Satan, Britney Spears Top Paris Hilton In OSS References

An anonymous reader writes "Krugle, a software search company, had some time on its hands — it compared frequency of mentions in open source code of presidential candidates, Beelzebub and yes, Britney Spears." I wish they'd link to a nice long list of the other terms this revealed — there are probably a lot of subtler funny references and asides.

Comments

Abbreviation:

[Stanistani]

Would 'BS' count as a reference to Ms. Spears? Just asking.

Re:Abbreviation:

[will.perdikakis]

No, but "BJs" would.

Re:Abbreviation:

[pjt33]

Well "Paris, France" appears to count as a reference to Paris Hilton.

Re:Abbreviation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Would 'BS' count as a reference to Ms. Spears? Just asking. Damn, that's a good point. ... <- Would that count as a reference to Satan, too?

Re:Abbreviation:

[Kinky Bass Junk]

No, that would count as a reference to the political candidates.

Am I missing something here?

[JCSoRocks]

I've never included random crap like that in my code... even in college when I was pulling all nighters. Why on earth would I want to have to reference the ParisHilton class? and how would that be helpful to other developers? This is silliness.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[antifoidulus]

That class will show its privates to just about anyone who asks!

Re:Am I missing something here?

[gstoddart]

I've never included random crap like that in my code... even in college when I was pulling all nighters. Why on earth would I want to have to reference the ParisHilton class? and how would that be helpful to other developers? This is silliness.

I was thinking the same thing.

But, I guess when some people are coding they like to inject a little bit of silliness or vent their anger.

I once worked on a project where we were explicitly told our comments couldn't have profanity or other non-PC things in them. Apparently, one time during a customer-required code walkthrough, the developer had littered their code with all sorts of insulting things about the customers and their requirements out of frustration with tight timelines and bad specs. It caused quite a stir. Thereafter, they made sure all developers understood that such things would not be tolerated.

Me, I just couldn't fathom why I'd want to waste time putting vitriol into my code and comments. I need the comments to explain to me what I'm doing and why so that 2 months from now I know what I'd been trying to do.

However, having maintained a few legacy code-bases in my day, you'd be astonished what people actually do put into comments. I've seen some downright bizarre things, ranging from slagging the product to slagging people. Heck, I saw a haiku once, and it actually explained the function quite well.

I suspect a lot of OSS coders have a different view about what to put into their code and have lots of time on their hands to do it in.

Cheers

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is silliness.

// this.popculturereference="SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Cornflake917]

The problem is that the class has to use its inheritance to get what it wants.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[vertinox]

Why on earth would I want to have to reference the ParisHilton class? and how would that be helpful to other developers? This is silliness.

I think the reason why so many open source projects have odd comments or funny comments is that its being made by people who aren't being paid and don't have a manager breathing down their necks so they'll use whatever they'd like at the time. Personally I think comments are the best part of open source code.

My fav so far:

/* DRUNK. FIX LATER */

Source and some more amusing comments.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[SQLGuru]

Exactly. I save my useless comments for places like Slashdot. :D

I have written "lengthy" comments about how much of a hack something was or references to better ways of doing something, but none of them ever needed to reference Satan (maybe sacraficing live chickens, but never pacts with the devil).

Layne

Re:Am I missing something here?

[AKAImBatman]

If you do a search on Krugle, you'll find that most of the references are in database files, not code. e.g. Public figures tend to show up in example data files. There were quite a few Clinton jokes back in the day, so Hillary shows up in a number of files. Paris Hilton is a common "adult" keyword, so you'll notice .htaccess files restricting it.

Here are a few examples:

http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Hillary%20Clinton
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Paris%20Hilton
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Barack%20Obama
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Tooth%20fairy

Even if you search for just code files, you sometimes find data inlined into a unit test:

http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Tooth%20fairy&lang=java
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Hillary%20Clinton&lang=java
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Paris%20Hilton&lang=java

So there you go. A whole lot of non-news. :-)

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Frosty Piss]

But, I guess when some people are coding they like to inject a little bit of silliness or vent their anger.

Apparently, one time during a customer-required code walkthrough, the developer had littered their code with all sorts of insulting things about the customers and their requirements out of frustration with tight timelines and bad specs.

I've always said to myself that when I start thinking of my customers this way, I'll stop coding for them. It's not worth the neurosis.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Chris_Jefferson]

Well, by reading the article and looking at the code, it actually all looks boringly sensible. Looking up "Britney Spears", it is used in a few comments as an example of a name, included in a few filter lists. Nothing exciting at all really unfortunately.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[stoofa]

If you're 'pulling all nighters' then you have no need to attend the Paris Hilton class anyway.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[AiToyonsNostril]

ParisHilton yeah*, but I've referenced Red Dwarf, and Russian literature, etc. and made random sci-fi in-jokes just to make an all-nighter more bearable. It was entertaining for me and the TAs appreciated it in most cases.

* Although I wrote a mock-sexual harrassment suit memo with Phyllis Schlafly as a defendant for my BusLaw class.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[somersault]

Well, one redeeming feature is that any hardware that the code runs on automatically creates a backup tape and uploads it to the net, so you never need to worry about backing up your application's data

Re:Am I missing something here?

[ari_j]

Often, such things come from frustration or from humor starvation. One time, in a programming competition during college, we were required to do our work in Visual Studio. We implemented a sort routine and knew not to call it sort(), so we called it mysort(), which also turned out to be taken by MS. Out of frustration with the clock counting down, I gave it a name that I knew would not have any conflicts: myfuckingsort().

I figured I was in the clear, because the competition administrators and judges had told us that they do not read the code, they just run the program and check for correct output. However, they did quietly talk to us after we received our prize for winning the competition. Apparently, while they don't read the code as part of the competition, they do skim it out of curiosity sometimes.

For the remainder of my C.S. career, I was notorious for having invented the by-then-shortened "fucksort" routine. It still comes up in conversation from time to time.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just out of curiosity, would mention of Hillary Clinton count as a presidential candidate or Satan?

Re:Am I missing something here?

[somersault]

$this = "madness";

if ($this eq "madness")
{
          $this = "sparta!!!! >(";
}

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Cornflake917]

Is there really a difference?

Re:Am I missing something here?

[nem75]

That class will show its privates to just about anyone who asks!

Plus to those who don't ask. Unfortunately.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[maxume]

Among other things, Paris Hilton inherited a degree of notoriety. She has parleyed that into other people paying her tens of millions of dollars. She doesn't need to inherit any money.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[techpawn]

In one of my early programming classes my professor had a minimum length for hard copy code to be turned in. Let's just say my code worked, but my hard copy was too short. Rather than muck my code with unneeded calls and the like I did a lengthy comment about how I believed CS finding the most direct solution to problems even at the risk of upsetting the client.

The code got an A with the added comment from the Prof that the minimum hard copy length requirement for first years would be going away after this.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

I once wanted to name an module in some fortran code 'data', but, of course, that's a protected word, so I called it 'brentSpiner' instead. I don't think my supervisor watched star trek though, so he didn't really get the joke.
</boring nostalgic story>

Re:Am I missing something here?

[spikedvodka]

honestly though... I'm a big fan of "//Magic happens here"

Re:Am I missing something here?

[0100010001010011]

And some times during all nighters we get bored so we spice up our comments and code to keep us entertained. Here's something from my young and stupid days:

//unset stuff that doesn't need to be going into the mysql db.
foreach(array('submit', 'table', ....) as $evil) {
// unset each evil field.
// depending on evilness, may have to call on priest();
unset($_POST[$evil]);
}

Re:Am I missing something here?

[ozmanjusri]

But, I guess when some people are coding they like to inject a little bit of silliness or vent their anger.

Silliness is sometimes fun.

I once coded all the error messages in one particular custom app in Scottish accents.

"Ye cannae click thayre Jimmy! What're ye thinkin?"

Re:Am I missing something here?

[gstoddart]

"Apparently, one time during a customer-required code walkthrough, the developer had littered their code with all sorts of insulting things about the customers and their requirements out of frustration with tight timelines and bad specs."

I've always said to myself that when I start thinking of my customers this way, I'll stop coding for them. It's not worth the neurosis.

Well, I gather this particular developer was a little high string at the best of times.

So it's tough to say if this particular project was any more deficient in terms of time-line and other factors. Suffice it to say, he did cause a new policy to be created -- I gather the actual customer contact was distinctly non-plussed by the whole thing. Some of the stuff, I'm told, was really not appropriate in any organization and he should have known better, even if the client would never see the code.

Cheers

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem is that the class lacks structure.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[metlin]

At my previous company, we were part of an R&D lab, so most folks had PhDs or graduate degrees in one form or another.

Anyway, every once in a while people would leave physics equations in the comments section of checked in code or documents. Once late at night, I was working on an architecture document that needed some major changes. So, I left a comment along the lines of, "Architecture changes complete. $change 1. $change 2. $change 3 etc. Also did $foobar, $foobar, $foobar. Also discovered warp drive. Space too little."

Anyway, the VP was a theoretical physicist who basically updated the document just to have a funny quip on Minkowski space in there etc. The whole thread continued between folks forever.

I mean, work was good but these comments made the work interesting, and adds character to the folks working on stuff.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

if(this.isDecaff())
{
kickClerkInBottomlessPit();
}

Re:Am I missing something here?

[beckerist]

Only problem with that is that it saves the text in a green-on-black grainy medium. The producers only adjective to describe the tape is "hawt."

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Cheesey]

I wouldn't reference Satan directly in my code, but if I need to pick an arbitrary integer constant for something, it's going to be 666. Possibly disguised as 0x29a or 01232. I can't resist an opportunity to annoy people who take Revelations seriously.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[russotto]

I think the reason why so many open source projects have odd comments or funny comments is that its being made by people who aren't being paid and don't have a manager breathing down their necks so they'll use whatever they'd like at the time.

Some of my closed source code has comments like "evil hack", or " made me do this". Probably a few reference Satan. And I'm pretty sure I've ended comments about fixes for nasty race conditions with "I blame George Bush". I have an informal policy of not including any actual curse words or derogatory references to customers or the CEO, but that's about it.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Hatta]

That's the first time I've ever seen "Paris Hilton" and "class" in the same sentence. At least without a "has no" in between.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

ParisHilton class is an oxymoron.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

My standard gray of choice is #666 in CSS for this very reason!

Re:Am I missing something here?

[msgtomatt]

Am I missing something here? Yes, you're missing a personality!

Re:Am I missing something here?

[ewanm89]

There are slagging off about Torvalds in the Linux Kernel code... and about various pieces of hardware...

I mean, just grep swear words for fun ;)

Re:Am I missing something here?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I think a search for the word "fuck" would prove far more enlightening.

In fact, I remember doing that on the kernel code awhile back. My favorite result was "Fuck me gently with a chainsaw..." at the beginning of a gigantic header file full of mappings of PCI ids to product names.

I remember looking at the thousands of #define statements and reflecting on how accurate it was. You really had to see it...

Fortunately for all of us, it's long gone, and that mapping now lives in the userspace pciutils.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[QuasiEvil]

For me, it depends on whether it's personal or professional code, or something in between.

My professional code is usually well documented and no bizarre comments. The worst you usually get is "FIXME - (reason)" or "Ugly Hack" The reason being that, while I've been its sole maintainer for years, somebody will eventually take over this job and will need to understand how all of the business rules weave themselves through the library. Plus, it's what's expected of a professional developer. (I will admit that there are more subtle humorous references in the architecture, but not many at all.)

My personal code is more a stream-of-consciousness conversation with the code. You'll often find "WTF was I thinking? This can't possibly work, but it does somehow," or other such. I'll often insert thoughts as I'm reading the code as markers of things to go back and explain to myself in comments later. Consider it a form of code review, except that the reviewer is me, removed by a few weeks from coding it. It really does help point out where I have documentation deficiencies. Then there always the drunk tags, indicating sections of code I may need to rework since I wrote them under the excessive influence..,

My personal favorite is a close friend of mine who went on a coding bender after his girlfriend completely screwed him over. It wasn't a bad thing, we had a lot of microcontroller code to write in a hurry. Unfortunately, we got lots of line labels like "LivsABitchDieDieDie:" (usually with a varying number of dies, or possibly with a number appended.) Surprisingly, most of the code worked and lived on for years, never really needing any maintenance (thankfully....)

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Crazyswedishguy]

A CS teacher I had in college (and who might be reading this, "hi!"), always made strange D&D (?) references in the example code or partially coded assignments... For instance, the most common comment was where we were supposed to complete the code:
// Here be the dragons...
It was always somewhere between amusing and confusing.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Thanks for posting some links; I skimmed TFA and didn't see anything other than "zomg people reference famous people in their code, and somebody did a search for it, PONIES!!!1" and was going to judge the article/topic a WOMFT.

You'd think they could have included some sample search links in the article, no? Searching for "fuck" in Linux code turns up more entertaining stuff if I recall correctly. Actually, seaching for "fuck" in Krugle is more entertaining than Satan:

"Fuck GNOME!"
"public class FuckNut"
"for (int i = 0; i n; i++) fuck(); "

Re:Am I missing something here?

[RiotingPacifist]

Might give that a shot, heres what had to be removed from mozilla before they opened the source
http://www.jwz.org/doc/censorzilla.html

Re:Am I missing something here?

[footnmouth]

I was once fixing some bugs in some PowerBuilder (remember that) at work and the code went something like: //kill memory mapper kill wf_memmap; //kill dtc connection kill nvo_dtc_conn; //kill ogd connection kill nvo_ogd_conn2; //kill your friends I sat opposite the guy who wrote it - and left soon after

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus it really sucks at composition.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Darinbob]

I've never included random crap like that in my code... even in college when I was pulling all nighters. They only said they were searching open source code, not necessarily good open source code.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Darinbob]

Personally I think comments are the best part of open source code. They're a good part of closed source as well. They tend to not be as sophomoric as college assignments, but there can be some interesting stuff. I read the microfiche of a major operating system a long time ago, and a comment at the start of the widely-used mail system said "I wrote this to learn how to program".

(you kids on my lawn can look up "microfiche" in your Funk and Wagnall's)

Re:Am I missing something here?

[mopower70]

I've never included random crap like that in my code... even in college when I was pulling all nighters. Why on earth would I want to have to reference the ParisHilton class? and how would that be helpful to other developers? This is silliness.
--
Please - learn how to spell. loose != lose. Yes. It is silliness. And judging by the uptightness of your post as well as your sig, you could use a little of it in your life.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Ethanol-fueled]

...and why is green on black a problem? *AHEMterminal!*

Re:Am I missing something here?

[alan_dershowitz]

Satan wasn't born in the USA and is thus ineligible.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[operagost]

The only thing that annoys me is calling Revelation "Revelations". It's one vision revealed to John the Evangelist.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[operagost]

That phrase actually comes from a map made in medieval times.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Valdrax]

Me, I just couldn't fathom why I'd want to waste time putting vitriol into my code and comments. I need the comments to explain to me what I'm doing and why so that 2 months from now I know what I'd been trying to do. See, that's actually *why* I put vitriol and sarcasm into some of my comments. If it caused me horrible frustration the first time I had to work with it, then I should be reminded of that later. Especially because that emotional trigger will bring the memories back faster.

Bonus points if you think the person who originally wrote the code you spent two days deciphering will get to see it.

Equally fun though if they've left the company, and everyone who comes after you will be going through the same process of slack-jawed disbelief at what they have to maintain. It's a way of patting the next person on the back and saying, "There, there. I've been through what you're about to go through too."

Naturally, I recommend using this extremely *sparingly.* You don't want to get a reputation for being "that guy" or worse put something in a logging or debugging function that might somehow someday be seen by a customer. (You never know what a production machine is going to overheat, have a hiccup, and enter the "should never happen" part of the code and start spewing profanity into the logs. Not that this happened to a program my first company sold or anything.)

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Valdrax]

Actually, "here be dragons" is an old cartographers phrase used to denote unexplored and presumably dangerous areas on maps, in the same spirit as drawing sea serpents off the coast of unexplored water.

It's kind of a running joke in computer circles.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[davester666]

It's doesn't back up everything. It just emails the CrashReport to everyone when the process crashes [similar to a core dump for you crazy Unix guys not using MacOS X].

Re:Am I missing something here?

[TrekkieGod]

And some times during all nighters we get bored so we spice up our comments and code to keep us entertained.

One of the "best" comments I made in my code was, "//WARNING: DO NOT DELETE THIS!" above a section that upon close inspection did absolutely nothing of consequence (although it did set a global variable somewhere. Looking for when it was used, it looked like it was always set to something else before the value was actually used, so setting the value at that point made no sense). Not remembering when or why I put that there, I tried commenting that section out and testing the program to see if anything broke. Everything appeared to run fine without it. However, just in case I was missing some interaction with the rather large codebase, I decided to uncomment the code rather than introducing a bug that I wasn't testing for.

To this day I'm still not sure whether that was a horrendous hack that I did or whether I fell prey to a practical joke I decided to pull to spice things up during one of those boring all-nighters...I am now sure of two things though: global variables suck and comments for horrendous hacks should actually explain what the horrendous hack is doing.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[SL Baur]

I think the reason why so many open source projects have odd comments or funny comments is that its being made by people who aren't being paid and don't have a manager breathing down their necks so they'll use whatever they'd like at the time. That isn't true, at least in my own case. I like to put in colorful comments on occasion because I view source code as something to be read by other programmers. Example (which works around a very wierd Stallmanism):

;; We must destroy this buffer in order to save it!
                (kill-buffer (current-buffer)) My favorite example that I've run across in other people's code was in the System V days in, I think, /usr/include/sys/vm.h. It contained some swapping constants where the defaults were explained economically by using then-current prices for VAX 11 memory cards. I think this originally came in via BSD because I saw the same comment in SunOS as well as the M68K System V/R2 desktop box I had at home.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[shutdown -p now]

Why on earth would I want to have to reference the ParisHilton class? and how would that be helpful to other developers? This is silliness.

Good on you. Pray that you never see production code with a higher-order function (taking a function that takes a function and returns a function, and returning a function) named "ThisIsAVeryFunnyMethod". Coincidentially, it was a static method in a class named "HeavyMetalIsCool".

Re:Am I missing something here?

[shutdown -p now]

Nah, the real fun is:

... // why does this work??

Very confidence-inspiring.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[fiskeben]

It's every programmer's God forsaken right to add a dash of sillyness here and there. It's what makes the World go!

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the class lacks class.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[kaen]

There must be a loophole for someone that arrived with the first explorers/settlers?

Re:Am I missing something here?

[en.ABCD]

There must be a loophole for someone that arrived with the first explorers/settlers? United States Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States. So it depends on if he was a citizen of the United States at that time.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[ewanm89]

A lot of the explicit language in kernel comments is due to various bits of hardware... and fsck turns up a lot of false positives, however, there are some interesting comments in there.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

I name Queues after John De Lancie.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that in a lot of these cases, the coder simply needed to either vent or keep themselves amused (depending on nature of comment) to keep themselves sane (or at least, sane enough to keep coding).

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you can have a Britney Spears class. You just cant put the two together in the same sentence. It wont compute. Maybe BritneySpears.classless but not a .class

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is silliness. Silliness? THIS! IS! JAAAVAAA!!!

Bad joke, I know. But so are most here.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[swillden]

Satan wasn't born in the USA and is thus ineligible.

Someone should tell the Democrats before they nominate her!

Re:Am I missing something here?

[The One and Only]

$this = "madness";

if ($this eq "madness")
{
$this = "sparta";

for ($count = 0,; $count < 10; $count++)
{
$this = $this . 'a';
}

for ($count = 0,; $count < 10; $count++)
{
$this = $this . '!';
}
}

Re:Am I missing something here?

[DMUTPeregrine]

Wheat on Dark Slate Grey or Green is much, much more readable.
#FFE6BC = Wheat (foreground)
#294D4A = DarkSlateGreen (BG)
#4D4D4D = DarkSlateGrey (BG)
Saturation = 47, Value = 30: DarkSlateX

Green on black causes lots of eyestrain.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[somersault]

Personally I'd just use .= :

while (Rand(10)>3)
{
      $this .= 'a';
}

;)

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

even in college when I was pulling all nighters.

I 'pulled' more than that!

Re:Am I missing something here?

[jgrahn]

Nah, the real fun is:

... // why does this work??

Very confidence-inspiring.

Not too bad, actually. You get a feel for the author's frame of mind when (s)he wrote that. I am guessing: reasonably clever, and aware that he writes for an audience -- but with a deadline coming up, and more urgent problems to deal with.

*snicker*

[krinderlin]

A friend of mine got a call a few days ago from an old job of his doing some Access application development (*pukes*). Apparently they didn't appreciate the fact that the code was littered with references to the Spanish Inquisition, Spam, Grail Shaped Beacons, and so on.

Re:*snicker*

[njfuzzy]

What did they expect to accomplish by calling to scold a former employee?

Re:*snicker*

[clickclickdrone]

And people wonder why CEO's etc don't consider IT people to be on their 'professional' level.

Re:*snicker*

[Anonymous Coward]

And people wonder why CEO's etc don't consider IT people to be on their 'professional' level.

And people wonder why "IT people" don't line up for the management lobotomy.

Go figure.

Re:*snicker*

[AiToyonsNostril]

CEOs cannot afford to have a sense of humor: IT people can.

Re:*snicker*

[InlawBiker]

I can tell you from fist-hand experience that the board room, once the doors are closed, is an excellent place to learn the latest sexist, vile and dirty jokes.

Re:*snicker*

[somersault]

It's almost as if they had no means of chastisement other than their mouth.

Re:*snicker*

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, seriously. I wouldn't have expected that sort of Spanish inquisition.

Re:*snicker*

[pAnkRat]

Ofcourse they were suprised to find these references in the code,
because "nobody expects the spanish inqusition!"

Re:*snicker*

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you from fist-hand experience that the board room, once the doors are closed, is an excellent place to learn the latest sexist, vile and dirty jokes. *fist* hand?

*snicker*

Re:*snicker*

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you from fist-hand experience that the board room, once the doors are closed, is an excellent place to learn the latest sexist, vile and dirty jokes. Tell me more...

Re:*snicker*

[InlawBiker]

I admit, it's a funny typo.

Re:*snicker*

[SanityInAnarchy]

Buy him a bumper sticker: "I wish I was coding Python."

Re:*snicker*

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Re:*snicker*

[__aagbwg300]

They were looking for an argument, but found insults instead. Stupid git.

Re:*snicker*

[fair_n_hite_451]

No they weren't

Re:*snicker*

[domatic]

Did he fart in their general direction?

Re:*snicker*

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, totally unreasonable that they'd prefer to work with code that isn't filled with idiotic, probably humorless references to Monty Python.

Re:*snicker*

[DMUTPeregrine]

Of course they were. Bumhat.

Re:*snicker*

[X3J11]

A friend of mine got a call a few days ago from an old job of his doing some Access application development (*pukes*). Apparently they didn't appreciate the fact that the code was littered with references to the Spanish Inquisition, Spam, Grail Shaped Beacons, and so on.

I guess one could say... (wait for it)...

THEY DON'T LIKE SPAM!

When I was farting around with something (I think it was a simple wget workalike) years ago, I had a pair of functions called HolyHandGrenade and KillerBunny. Not all that creative, but I still chuckle over it.

Meaningful Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

My Favorite comment came from the DEC PDP-11 Fortran compiler. After searching extensively for a bug in our code, we managed to get the compiler source, and at the location where our code imploded, the compiler author had inserted the comment,

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

Re:Meaningful Comments

[ddrichardson]

I rather like this one that I saw at the weekend. Sounds like an unpleasant way to go.

Satan I can understand ...

[trolltalk.com]

Satan I can understand (BSD Devil, references to the Beast from Redmond, Chipzilla, etc), but Britney Speares? That's EVIL!

Re:Satan I can understand ...

[zappepcs]

Well, the major datum contributing to the listing of satan and spears is their soon to be well known contractual obligations to one another.

Apparently satan has refused to uphold his part of the deal in as much as she has yet to have a successful singing career.

I'm certain that the **AA lawyers are all invited to the gallery for this trial. DAMN, I tried to spell that gallows but for *some* reason my fingers just couldn't type it????

Re:Satan I can understand ...

[dextromulous]

Satan I can understand (BSD Devil, references to the Beast from Redmond, Chipzilla, etc), but Britney Speares? That's EVIL!

Joking aside, there are a few projects that use SATAN as an acronym which would pad out the numbers quite a bit:

• Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks
  
• Signal Applications To Audio Networks
  

Re:Satan I can understand ...

[DiEx-15]

Could it be it is crazy code?

Re:Satan I can understand ...

[trolltalk.com]

Actually, on second thought, it makes sense to include references to the Britster in code. For example, when someone f*cks up and just keeps introducing the same bug over and over, we could call them a "Britney Coder" as in "Oops, I did it again!"

Hillary Clinton? Duh.

[AKAImBatman]

The fact that Hillary Clinton outstrips McCain and Obama should come as no surprise. She spent 8 years in the public eye, back when no one had even heard of the other two candidates. Expressing surprise that she is 'in the lead' as it were, is just silly.

Re:Hillary Clinton? Duh.

[Holi]

I think McCain has been in the public eye a little longer than Mrs. Clinton, considering he's been a US Senator since 1986.

Re:Hillary Clinton? Duh.

[fprintf]

And was a POW in Vietnam for several years, refusing to come home before other prisoners. The guy was a hero, all over the newspapers way back then. Not that it means much to modern day programmers (most likely demographic for OSS contributors) who weren't around or paying attention to such news in the early 70s.

Re:Hillary Clinton? Duh.

[AKAImBatman]

Just because he's a senator doesn't mean that he's managed to stay in the public eye. He's managed to stay a public figure, but for the most part he's been ignored by the public at large.

Just try doing a search on Clinton jokes vs. McCain jokes. You'll get a LOT more Clinton jokes. (Most of which are based on the idea that it was Hillary running the Presidency, not Bill.)

Re:Hillary Clinton? Duh.

[Kenoli]

Being a senator doesn't exactly put someone in the public eye.

Re:Hillary Clinton? Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but McCain is no stranger to the public eye.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five

Re:Hillary Clinton? Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary Clinton outstrips McCain and Obama She only got into stripping because Bill made her. But with so much practice at it, no wonder she does it better than McCain and Obama.

Re:Hillary Clinton? Duh.

[fractalboy]

Several years ago I named my final project in a compiler construction class Hillary Clinton. The main reasons being that it was a bitch, and every time I used it I could say that I was executing Hillary Clinton. (And when it would freeze up before I got all the kinks out, I'd also have no choice but to kill the Hillary Clinton process as well.)

Re:Hillary Clinton? Duh.

[witherstaff]

I'm curious what the Ron Paul love among developers and code is.

Satan, Britney Spears

[towelie-ban]

Those are just synonyms, right?

Re:Satan, Britney Spears

[Redbaran]

No, they are actually dangling pointers to the same object. The garbage collection doesn't seem to be working here for some reason.

Re:Satan, Britney Spears

[elrous0]

Back in 1981, scientists thought it would be SUCH a great idea to do a Liza Minnelli/Bo Derek clone. And I warned those scientists about their family histories of mental problems, alcoholism, etc. But they were all like "No, look at how funny Liza is in Arthur, wouldn't it be great to combine her talent with big tits and blonde hair?" And, at first, I thought "Well okay, she could sing and she would be hot. That might just work."

And that is how I became one of the monsters that created Britney Spears.

It's funny how easily you can drift into doing evil, horrific things with just a little peer pressure and lack of foresight.

Re:Satan, Britney Spears

[sadgoblin]

Satan > Britney

Re:Satan, Britney Spears

[The Redster!]

Don't clean up yet, we still care about one of those pointers!

Re:Satan, Britney Spears

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Satan is nowhere near as bitchy and doesn't have fake tits.

I predict that..

[Thelasko]

Tipper Gore and the Parents Software Resource Center are going to petition congress to ban open source software because the source code is explicit. The end result will be a warning label on all open source software available on the internet.

end sarcasm

Re:I predict that..

[Thelasko]

That's not funny! Hans Riser killed his wife because the source code told him to do it. We have censor the source code to prevent these acts of violence from happening again!

Re:I predict that..

[Thelasko]

the PSRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years dealing with the interpretational and enforcemental problems inherent in the proposal's design.

f[u#s]ck(ing)?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

... is a very useful regex to find problems and workarounds with (3rd party) frameworks and libraries

Re:f[u#s]ck(ing)?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'd probably have written it as: (f[u#\*s]|s[u#\*])ck(ing)?

Sorry, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

shouldn't this be posted at whogivesashit.com ?!??

I mean, really, who really cares about this?

http://www.whogivesashit.com/posts/75210113149056200811351.html

there.

What, no examples?

[Frosty Piss]

The "article" (if you can call it that) shows neither neither charts of actual numbers, nore places the uses in context (with or without examples). Good grief.

Re:What, no examples?

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Yeah, sucky article. I used krugle to search for Britney Spears myself and was actually quite disappointed. I was hoping to her name to appear in comments like:

// This code is more fscked up than Britney Spears

Instead, she just appears as a canonical example in database entries and spelling lookup examples.

Hee!

[Rob T Firefly]

Whenever I use a switch statement, I'm compelled to name its variable "jimmysmits." This results in the statement "switch(jimmysmits)", and never fails to make me chuckle.

...too obscure?

Re:Hee!

[thatskinnyguy]

Whenever I'm configuring a Cisco router for PAT, I have a similar compulsion to name the NAT pool "frustration" so that when I go to execute the command for PAT it will end with "frustration overload". I have done this on occasion. It all goes back to my days in the Networking Academy.

Re:Hee!

[cbart387]

A little offtopic but related ... for an infinite loop in C

#define EVER ;;
for(EVER){
...
}

Re:Hee!

[SQLGuru]

Totally unrelated, but right after reading this post, I got an e-mail from the animal shelter I volunteer at....here are the cats adopted yesterday:

ID Kennel # Outcome Type Animal Name Weight
CAT A496283 AB - 05 ADOPTION RABBIT 6.5
CAT A503957 AB - 27 ADOPTION BEAUREGARD 8.75
CAT A505787 AB - 28 ADOPTION JIMMY SMITS 2.5
CAT A507051 ISO 1 - 15 ADOPTION OREO 6.25
CAT A507677 AB - 30 ADOPTION COCONUT 9
CAT A507806 CONDO ADOPTION BANDIT 2.25
CAT A507808 CONDO ADOPTION FELICITY 2.00
CAT A507807 CONDO ADOPTION FIONA 2.25

Layne

Re:Hee!

[Muad'Dave]

CAT A507051 ISO 1 - 15 ADOPTION OREO 6.25

Cool!!! An ISO-standard cat!

What are ISO standards 1 thru 15, anyway?

1. "Proper Method for Furniture Destruction by Willful Application of Claws"
2. "Method for Waste Burial in an Attapulgite Clay Medium"
3. "Procedure for Maximal Shedding, and Subsequent Hairball Production"
4. "Hairball Trajectory Management"
5. "Proper Method for control of Insect and Bird Population, with Emphasis on Proper Placement on Owner's Pillow"

Need I go on?

Re:Hee!

[SQLGuru]

In this case, it's ISOlation.....the cat was recovering (possibly from being "fixed").

Layne

Knuth appears, but...

[serviscope_minor]

Knuth is on the list. That said, he appears in my code, without me making wierd references or easter-eggy comments.

//Implementation of Knuth's foo algorithm.
//See TAOCP Vol 3, Page ??

Is the summary wrong or is the article misleading?

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

The summary suggests that they measured the frequency of mentions of these terms in the source code - the article seems to suggest that they measured the terms searched for using the Krugle search engine. The former would be interesting, the latter would not.

in code, or in comments?

[Briden]

what i'd like to know is, were these things discovered in comments, or actual code?

i've used some amusing code like:
itBroke = true;
but that still communicates something useful to me, (it indicates an unrecoverable error condition)

plus then i could write:
(itBroke) ? fixIt() : dontFixIt(); //(if it ain't broke don't fix it)

naming a class HillaryClinton is just ridiculous. I wonder if there are variables named intCheatCount in the diebold software?

currently i am working on a section of code littered with ninja references in the comments though, that is fine, and lightens up my day a little. //really the only time this will be ran is when the actions are dis-approved. //but....... we gota check it just to be sure ninjas are not in the computer trying to //screw things up. .... //why? because it's more l337 and it saves space. Gee. Man. Aw come on! GO NINJA GO! //it cannot get above 26. if Value is above 26, turn into aa, ab, ac, etc. like clockninja.

sheesh.

Re:in code, or in comments?

[Cro Magnon]

Well, I didn't see this first-hand, but I heard that one of my cow-orkers wrote some interesting COBOL code during his divorce. He had this line of code:

Perform Beat-my-wife Until She-Screams.

Sadly, I never got to work on any of his code before it was cleaned up.

Re:in code, or in comments?

[ewanm89]

We were talking about open source code... Most hackers prefer this philosophy.

(itBroke) ? don'tFixIt() : fixIt(); //(if it ain't broke fix it)

Re:in code, or in comments?

[Mercano]

naming a class HillaryClinton is just ridiculous. I wonder if there are variables named intCheatCount in the diebold software? Well, there's probably one in the BillClinton class.

Re:in code, or in comments?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perform B^Heat-my-wife Until She-Screams.

Tried a Google Code Search and ...

[gzipped_tar]

Most of the matches of "Paris Hilton" appear, rather unsurprisingly, appear in bot- or spam-blocking programs.
But this one is more interesting: Category theory is the Paris Hilton of mathematics.

He was a terrible pilot.

[FatSean]

He crashed numerous plains in training and if his Admiral daddy hadn't pulled strings, ol' Johnny might never have flow in the Vietname Fail.

McCain was also one of the Keating Five. He's not the kind of person I want running this country.

Re:Diebold comments

[maxume]

// I think this works

Never mistake incompetence for intention.

Re:fist-hand

[maxume]

Wait, corporate executives masturbate together when they are behind closed doors?

That's even more vile than I thought.

They missed #1 completely

[rozthepimp]

There are over 6 gazillion code comments that start "Damn it Jim, I'm a programmer, not a....."

I don't see why

[Anonymous Coward]

Satan can play a pretty mean fiddle, demonstrating actual musical talent.

Amusing anagrams

[pandrijeczko]

Paris Hilton - Hail, it's porn!

Britney Spears - Prissy bra teen

Re:Amusing anagrams

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeremy Irons - Jeremy's Iron ...

What?

Bad Article Summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

The article actually discusses some of the stranger things that people have used as search terms in Krugle's search engine - NOT what terms actually show up in code.

Sheesh.

cout

[DarkOx]

cout is for printing a line to the stdout, its like simpler printf. Its not a misspent reference to part of Britney's anatomy. Seriously these noob coders...

Right-wing punditry has helped Clinton

[FatSean]

Many of the talking heads and hate-radio personalities get a good response from hating on Hillary. They've been doing it ever since Clinton got roped into an impeachment for a non-issue. Ooooo...so he didn't run the government improperly but he did cheat on his wife and lied about it under oath! Oooooh!

I know they think that McCain can beat HillDawg more easily than he could beat Obama...but I'm not sure why.

Well, good!

[FatSean]

There is a large stack of evidence showing that warning labels don't work, and may in fact inspire more people to try the thing being warned against.

More developers is a good thing.

Re:Well, good!

[evanbd]

I have here a package of razor blades. "50 single edge #9 razor blades," it says in large print on the front. On the side, it reads "Warning: razor sharp blades."

I think warning labels have gotten excessive.

Re:Well, good!

[GregNorc]

We should lobby to have a label for diet coke and mentos warning not to mix the two.

The real question is [OT, obviously]:

[Anonymous Coward]

how do you ork a cow??

Re:The real question is [OT, obviously]:

[Adambomb]

Get off our lawns.

RUSH

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed a lot of references to the Canada Band Rush in code. Try google's code search with the band name, some of their song names, or some common lyrical quotes and you'll find them.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever I use a byte[] for buffering, it is called buffyTheVampireSlayer. I used to call them buffy, but thought the added vampire slayer reference would make the code just that bit more surreal to read.

Not in my code, but...

[geminidomino]

I definitely do it in my SVN comments, since I know it's just going to be seen by the other devs.

Like this little gem from today:

"Updated to handle duplicate codes. May the gods have mercy on my soul."

Needless to say, my solution was determined more by deadline than by elegance...

LOV.IsDirty?

[CNTOAGN]

I was writing some routine a while back that included a class by the name of LocatorObjectValue (LOV for short) and it had a IsDirty flag. Unit tested, running green, and then noticed throughout the code: if (Lov.IsDirty)...

Re:LOV.IsDirty?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it ain't dirty, you're not doing it right ;)

Intuitive connections

[StreetStealth]

Your Paris Hilton example is funny, but it is why I actually do sometimes use amusing function names -- I can more easily remember what they do if their silly names actually reference their behavior.

Re:Intuitive connections

[The Cydonian]

Back in the day, wrote a method called ReturnOfTheJedi() which had a parameter called theJediWhereTrick. Returned a search result, but with an optional where clause in the SQL query.

Kept fielding emails about that for six months straight, from the company's offices in Palo Alto and Singapore. Fun times.

Islamic twist

[mapkinase]

I searched for "bismillah", "inshallah", "alhamdulillah".

Not many hits, but I am glad some brothers remember Allah when coding... Alhamdulillah.

Programmers get punchy late at night.

[fahrbot-bot]

Way back in college, a review of a friend's OS class project code revealed the following line in a long list of, otherwise seriously documented, task scheduler variable declarations:

unsigned int slice; /* A new fruit-flavored drink. */

[ And, this guy finished his semester project over a weekend. ]

Wait!

[girasquid]

What about Cthulu?!

Isn't that the same list as..

[tinkerton]

the list of commonly used passwords?

Re:Isn't that the same list as..

[frostoftheblack]

Everyone knows the most commonly used passwords are god, love, secret, and sex.

I think she was out of class at the time...

[Anonymous Coward]

oopsIDidItAgain();

funny comment

[trybywrench]

I found a comment in my codebase that said something like "All i want to do is dance, dance, dance". I couldn't remember if i wrote it or my coworker... it was probably her seeing how i hate dancing. The code was about 4 years old.

another one said "FIX ME BAD" i'm pretty sure i wrote that one heh

Re:funny comment

[Anonymous Coward]

I found a comment in my codebase that said something like "All i want to do is dance, dance, dance". I couldn't remember if i wrote it or my coworker... it was probably her seeing how i hate dancing. The code was about 4 years old.

What, no version control to trace back who added that line?

(Sad that VCS systems are still not as common as they should be, over 20 years after RCS and CVS hit the scene.)

Re:Is the summary wrong or is the article misleadi

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking exactly the same thing--I was wondering if I was misinterpreting the article or something.

It's really not surprising at all to me that these search terms would be used. People get confused, think they're using Google, and type them into the search engine.

Someone can help here

[blue_teeth]

I remember reading very insightful commentary on concept of "time"
in GNU info or manpages.

Thanks
BT

Binks variable...

[refactored]

My Java library path variable is called binks.

It's the place I store all my jarjars.

(Ooo, thats going to cost me! Don't you just love the smell of karma burning in the morning...)

heh? Mark shuttleworth was your teachers fav?

[rootpassbird]

back then?

Special names...

[bwcbwc]

Maybe ParisHilton is an abstract interface that has no class? I'm curious how many developers have actually used variables called foo and bar in live code (apart from cut/paste jobs from programming texts).

Re:Special names...

[jgrahn]

I'm curious how many developers have actually used variables called foo and bar in live code (apart from cut/paste jobs from programming texts).

I don't think I have ever done it. They are reserved for use in examples; using them elsewhere diminishes their power.

Satan, Britney Spears Top Paris Hilton, eh?

[grouchomarxist]

I rented that DVD, not bad actually...

buffyTheVampireSlayer and boxBruceleitner

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a buffer named "buffyTheVampireSlayer" and a JComboBox named boxBruceleitner in my code. And that's in a project for my day job. Why I did it? The work on that specific code was boring and getting on my nerves. This little bit of creativity eases the stress and makes work more pleasant. I only got in trouble once when some nosy customer who poked around in the binary didn't like what I used as prototype string for sizing an input field. My boss told me to change it and I replaced it with something that sounds like an Arab call to arms. But no one has noticed so far :-(

Here's what I do....

[kehren77]

Just don't comment your code at all. That's the best prank you can pull on someone who has to deal with it after you.

Plus after six months of not looking at it, you can enjoy the pleasure of trying to figure out what does what all over again. :)

Re: Inside the Church of Satan

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe THIS has something to do with it: Breaking news . . . www.InsideTheChurchOfSatan.com