIX, driving me to homicide.

A poem for complicated systems; this may be added upon later:
Look at the systems we create.
They're complex, but we'll automate.    --or--    Complicated; we'll automate.
Then we'll automate them in turn.
Simplicity we often spurn.

Concerning insecurity:
Why do so many ``security researchers'' like and promote C?
They want to keep their jobs.

Concerning simple and complex systems:
There's a  strong desire  to distill  one's ideas  into a  small amount  of  pleasant and  aesthetic
essences,  but this  also leads to  dreaded academic issues  that could be exemplified  as ``Well of
course we need to pass a closure to this higher order function in this lambda to this lambda to that
lambda  to this lambda's  third cousin  and so on;  it keeps the basics simple!'';  how dreaded  and
complex I've seen so many simple systems become to accomodate things.

Concerning the Rust programming language:
Rust is simply the effeminate man's Ada.

With regards to universities in the United States:
Colleges are quick to create degrees related to ``cyber'' topics.
There would be ``cyber nursing'' degrees if they thought they could get away with it.

Also concerning the ``UNIX philosophy'':
The  ``UNIX philosophy''  is simply brand-named simplicity.   The ideas of modularity and simplicity
predate automatic computing and recorded history, and yet people will claim you're following UNIX if
you  write a program that  adheres to these basic ideals.   Further,  those other qualities of  this
``philosophy'' result in programs that aren't modular, simple, nor beautiful.

Concerning markets:
The ``invisible hand'' of ``the free market'' seems more concerned with masturbation than anything.

On a tenant of the ``UNIX philosophy'':
Text is the universal interface,  yes,  so long as it's ASCII, I mean EBCDIC, I mean Latin-1, I mean
Shift-JIS, I mean UTF-16, I mean UTF-8.  Yes, text is the universal interface.

With regards to religious idioms:
Occasionally I find myself wanting to use a religious idiom, such as ``God forbid'', but also do not
want to legitimize the god.  You can use ``your'' to make use of such idioms without doing so and as
it's a single syllable, other people may not even notice.
So, ``God forbid'' becomes ``Your god forbid''.

Regarding Internet statistics:
Why is HTTP the overwhelming majority of Internet traffic, by some metrics?
It's easy to overwhelm the network with a profoundly inefficient protocol.

Regarding human interaction:
If you seek to seem more generous than you actually are, simply offer to help when you figure others
don't actually need help; this also applies to generosity and like interactions.  Further, if you're
later asked for something previously offered and denied, you can use that to avoid that action then.

A license analogy:
Copyleft licenses are akin to types provided by a programming language's standard library; one could
write one's own, but it's usually better to simply use the same as most everyone else.

Regarding APL:
Why is ed a decent editor for APL?
You're only going to write one line anyway.

A haiku for the Internet:
An old post startles.
I'd written it so long back;
there's still no response.

Regarding common programming actions:
We're bravely rushing towards incorrect answers.

Regarding the WWW:
People were worried about the collider, but worse came from CERN.

A fun rhyme concerning debate:
Where reason fails, violence prevails.

A poem for Go, perhaps to be extended later:
Go, Go, look at it go.
Already like what I already know.
Generics are bad; generics are lame.
If err isn't nil is nice and tame.
I solve my problems with language so thin.
Writing the same things again and again.
My code reads like all of the rest.
That's how I know I've done my best.
There's no need to configurate.
Use it as is, and say that it's great.
When I'm replaced somewhen, I'll know,
They'll have no problems reading my Go.

Concerning profits and proselytization:
What is a similarity between major religions and major corporations?
After they saturate domestically, they begin making massive appeals to foreigners.

This haiku was inspired by the behaviour of those around me:
I read a headline.
No relation to my life.
I read another.

Concerning humor:
Perhaps the most important aspect to a good joke is that others don't understand or necessarily even
notice it.

Concerning two program categories:
The opposite of a daemon is an angel; unlike daemons, angels only appear when a god has specifically
demanded they do so.

Concerning system design with a religious flair:
For refusing to sacrifice cycles to the spirits of bounds checking, debugging, et al., the cult of C
now must sacrifice these to the false gods of W^X, guard pages, ASLR, and other true inefficiencies,
which deceive them into believing they've become safe.

Regarding rigidity:
What's usually followed by rigor?
Mortis.

On arguing:
A nice property of moving goal posts is that the planet is spherical, so one can do it forever.

Regarding my machine customization or ``ricing'':
I rice so little one could confuse me with China's Great Leap Forward.

With respect to Aku:
Long ago, in a distant market, I, UNIX, the segfaulting Master of Panic, unleashed unspeakable brain
damage!  But a foolish Lisp hacker, wielding homoiconic macroes, stepped forth to oppose me.  Before
he could perfect his ways, I shifted the market from underneath him, and flung him off his dedicated
hardware, and now my brain damage is law!  Now that fool seeks to rebuild his listener, and undo the
brain damage that is UNIX!

Regarding a fool:
There are but two kinds of programming languages: those which are well-designed, lack damning flaws,
and which are suitable for their purposes; and those for which people deflect direct criticisms with
``There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.''.

Regarding an inefficient language popular for ostensible efficiency:
Rust only develops well on a bigger iron.

Concerning those who destroy language by misusing it:
People who misuse the word ``literally'' should be sent to concentration camps.  If they continue to
misunderstand, they should be sent to literal concentration camps.

On aesthetic trends:
Transparent casings make it easier to tell when a Chinese manufacturer has cheated.

Regarding most of human history:
What a shame that an intellectual eunuch can still reproduce.

With apologies to Theodore Kaczynski:
Postel's Law and its consequences have been a disaster for software development.

My thoughts on cryptographic hashing functions:
Through the rotations, this message goes; where will the bits flip, nobody knows!

Regarding naught suspicious:
Facebook has decided to ban ``stereotypes about the collective power of Jews that often depicts them
running the world or its major institutions.''; does this rule also apply to those who run Facebook?

Egregious economic exhaustions:
I was having a conversation with another, discussing economic systems, and this other made a joke of
how Communism provides so few choices.  I noted how there are two major mobile phone providers, that
five companies control most of the television shows and film available, and how many restaraunts and
food producers are actually owned by the same companies; capitalism merely provides illusory choice.

On the state of automated systems:
I joke that AI is going to mean ``Artificial Indians''.

Born of my disgust with modern computing:
What's the difference between paper and modern computers?
Paper doesn't forget what its owner tells it.

Regarding value judgments:
What's the difference between firemen and programmers?
People recognize that firemen who start fires are bad.

A parody of a poem, describing some of my political thoughts:
This subversion never ends.
Yes, it goes on and on, my ``friends''.
A small group started it, knowing exactly what it was,
and it will continue onwards as it has been just because ...

With no apologies to homosexuals:
I just thought of an amusing new pejorative for C language programmers.
Call them bug-chasers.

This poem of mine is repeated in my mind continually; read it with a slight pause between syllables:
Personally,
I don't believe
There be reprieve
From misery.

An observation:
The Romans were very unfortunate to have a word for Jews, and yet no word for coffee.
.