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Satan, Britney Spears Top Paris Hilton In OSS References

Posted by timothy on from the knuth-beats-satan dept.

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.

3 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Am I missing something here? by JCSoRocks · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
    1. Re:Am I missing something here? by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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
      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:Am I missing something here? by techpawn · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you