Encyclopedia of Humor

99 little bugs in the code,
99 bugs in the code,
Fix one bug, compile it again,
101 little bugs in the code.
101 little bugs in the code,
101 bugs in the code,
Fix one bug, compile it again,
103 little bugs in the code.

Twas the night before crisis,
And all through the house,
Not a program was working,
Not even a browse.

Programmers were wrung out,
Too mindless to care,
Knowing chances of cutover
Hadn’t a prayer.

The users were nestled
All snug in their beds,
While visions of inquiries
Danced in their heads.

When out in the lobby
There arose such a clatter,
That I sprang from my tube
To see what was the matter.

And what to my wondering
Eyes should appear,
But a Super Programmer,
Oblivious to fear.

More rapid than eagles,
His programs they came
And he whistled and shouted
And called them by name.

On Update! On Add!
On Inquiry! On Delete!
On Batch Jobs! On Closing!
On Functions Complete!

His eyes were glazed over,
His fingers were lean,
From weekends and nights
Spent in front of a screen.

A wink of his eye,
And a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know
I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word,
But went straight to his work,
Turning specs into code,
Then he turned with a jerk.

And laying his fingers
Upon the ENTER key,
The system came up,
And worked perfectly!

The updates updated;
The deletes they deleted;
The inquiries inquired;
And the closing completed.

He tested each whistle,
He tested each bell,
With nary an abend,
And all had gone well.

The system was finished,
The tests were concluded,
The client’s last changes
Were even included!

And the client exclaimed,
With a snarl and a taunt,
“It’s just what I asked for,
But it’s not what I want!”

If IBM ran Christmas…
They would want one big Santa, dressed in blue, where kids queue up for their present-processing. Receiving presents would take about 24-36 hours of mainframe processing time.

If Microsoft ran Christmas…
Each time you bought an ornament, you would have to buy a tree as well. You wouldn’t have to take the tree, but you still have to pay for it anyway. Ornament/95 would weigh 1500 pounds (requiring a reinforced steel countertop tree), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your living room, would claim to be the first ornament that uses the colors red/green together. It would interrogate your other decorations to find out who made them. Most everyone would hate Microsoft ornaments, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the other tree types wouldn’t work with their hooks.

If Apple ran Christmas…
It would do everything the Microsoft ornaments do, but years earlier, and with a smaller mouse (not stirring of course).

If Silicon Graphics ran Christmas…
Ornaments would be priced slightly higher, but would hang on the tree remarkably quickly. Also the colors of the ornaments would be prettier than most all the others. Options would be available for ‘equalization’ of color combinations on the tree.

If Dell ran Christmas…
Wait a minute? Isn’t IBM running this Christmas..?

If Fisher Price ran Christmas…
“Baby’s First Ornament” would have a hand-crank that you turn to hang the thing on the tree.

If The Rand Corporation ran Christmas…
The ornaments would be large perfectly smooth and seamless black cubes. Christmas morning there would be presents for everyone, but no one would know what they were. Their service department would have an unlisted phone number, and be located at the North Pole. Blueprints for ornaments would be highly classified government documents. X-Files would have an episode about them.

If the NSA ran Christmas…
Your ornaments would have a secret trap door that only the NSA could access in case they needed to monitor your tree for reasons of national security.

If DEC ran Christmas…
We used to have Christmas back in the ’70s, didn’t we?

If Hewlett-Packard ran Christmas…
They would market the Reverse Polish Ornament, which is put in your attic on the weekend after Thanksgiving, and placed out for viewing the day after the January Bowl Games.

If Sony ran Christmas…
Their Personal Xmas-ing Device, which would be barely larger than an ornament and flat, would allow you to celebrate the season with a device attached conveniently to your belt.

If the Franklin Mint ran Christmas…
Every month, you would receive another lovely hand-crafted item from an authentic Civil War pewter ornament collection. Each ornament would weight about seven pounds, and require you to pay shipping and handling charges.

If Cray ran Christmas…
The holiday season would cost $16 million but would be celebrated faster than any other holiday during the year.

If Thinking Machines ran Christmas…
You would be able to hang over 64,000 ornaments on your tree (all identical) at the same time.

If Timex ran Christmas…
The holiday would be cheap, small, quartz-crystal driven, and would let you take a licking and keep on shopping.

If Radio Shack ran Christmas…
The staff would sell you ornaments, but not know anything about them or what they were for. Or you could buy parts to build your own tree.

If University of Waterloo ran Christmas…
They would immediately change the name to WatMas.

Which language is right for you?

Assembler: You shoot yourself in the foot.

Ada: The Department of Defense shoots you in the foot after offering you a blindfold and a last cigarrette.

BASIC (interpreted): You shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol until your leg is waterlogged and rots off.

BASIC (compiled): You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a SCUD missile launcher.

C++: You create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Not knowing which feet are virtual, medical care is impossible.

COBOL: USE HANDGUN.COLT(45), AIM AT LEG.FOOT, THEN WITH ARM.HAND.FINGER ON HANDGUN.COLT(TRIGGER) PREFORM SQUEEZE, RETURN HANDGUN.COLT TO HIP.HOLSTER.

cah: After searching the manual until your foot falls asleep, you shoot the computer and switch to C.

dBASE: You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next version of the gun is the one that is scheduled to shoot bullets.

Fortran: You shoot yourself in each toe, interactively, until you run out of toes. You shoot the sixth bullet anyway, since no exception-processing was anticipated.

Modula-2: You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might currently be a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.

Pascal: Same as Modula-2, except the bullet is not of the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.

PL/1: After consuming all system resources, including bullets, the data processing department doubles its size, acquires two new mainframes, and drops the original on your foot.

Smalltalk, Actor, etc: After playing with the graphics for three weeks, the programming manager shoots you in the head.

Snobol: Grab your foot with your hand and rewrite your hand to be a bullet.

ADA: A Dumb Arrangement
ADA: A Dumb Acronym
ADA: A Dumb Annoyance

BASIC: Boring And Shamelessly Idiotic Coders
BASIC: Badly Assembled, Severely Illogical Code
BASIC: Beginner’s Algorithms for Seemingly Infinite Confusion

C: Crud
C: Confusing

COBOL: Completly Outdated, Badly Overused Language
COBOL: Completly Overused, Badly Outdated Language
COBOL: Cowards Only Buy Outdated Languages
COBOL: Cowards Only Build Outdated Languages
COBOL: Crap Operated By Obsessed lunatics
COBOL: Crap Often Bothers Our Lethargy
COBOL: Crap Ostracized By Our Loathing
COBOL: Compiles Only Because Of Luck
COBOL: Cumbersome, Overdone, Badly Organized Language
COBOL: Coded Only By Obsessed Lunatics

FORTRAN: Files Only Run Through Right At Never-neverland

LISP: Lots of Insanely Stupid Parentheses
LISP: Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses

PASCAL: Programmers Against Structured Code And Language