this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
1160 points (96.8% liked)

Programmer Humor

23130 readers
764 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I have a guess that it didn't even fullly understood the prompt behind this slop either...

[–] elrecoal19_1@lemmy.world 40 points 2 days ago

Another crap meme made with AI, yay, I love AI slop

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 141 points 2 days ago (18 children)

I’ve been a professional software developer for over two decades. There is zero chance my job will get taken by an AI any time soon. Anyone who thinks my job is to write code doesn’t understand my job. That’s like saying a bus driver’s job is to turn a steering wheel.

My job is to turn vague ideas and nondescript feelings into APIs and (sometimes) UIs, then turn those into specs, then split those into tasks, then sometimes I’ll write the code for them and sometimes someone else does. About 90% of my time is turning ideas into plans, and about 10% of my time is turning those plans into code.

When I was young and was a junior engineer, my job was more to receive the specs from the senior engineers and turn that into code, but even then, I was still designing my own stuff. Maybe more like 40/60 time instead of 90/10.

Now that I’m a grizzled old man forged in the fires of task management software, I’m doing almost all of the design work myself. I manage a project that has about 250,000 lines of code. An AI isn’t going to be able to build new features into that, let alone decide which features to build in the first place.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 68 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Heh, that won't stop a C-level from thinking that you just write code.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 30 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Yeah, that’s probably true. Remember how all the execs decided to replace cashiers with robots, then the stores started losing money because a. it made stealing a lot easier and b. people would avoid stores that only had self-checkout robots and never had anyone to help you because a robot doesn’t know where the flour is. Now the self checkouts are being decommissioned and we’re going back to regular human cashiers. It turns out cashiers do more than just scan barcodes. But, upper management didn’t get to where they are by being smart.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 16 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Now the self checkouts are being decommissioned and we’re going back to regular human cashiers.

Maybe this is North American thing because in Europe they never really got rid of human cashiers, they just had the automated systems alongside the human cashiers.

I don't know of any store that went over to 100% self-checkout

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's why the best places to work tend to be the places where your CEO has had your job before.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] hardware26@discuss.tchncs.de 34 points 2 days ago (4 children)

That’s like saying a bus driver’s job is to turn a steering wheel.

That's a good analogy, I will use that.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (16 replies)
[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 160 points 2 days ago (15 children)

The client wants to drag and drop their own personalized excel file with no guaranteed formatting or column order or data contract in order to import their data into our system <3

[–] Whelks_chance@lemmy.world 72 points 2 days ago

Needs more AI to randomly guess what the columns might be

[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 30 points 2 days ago

I love how this is a universal experience.

[–] Trarmp@feddit.nl 24 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Jesus, this gave me war flashbacks.

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Please, do elaborate. Let others feast on your suffering.

[–] 7dev7random7@suppo.fi 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

May I?

A controlling department wasn't granted any money for digitializing their workflow.

So these guys created their own solution(s!). Things like dedicated "user interfaces" loading data from tables created by hand. After years these people realized that data formatting is quite the issue.

They started to put random rules into different tables:

Two empty lines: New Group Data Record. One empty line: New Subgroup Data Record.

Excel tables aggregating this data via hardcoded links.

A dedicated table to start calculations on parent tables.

They mutated data like this:

Load data from excel files into one. Manually delete, add or change lines (or columns). Start a collection run from dedicated excel file and load new excel file data and replace old excel file data.

They had files where 'it was easier to read' when they pivot the data. This was troublesome since some values are intermediate results. Dropping one column may imply dropping another one as well.

All workflows required manual alignments along the way.

They were only able to process 10% of the data from a year within a year. Managing millions in cash.

Their data input came from different internal sources. Programs which were written two decades ago once and without any tests. Talking like VB, macro's from host servers and copy-pasta data from other internal programs.

And don't get me started on customer tables.. They created a zip-code encoded filesystem hierarchy where each customer data (you guessed it, excel file) was renamed and then saved. In each of these directories where randomly named files if something went wrong; So no actual file patterns to rely on.

I respect them.

They creates a diagram for their tables with word. Word! (Didn't know either: you can select the web view in the bottom right corner and you get an infitive canvas..) Madness.

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Holy cow :O

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (12 replies)
[–] Rookeh@startrek.website 52 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] ulterno@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If those project managers could read, they would actually be able to use Jira.


I regret what I wrote.
I realised, just being able to read, doesn't make sure they can actually use Jira

[–] TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world 24 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Surprised there's no one in the comments going bat shit crazy that this was made by AI. Are we not doing that anymore?

[–] Dremor@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

You just had to wait 2 more hours for that.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] JakenVeina@lemm.ee 24 points 2 days ago

You know what we, in the industry, call a detailed specification fo requirements detailed enough to produce software? Code.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 62 points 2 days ago (2 children)

No, the customer wants a button that does a very specific thing.
He can't tell you what that is, though. You're the expert!
Also, can you put in more ads? And make it so the users can't close the tab until they bought something.

[–] spizzat2@lemm.ee 18 points 2 days ago

You're the expert!

I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 15 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Customer requirements are basically always “I want what my Excel sheet used to do”.

[–] mcv@lemm.ee 6 points 1 day ago

"You mean you want it to corrupt your data and end up with conflicting changes once you share it?"

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago

Make sure to convert 1/2 to February

[–] zerofk@lemm.ee 5 points 2 days ago

I want faster horses.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Just wait until QA gets a hold of it

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 53 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This is when the AI, in a microsecond, decided to destroy the human race.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 47 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not gonna lie, I don't really blame the AI.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

"Can we jazz it up a bit?"

This is a real request from a real manager. They have played us for absolute fools.

[–] slappypantsgo@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

My favorite was to make it “crisp”. My boss was sympathetic when I joked about it being “crispy and delicious” but he still acted like we basically should have known what that means.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 22 points 2 days ago (1 children)

presses button; nothing happens

"Well see here! I wanted that button to do something!"

"Oh but it did! It wasted your time as well as mine!"

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 30 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Button that does something? That’s too advanced for me, I’ll use a library

[–] elvith@feddit.org 22 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Help, Debian has libbutton only in 1.4.3 and libdosomething is not in my repo. I compiled libdosomething from source, but now it needs libbutton >= 2.4.1 and compiling that version of libbutton fails, as my GCC and make are too old and incompatible!

I already tried it on my other PC, but that isn't based on glibc, which makes all these dependencies even worse...

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] rational_lib@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

AI Project Manager: Create a button on a webpage that, when clicked, displays an alert saying "Hello World!"
AI Programmer: "What a sensible requirement! Here you go."
AI Billing Department: "Project completed, that'll be 10 million dollars."
Client AI Payments Department: "Sounds right, paid!"

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

AI Quarterly Call Bot: Delivery is on time and synergy is high!

AI investment selector: This company looks profitable. Purchase!

[–] BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 34 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I had a client once explain to me that his request for the 75% redesign of his mobile app would be simple because "it's just 3 pages"

That was the exact quote

I know that was hardly related to the post, but it reminded me of that and I needed to vent to my therapist (aka strangers on Lemmy)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] resipsaloquitur@lemm.ee 22 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Managers about to find out the hard way that all the requirements are in the brains of those they laid off.

I’m sure coding bootcamp and AI will turn them into leet hax0rs.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Whoa whoa, hold on there! You can't expect a product manager to come up with such detailed specs!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] GrabtharsHammer@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

AI slop image, for this gag?

[–] StellarSt0rm@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

How queer, I must report to my supervisor posthaste!

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 18 points 2 days ago
load more comments
view more: next ›