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

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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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.