Comment Profanity by Language

beret found a nifty little pie chart breaking down profanity in code comments broken down by language. He used Carlin's Seven Words, and C++ came out on top while PHP users are either wholesome or perfect.

Comments

Perfection.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perfection is the enemy of progress.

Re:Perfection.

[mini me]

Ruby only scored so high because of David Heinemeier Hansson. Source: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/47/127984254_ddd4363d6a.jpg

Re:Perfection.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Off.

Re:Perfection.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perfection is the enemy of progress.

God is the enemy of Progressives.

Re:Perfection.

[IBitOBear]

Php showed up as perfect because it is almost perfectly comment free.

This is an indictment of the language, not the programmers, since well-commented php is drastically slower (like .5% tomg!) than stripped down and nearly obfuscated code. That fraction really adds up when you have all those unnecessarily dynamic web pages to generate.

Now if someone were to do a comparison on the ratio of active code, to code that is commented out but not removed because the author doesn't use version control... In that category PHP would freaking rule!

Re:Perfection.

[kevinNCSU]

I fail to see how comments in the repository commit message could possibly slow down the code itself.

Re:Perfection.

[maxwell demon]

The PHP interpreter tends to get bored with executing the code, and then browses the repositories. The less comments there are in the commit messages, the less time the PHP interpreter spends reading them, and the more time it can use to actually interpret the code. :-)

Re:Perfection.

[Joce640k]

Yep. On a sample that small there's a good chance of it being down to individual developers, not programming language.

Perfect?

[SatanicPuppy]

More like they never fucking comment their motherfucking code.

Perl programmers never put in profane comments, because cursing in Perl itself is much more satisfying.

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my personal opinion, python does not require much commenting because its not as complex to figure out to by just looking at is as c++ (and other languages) is.

Re:Perfect?

[somersault]

More like they never fucking comment their motherfucking code.

My thinking exactly. Anyone who writes in PHP probably is using it because it's the easiest option..

Re:Perfect?

[Dayze!Confused]

Really the title of the /. article is misleading, it is Commit Profanity by Language, which is entirely different.

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perl programmers never put in profane comments, because cursing in Perl itself is much more satisfying.

and, just for the hell of it, to annoy a manager who was getting on my case about my not commenting my code, all the comments in a Perl program I wrote were C code equivalents of the various blocks of Perl..
The C was commented in English, the Perl was commented in C, the only people who would have really looked at it anyway would either be C and/or Perl programmers, as far as I was concerned, as the C compiled and worked as per the Perl code, the comments were valid..took me about five times as long to cobble the C together as it did the Perl,

I was mad back then, quite, quite mad....

Re:Perfect?

[TheRaven64]

In my personal opinion, developers like you are the reason why every single 'working' piece of Python code I've encountered has required me to spend time debugging it before actually using it.

Re:Perfect?

[Lord Ender]

Perl programmers never put in profane comments, because cursing in Perl itself is much more satisfying.

I love Perl programs, like I love the Perl stack-traces. I have sampled every language, Perl is my favorite. Fantastic language. Especially to curse with. It's like wiping your ass with unix.''=~('(?{'.('/_)@){'^'_-@.][').'"'.('___[^'^'-*="|').',$/})'). I love it.

Re:Perfect?

[eln]

Most people skilled in a language (yes, even perl) can figure out what a piece of code actually does given enough time to look through it. The comments are to tell us what the code is *supposed* to do and *why*, so when we need to debug it we know what you were thinking when you wrote it and what you were trying to accomplish. When you're trying to figure out why a piece of code doesn't do what it's supposed to do, it's very helpful to know what it was supposed to do first.

Re:Perfect?

[dkleinsc]

All I know is that I'm sick and tired of these motherfuckin' comments on this motherfuckin' server!

Re:Perfect?

[GMFTatsujin]

Also, you never know what "$%!!!#$!!()$!$)!" will actually parse...

Re:Perfect?

[vlm]

I was mad back then, quite, quite mad....

Intercal, now that would have been mad, quite, quite mad.

Re:Perfect?

[Lije Baley]

Erm, how did you know it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do if you didn't first know what it was supposed to do?

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

C++. And there is no escape from it. We are forever slaves to it. Our only hope, only peace is to understand it. To understand the why. Why is what separates us from them. You from me. ;-)

Re:Perfect?

[Ikkyu]

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.

Re:Perfect?

[raddan]

Come on guys:

I ripped an equal amount of commit messages per language

That means that PHP users have a lower incidence of swears per commit, i.e., a lower swear frequency. You may now continue your baseless PHP-bashing...

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

My thinking exactly. Anyone who writes in PHP probably is using it because it's the easiest option..

Generally it is a good idea to code in the easiest language for the job, don't you think? Note that I'm not saying the easiest language to write hello world in, but the easiest one for the job. Now I'll let you get back to writing your web application in assembly.

Re:Perfect?

[Garble Snarky]

You have a valid point, but "easiest to learn in general" is not equivalent to "most appropriate for the task", and I think the distinction is important.

Re:Perfect?

[element-o.p.]

Most people skilled in a language (yes, even perl) can figure out what a piece of code actually does given enough time...

Unfortunately, in the case of perl, human beings do not have a sufficiently long lifespan :D

I kid, I kid (mostly...)! However, even though I'm on the perl side of a perl vs. python debate where I work, I have to admit, I'd much rather try to figure out what someone else's python code did than try to figure out what someone else's perl code did. There are just too many ways to do the same thing in perl, and some of those ways can get pretty darned arcane.

Re:Perfect?

[somersault]

I learned to write web apps in PHP at Uni, but just because it's easy doesn't make it good. I read it encourages poor habits in terms of the security of your apps, so I decided to look at other options. I didn't look very thoroughly as I settled on Perl, which I knew to be a good multi-purpose scripting language.. but I probably should have gone with Python as it seems to be growing while Perl declines.. even Ruby would have been okay, I didn't realise it was meant for more than just web coding when everyone was making a big deal about "Ruby on Rails".

Re:Perfect?

[cheekyjohnson]

I generally don't comment my code if it's obvious what it is supposed to do. The question of "why" is usually fairly easy to figure out in those cases, as well, depending on the situation. I really dislike useless comments.

Re:Perfect?

[LateArthurDent]

Erm, how did you know it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do if you didn't first know what it was supposed to do?

You know what the overarching program is supposed to do, and it's not doing it, so you look at the code. You don't know which part of the code is doing what and what approach is being used to accomplish the task until you look at it. You don't know what the original coder meant to do with that individual section of code unless he has commented it (or you managed to figure it out, but if the code is wrong in the first place, you might have problems doing that).

Re:Perfect?

[grcumb]

More like they never fucking comment their motherfucking code.

Perl programmers never put in profane comments, because cursing in Perl itself is much more satisfying.

There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this: PHP is a web language, whereas everyone knows that most curses-based programs are written in C or C++.

Re:Perfect?

[mkiwi]

I agree with parent. Although, since I started coding using Objective-C naming conventions (even in other languages), I've found that many comments are unnecessary. When you have a method called:
putTextPaneFromSearchBoxInMainNSView(TextPane * textPane, NSView * primaryView)
it's pretty clear what it means. I don't think many python programmers have learned that style yet, thus you see the problems with the code. (My experience, YMMV)

Re:Perfect?

[Okonomiyaki]

I know, right? Come on you lazy php programmers! Get off your asses and choose a harder option! What's the matter? Chicken? Bok bok bok! Oh, look at the little babies go crying home to their mommies!

Re:Perfect?

[ewe2]

.so Perl programmers watched the other Matrix movies, I knew it.

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a reason to use a harder option than necessary?

Re:Perfect?

[Hugh_G_Wrecktion]

You also have to look at the kinds of problems that are being solved with the language. When is the last time you wrote a program in PHP that actually required comments? The vast majority of PHP is used for a specific type of application that doesn't require comments to understand. C/C++ on the other hand, is often used where finer control of the hardware is required, and anybody who has had to interact with hardware through code knows that it can be miserable experience sometimes. It also helps to looks at the experience of the programmers who tend to use a particular programming language. All programmers start out thinking they are hot shots. After five or more years of experience they turn into real hot shots, and actually comment their code.

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perl will also blend, so you can make the pie to get the pie. Watch out for the stains on the Überkeyboard, though.

Re:Perfect?

[Thing 1]

I really dislike useless comments.

And yet you posted that.

Re:Perfect?

[pclminion]

If you find a comment saying A, and a piece of code that does B, it could be that the implementation of B has a bug, or it could be that the code is supposed to do B and the comment is what's wrong. Unless you really understand a lot, you can't really assume one or the other.

This is why code should be worked out so that it mostly speaks for itself with little need for comment. It's not that comments are bad, it's that, because they have no bearing on the code generated by the compiler, they can easily become wrong without anybody noticing. I'm not saying not to comment here, just that comments aren't an automatic path to saving your ass.

Re:Perfect?

[slashqwerty]

Explicit is better than implicit.

Excellent. When is Python going to add start and stop delimiters for blocks of code?

Re:Perfect?

[kmoser]

One programmer's "obvious" is another programmer's "WTF?"

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was mad back then, quite, quite mad....

Intercal, now that would have been mad, quite, quite mad.

Aye, true, though maybe that would have counted as 'quite insane, quite bloody insane'.

I *did* start doing the comment code in APL, thinking 'ah, that'll learn em', but to my shock/horror/relief I found that I really couldn't do it..most of *that* language had been purged from my tiny puny human brain through a decade of intensive therapy (i.e. not required to use or look at it, hopefully, never having to again. ever.).

I forgot to add in my original comment (was in a hurry to catch a bus) that, apropos the subject of the article, or, at least the spirit of the article, not the niggly little details wrt being a committed git, the variable and function names in the C code were fairly scatalogical.
At the time, having a colleague from Hong Kong whose 'hobby' was collecting and collating profanities and slang in as many languages as possible was most useful and helped obscure the more 'pointed' of the scatalogical variable and function names (i.e. jibes at the manager). This was all pre internet 'explosion' days, I know there's websites devoted to stuff like this now, I always wondered what he did with his data, he had several box folders worth of some of the most interesting vulgarity and slang from all over this dirtball...

Re:Perfect?

[evil_aar0n]

It's hardly manly if you don't stick your balls in the vice and give the handle an extra turn or three. Quit being such a pussy... /sarcasm

Re:Perfect?

[cheekyjohnson]

Well, I mean extremely obvious things. For instance, you probably don't need to tell what a function called "addition" does. Really, you should be using function and variable names that describe what is going on. If that's not possible, then resort to comments.

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

please mod parent +1 Funny

Re:Perfect?

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

"Anyone who writes in PHP probably is using it because it's the easiest option.."

And this is wrong why?

Re:Perfect?

[somersault]

That's not the point. The point is that those who set the bar so low probably aren't interested in learning how to code well. The guys who redesigned our website have for some reason put their downloaded email script in 4 different places rather than just have it in one place and change the URL..

Re:Perfect?

[somersault]

It's not that it's "wrong", it just says a lot about the "programmer", and would make me want to ask furthermore questions before hiring. I'd rather a developer knew how their cut'n'pasted code was working, and how to fix it if it's buggy.

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... yeah. Good code is always self-documenting, regardless of the language. Real Comments (tm) explain the intent behind the code, and how it works.

And that example of yours is just horrific on so many levels.

Re:Perfect?

[MiggyMan]

The real truth of it, we all know us perl guys prefer sarcasm to outright profanity in our comments :D

Re:Perfect?

[Barryke]

There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.

I saw what you did there. And it is the way to do that.

Re:Perfect?

[MareLooke]

Legions of Visual Basic coders disagree... Thus your point is proven valid...

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and using indentation to implicitly indicate code blocks... and requiring the use of null statements to implicitly imply that this is an empty function.

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

wiping your ass with unix.''=~('(?{'.('/_)@){'^'_-@.][').'"'.('___[^'^'-*="|').',$/})').

You have a lot of warts on your ass.

Lameness filter is lame. Lame is lameness filter.

Re:Perfect?

[Okonomiyaki]

So, the "guys" who "redesigned" your "website" chose PHP because it made it easier for them to ignore principles like DRY. I follow your tortured logic so far. But what I don't get is, why would you prefer to have them choose a language that made it more difficult for them to do what they so clearly want to do which is write shitty code that they know they don't have to maintain because they know it's your problem once they've fulfilled the requirements of their contract. Aren't you just being mean?

Re:Perfect?

[somersault]

If they had to learn to write full scripts then they'd at least have to put more effort into understanding how it all works, rather than just copying and pasting stuff they find in tutorials. There's nothing wrong with looking at tutorials and examples of course, but things like them having multiple copies of the exact same script in different directories is an indicator that they have no idea how it all really works..

You do get the same problem with other languages too, people just copy and pasting and hoping for the best, asking people for the direct solutions on messageboards etc.. but I'm saying that IMO there are far more people doing that with inline stuff like PHP and JavaScript than other languages.

Re:Perfect?

[dunkelfalke]

"I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years"

Re:Perfect?

[Okonomiyaki]

Inline stuff? Wait, you don't like JavaScript either? So, next time I'm thinking of using JavaScript in a project, what language would you recommend that I use instead?

Re:Perfect?

[somersault]

JavaScript is okay, and very useful since it's the only option for cross-platform active scripting anyway. But for the back end stuff, there's a lot more choice than just PHP.

Again, I'm not saying that there aren't good PHP developers, I'm just saying that you are much more likely to find bad ones than good ones. I expect there are a lot of people out there for whom PHP is their first and only programming language, and it really wouldn't inspire me to hear that.

Re:Perfect?

[Carewolf]

When you have a method called:
putTextPaneFromSearchBoxInMainNSView(TextPane * textPane, NSView * primaryView)

You have something that takes forever to parse and read.

Compared to C++ style:
primaryView.put(SearchBox->textPane)

More precise, less duplication, faster to read.

Re:Perfect?

[CaptSlaq]

Keep your hands off of my @{$_[$i]{$key}}

:)

Re:Perfect?

[TheSpoom]

My thinking exactly. Anyone who writes in PHP probably is using it because it's the easiest option..

Not this shit again. I work on a gigantic, mostly object-oriented HR application daily. It handles thousands of employees using our custom-built punchclock, as well as ambulance dispatch services, scheduling, internal mail, payroll calculation (we leave the actual payroll processing to another app), and a million other mission-critical business functions. We separate business logic and design using Smarty templates, and try to make it a point not to duplicate any code. Copy and pasted code generally doesn't show up because the functions the app handles are too complicated for most "tutorial" sites to work with. I comment my code extensively, and use phpDoc (yes, that's a thing, gasp) comments on classes and functions. Everything is in a Subversion repository with an automatically updated test app installation (though I tend to test locally).

And it's all PHP.

Yes, PHP is easy to pick up, but at this level of coding we consider all the same issues that high-level developers using other languages do (and I have coded in quite a few others, including Java, C, C++, Python...). And it works. Very well.

In any case, as my sibling comments have pointed out, the article is talking about Git commits, not comments, so your whole point is invalidated to begin with.

If you're going to badmouth PHP, pick something specific, and not "teh devs r stoopid lol".

Re:Perfect?

[somersault]

"Anyone" was going too far. I should have said "most people".

Re:Perfect?

[Lord Ender]

That string of characters is actually an executable perl program. No joke.

Re:Perfect?

[maxwell demon]

[OK, all the text added at the end didn't help to please the lameness filter; maybe it considers only a certain number of lines. Well, let's add junk to the beginning instead. That's of course even less nice to the reader, but if the alternative is to not get this post posted at all ...]

Beautiful is better than ugly.

I think nobody argues that -- assuming all else being equal, of course (beautiful but incomprehensible is certainly worse than ugly but understandable).

Explicit is better than implicit.

Sometimes, but often not. That's why e.g. the vast majority of programming languages uses the same operator for adding integers and for adding floats. Now for division, it does make sense to distinguish both. Also note that all(!) abstraction is about making some things implicit. This is even true for such simple things like a loop, where the explicit form would use an if controlling a goto.
And isn't one of the much advertised advantages of languages like python over languages like C that memory management is implicit?

Simple is better than complex.

Only as long as you don't oversimplify.

Complex is better than complicated.

I'm not sure what exactly is meant here.

Flat is better than nested.

BASIC rules!

Sparse is better than dense.

Wrong. You can be too dense, and you can be too sparse. Both are equally bad.

Readability counts.

Of course. Nobody ever seriously argued that, I think.

Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.

Depends on what is meant by that. If you need to break the rules for special cases, the rules are not general enough. However, when the language evolves, it may be the better solution to add a special case, than to replace the rules by better ones, breaking all the code depending on the old rules. Of course the worst decision would be to not support something useful purely on the reason that the current rules don't allow it.

Although practicality beats purity.

Again, depends.

Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.

In an ideal world, yes. In the real world, one has also to take into account how expensive it is to detect the error.

In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.

Guessing is bad. However, simple and clear rules for ambiguity resolution can be an advantage. Especially if the ambiguity exist only formally (i.e. to a human it's "obvious" what should happen).

There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.

Disagree. This means forcing a certain style on the programmer. It should be the used style which makes the decision obvious, not the language (of course, there are very simple things where this rule obviously should hold; e.g. the obvious way to add x and y is to write x+y).

Now is better than never.

Depends. If someone wanted to kill me, I'd rather chose never than now. :-)

Although never is often better than *right* now.

No argument here.

If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.

Not necessarily. If the hard to explain implementation is the only way to acomplish the task, it's a good idea to use it.
Also: Explain to whom? I can imagine an implementation of a quantum computer simulator would be hard to explain to the average programmer, but relatively easy to explain to a quantum ph

Re:Perfect?

[maxwell demon]

It's not that it's "wrong", it just says a lot about the "programmer", and would make me want to ask furthermore questions before hiring. I'd rather a developer knew how their cut'n'pasted code was working, and how to fix it if it's buggy.

Oh, that's easy. The cut and pasted code works well, at least in the two unrealistic cases he tested. Otherwise he wouldn't have used it. And if it is buggy, just find some better code to cut and paste from.

SCNR :-)

Re:Perfect?

[SatanicPuppy]

Shrug. I use php because I don't do a lot of web development, and what I do isn't high security. I used to do it all in Java, but it took 10 times as long to deploy simple services, they needed more infrastructure, and they were harder for other people to maintain. Mind you, those poor idiots who use php for anything OTHER than web code...I don't have anything good to say about them. But for quick database driven webapps, it shines.

Ignoring a decent tool because it's easy to use is foolish.

Re:Perfect?

[somersault]

I ignored it after doing an "Ask Slashdot" asking about PHP vs Perl for secure web development. I was a bit shortsighted only considering Perl as the other option, but I've been very happy using it. Ruby or Python would probably have been better choices, but I didn't consider either quite so likely to be installed as standard on all Linux boxes.. though Python probably is.

Re:Perfect?

[maxwell demon]

That means that PHP users have [...] a lower swear frequency

So PHP users only swear low-pitched? ;-)

Re:Perfect?

[Ikkyu]

I think you are misinterpreting the meaning, look at http://artifex.org/~hblanks/talks/2011/pep20_by_example.html for concrete examples for each item

Re:Perfect?

[Anynonymouse]

What does it do? I'm not familiar with Perl and I can't get it to evaluate.

Re:Perfect?

[omfgnosis]

Not to defend the horrifically long method name from the parent, but yours does omit something: the method name itself describes its argument. This is "redundant" in use, but only after the fact. For whatever it's worth, primaryView.put(ResultsBox->icon), where primaryView is only meant to put SearchBox->textPane, is not an obvious error.

Re:Perfect?

[Carnildo]

It says things too vile to repeat.

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does it do?

evals to "ruby" ;-)

(I tried to post the original perl code, but apparently "Filter error: Your comment looks too much like ascii art.")

Re:Perfect?

[SatanicPuppy]

It's funny: I'm normally a Perl guy, but I use Php for web stuff. I keep trying to do web stuff with Python, but it takes longer than I think it should...Probably just need more practice using it that way.

Re:Perfect?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like wiping your ass with unix.''=~('(?{'.('/_)@){'^'_-@.][').'"'.('___[^'^'-*="|').',$/})').

You're a sick, sick person. :P

(Note to mods: this isn't flamebait as much as an acknowledgement of the fact that the above really IS valid Perl.)

Re:Perfect?

[tomhudson]

Yes, and using indentation to implicitly indicate code blocks... and requiring the use of null statements to implicitly imply that this is an empty function.

Explicit: clearly developed or formulated.
Implicit: implied, rather than expressly stated.

It's explained (explicit) in the documentation that indentation is significant.

Indentation explicitly indicates code blocks. There's nothing "implicit" about it. It's part of the language definition, same as keywords, etc. but if it bothers you that much, turn on "show tabs" in your editor of choice, to make it more evident / explicit.

A lot of people don't like the idea of whitespace being significant, because that's not what they're used to. It takes a bit of getting used to, but when you indent code, you are explicitly saying it is at a specific nesting level (as opposed to needing to bracify a series of expressions, or using the implicit nesting of single-line statements in, say, c or c++)

Javascript profanity breakdown.

[Heytunk]

Now do profanity + browser names for javascript.

Re:Javascript profanity breakdown.

[dmomo]

I'd throw in CSS too in that case. I'm sure the biggest find would be "fuck" + "IE6"

C++ Templates

[Bloodwine77]

C++ Templates will turn the most pious programmer into a curse-slinging, chain-smoking alcoholic.

Re:C++ Templates

[Anonymous Coward]

C++ Templates will turn the most pious programmer into a curse-slinging, chain-smoking alcoholic.

I liked the templates - when they're used properly.

When some numb-nut who first learns about them and decides that they need to create a template for everything is when I hit the bottle.

Come on! Writing a template class for something that will be used for integers and no other data type for all eternity?!?!?

Or the reimplementation of STL functionality because "mine is better!" ... OOooooooooooooo!

Re:C++ Templates

[Bill Dog]

Then you're doing it wrong -- at the point you can no longer grok what's going on, you've used too much of the feature (for your current level of ability to work with it).

And this holds for the language itself, which is what is usually leveled against. Until you understand what the compiler is doing behind the scenes, don't use it. It doesn't just translate your high-level code, it also can generate a lot of code for you. You have to know what your tools do. Even if the basic way you use them look a lot like how you use other, simpler tools.

Re:C++ Templates

[Anonymous Coward]

I think templates and the STL are poorly understood. I used to be ambivalent towards templates and hated the STL with a passion. Then I took a class on generic programming in grad school and did a complete 180. Prior to the class I understood simple template usage, but I really didn't get the STL. Once some of the design concepts underpinning the STL were explained, the whole thing suddenly made sense. Furthermore, once they made sense, I could use them to write fast, compact code quickly. That class had was one of the most influential that I have ever taken.

Re:C++ Templates

[sqldr]

.../me looks at lit fag.... looks at visual studio... looks at glass of wine... looks back at visual studio...

um...

Re:C++ Templates

[VortexCortex]

Then you're doing it wrong -- at the point you can no longer grok what's going on, you've used too much of the feature (for your current level of ability to work with it).

Well, then, I suggest any C++ newbie stay away from the STL, (esp. <iostream> and <string>).

/cryoscript/src/core-test.cpp: In function ‘int main(int, char**)’:
/cryoscript/src/core-test.cpp:116: error: no match for ‘operator<<’ in ‘std::operator<< [with _Traits = std::char_traits<char>](((std::basic_ostream<char, std::char_traits<char> >&)(& std::cout)), ((const char*)"Mem: ")) << * mm’
/usr/include/c++/4.4/ostream:108: note: candidates are: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& (*)(std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>&)) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/include/c++/4.4/ostream:117: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::basic_ios<_CharT, _Traits>& (*)(std::basic_ios<_CharT, _Traits>&)) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/include/c++/4.4/ostream:127: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(std::ios_base& (*)(std::ios_base&)) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/include/c++/4.4/ostream:165: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/include/c++/4.4/ostream:169: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long unsigned int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/include/c++/4.4/ostream:173: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(bool) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/include/c++/4.4/bits/ostream.tcc:91: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(short int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/include/c++/4.4/ostream:180: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(short unsigned int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/include/c++/4.4/bits/ostream.tcc:105: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/include/c++/4.4/ostream:191: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(unsigned int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/include/c++/4.4/ostream:200: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long long int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/include/c++/4.4/ostream:204: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(long long unsigned int) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/include/c++/4.4/ostream:209: note: std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>& std::basic_ostream<_CharT, _Traits>::operator<<(double) [with _CharT = char, _Traits = std::char_traits<char>]
/usr/inc

Re:C++ Templates

[maxwell demon]

C++ Templates will turn the most pious programmer into a curse-slinging, chain-smoking alcoholic.

Only those who don't understand them.
Learn a functional programming language, and you'll understand much more about C++ template programming.

Re:C++ Templates

[Bill Dog]

If I would have followed your advice, I'd have never become proficient in C++

You must've become proficient in C++ thru a lot of trial and error then.

There's nothing wrong with, while a newb, falling back to printf when cout is giving some perplexment. Then make a plan to read up on traits.

It also helps not to panic. I read that as "error: no match for 'operator<<' in blah blah blah". Where the "blah blah blah" appears to be mostly a listing of all overloads and the types that it does compile with.

Re:C++ Templates

[Anonymous Coward]

pardon me, but if you have to understand what the compiler is doing "behind the scenes", then it's not providing a useful abstraction.

Re:C++ Templates

[Bill Dog]

I meant only needing to understand the behind-the-scenes stuff that are actually features of the language. (And where the expression of Standard Library usage errors in terms of the compiler's library's implementation of it is obviously not a feature of the language.)

Re:C++ Templates

[lordholm]

Use clang (http://clang.llvm.org/) instead, it actually gives you useful error messages. Plus, it tries to recover form common errors (misspellings, missing semi colons and so on), meaning that you will not get a cascade of errors and warnings from code after the initial error. This in turn means that you can fix more than one error / warning reported by the compiler, before you rebuild.

Re:C++ Templates

[marcosdumay]

"You must've become proficient in C++ thru a lot of trial and error then."

Is there any other way?

Re:C++ Templates

[Anonymous Coward]

When template meta-programming is "discovered accidentally" its fairly safe to say that few to none of the *language designers* understood templates.

Re:C++ Templates

[jgrahn]

C++ Templates will turn the most pious programmer into a curse-slinging, chain-smoking alcoholic.

Only those who don't understand them. Learn a functional programming language, and you'll understand much more about C++ template programming.

For normal everyday use of templates, you don't even need that.

And in contrast, what makes *me* curse and drink is what people use in C, in the absence of templates: What's this? Oh, yet another buggy linked list implementation. And this? An oddly mutated implementation of a balanced search tree. And this? The same tree, but for some other datatype. This void pointer? Aaargh ...

PHP programmers

[ewe2]

are under close observation and medication, any profanity is silently ignored.

Re:PHP programmers

[MightyMartian]

Maybe it's time someone modified the preprocessor to recognize the #if-fucked directive.

Re:PHP programmers

[TheRaven64]

PHP programmers have such a low number of profanities in comments because they have yet to learn to comment their code.

Re:PHP programmers

[LoudNoiseElitist]

You should try actually reading the article before you start talking down to PHP programmers. Most of them probably know the difference between comments and commit messages. Apparently, you do not.

Re:PHP programmers

[CynicTheHedgehog]

It's actually commit logs ... but then again I've yet to meet a PHP dev that actually uses a VCS ;)

Re:PHP programmers

[TheSpoom]

... but then again I've yet to meet a PHP dev that actually uses a VCS ;)

*waves*

Also a bar chart!

[Abstrackt]

There's also a bar chart because somebody couldn't interpret the pie chart....

Re:Also a bar chart!

[Dynedain]

From an infographics standpoint, bar and pie charts convey different meanings. Pie charts are useful for quickly visually approximating how much of the whole a particular part is (percentage). Bar charts, however, are very good at quickly conveying comparative sizes between the parts.

Sure, if you read into the chart enough you can deduce the same information from both, but at a quick glance you can interprit different types of correlative information from the two different chart styles. In this particular example, I think the bar graph is far more useful as the percentage of the total is meaningless. What's important is the comparison between languages, not the individual comparison to the collective data set.

Re:Also a bar chart!

[Ksevio]

A pie graph is somewhat inappropriate since the units aren't really related. C++ may have 24% of the swears, but it's more interesting the swears for the language rather than the language for the swears.

Without information on how many words were in each language, the data is pretty useless anyways. There might be only 5 messages in PHP all containing swears and 500,000 in C++ with only 48 swears.

Re:Also a bar chart!

[Rary]

There might be only 5 messages in PHP all containing swears and 500,000 in C++ with only 48 swears.

According to TFA: "Note that I ripped an equal amount of commit messages per language so the results aren't based on how many projects there are per language."

Re:Also a bar chart!

[Abstrackt]

True, but you are still clearly capable of interpreting a pie chart. The exact words used by the person who caused a bar chart were "Pie chart? I have no idea how to interpret this..." leading me to believe they probably won't do much better with a bar chart. ;)

Re:Also a bar chart!

[Anonymous Coward]

From a non-marketdroid-faggot standpoint, anyone who thinks "infographics" is a word needs to be killed slowly and painfully.

Re:Also a bar chart!

[magus_melchior]

Or because the blog writer had to respond to a troll...

Explanation?

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be better if I could find out at all what a commit message is.

Re:Explanation?

[Nadaka]

Congratulations on being the wrong kind of nerd. A commit message is a message attached to a commit in a version control repository. The commit message is basically your explanation of what you changed and why. This is most often used in software development, but is applicable for almost any cooperative authoring environment.

Isn't profanity a part of C++?

[ibsteve2u]

Like isn't polymorphism a reference to the ability to fuck anything up - with class?

Re:Isn't profanity a part of C++?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like isn't polymorphism a reference to the ability to fuck anything up - with class?

I'm totally going to use this quote on the next job interview I get asked about polymorphism.

Re:Isn't profanity a part of C++?

[orangesquid]

As some other commenters have noted, C++ and its plethora of features give something comparable to a write-only language like COBOL (remember that debugging is part of reading the code).
I wouldn't retrofit things like polymorphism onto C, if I were to start over (something the guys at digital mars probably agree with). IMHO, you end up with kludginess without the brevity (sometimes called "elegance", but that's a bit debatable) of perl. Hey, we could be doing worse---at least it's not PL/I! *g*

I'm just surprised nobody has parroted the oft-quoted "obscenity is the crutch of inarticulate motherfuckers" yet ;)
captcha: innuendo

Re:Isn't profanity a part of C++?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, that's polygamy. I don't think it's an official extension to the language.

I'd be curious...

[Quantus347]

To see the results with a few choice words added to the Carlin's Seven. Offhand "Kill", "Hate", and "Die" would probably show themselves quite a lot.

Re:I'd be curious...

[Anonymous Coward]

I see what you did there. die being a native widely used function in PHP. Very sneaky sir.

Re:I'd be curious...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please avoid widely using die or exit in your code.

Re:I'd be curious...

[BillX]

Not to mention my personal favorites: HACK HACK HACK / WTF / FIXME

To me these are dirtier words in code than any of Carlin's, since they mean the surrounding code is probably broken!

NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[iYk6]

Actually, contrary to the summary, this article has nothing to do with code comments, and so the amount of comments per code has no effect on the results. The profanity measured in the article is from git commit messages.

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[LWATCDR]

I am sure that the creator of the Ruby is not happy about the level of profanity.

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, contrary to the summary, this article has nothing to do with code comments, and so the amount of comments per code has no effect on the results. The profanity measured in the article is from git commit messages.

The original comment still stands - most PHP "programmers" I know couldn't tell the difference between source control and birth control.

If pressed, they'd probably decide that "source control" meant making sure you FTP the files to the right server (and therefore keep control of your source).

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[pizzach]

It's okay. He is Japanese and in many ways the Japanese don't have swear words...at least not in the same way as English has them. Of course, I am making comments about another person who I do not know so take this with a grain of salt ;-p

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[angus77]

Japanese has just as many ways to express disgust and frustration as any other language. It's just that those words don't have the heavy taboos associated with them which would make them "swear words" (and get bleeped).

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[amicusNYCL]

The original comment still stands - most PHP "programmers" I know couldn't tell the difference between source control and birth control.

What kind of stupid argument is that? Sure, a lot of people who claim to write PHP code don't know what source control is. But, again, these are commit messages. What percentage of people writing commit messages do you think know what source control is?

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[digitig]

Actually, contrary to the summary, this article has nothing to do with code comments, and so the amount of comments per code has no effect on the results. The profanity measured in the article is from git commit messages.

The irony of that is probably only noted by British readers ("git" is a mild profanity in British English).

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[pizzach]

Which was why I added :-p to the end of my post :-p But thank you for the extra detail.

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[binary paladin]

He's a Mormon too, so yeah.

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of swear words in Japanese you just have to live in Japan long enough to come in contact with them. When I was new here I was told by a Japanese person there are no swear words in Japanese, but 8 years later I now know them all!

For example, one of the worst things you could call someone is "chin kasu yaro", which literally describes a person as being the smeg from under the foreskin of a penis. In English its like calling someone a "fucken cunt".

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[element-o.p.]

Ummm...maybe.

I lived in Japan for a while as a kid, so while I won't pretend to even be marginally fluent in the language, I got the impression while living there that Japanese had something at least somewhat similar to American swear words. For example, I once was sitting in a restaurant with a Japanese friend of my family's. In the restaurant was a parrot (myna bird? something like that, anyway) to which restaurant patrons had taught some choice phrases and/or words. Every time the bird was speak, the Japanese people in the restaurant would laugh. Not wanting to miss out on what was obviously a very funny joke, I asked the family friend what the bird was saying, but he declined to tell me, saying something to the effect of "It is not polite," or "it is not appropriate." I was something like six or eight at the time, so take the anecdote for however much or however little it's worth <shrug>

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[sjames]

It's not a matter of being offended, just that his goal with Ruby is for programming to be fun and not stressful.

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[J. T. MacLeod]

Japanese absolutely has swear words you won't hear on TV. They don't have to include them to be bleeped out or worked around cleverly because of the other ways of expressing disgust and frustration that you mentioned... but they definitely have them.

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[iandog]

My experience is that PHP folks leave the commit messages blank. It's a lovely practice really as it makes source control essentially worthless.

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[xero314]

What percentage of people writing commit messages do you think know what source control is?

Sadly, far less than logic would dictate.

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[LWATCDR]

Probably but I was more making a joke about him being LDS which culturally try to avoid profanity. But I would guess you are right. No one wants to think about someone using profanity about their work.

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not British but I'm glad someone finally pointed that out. Always snickered when I read "github".

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[Thing 1]

Fucking grammar nazi inciter. Oh, and :)

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[HornWumpus]

(A cocktail party in Dulwich. Quiet party-type music. Constant chatter.)

Host (Graham Chapman): Ah, John. Allow me to introduce my next-door neighbour. John Stokes, this is A Snivelling Little Rat-Faced Git. Ah!

Mr Git (Terry Jones): Hello, I noticed a slight look of anxiety cross your face for a moment just then, but you needn't worry - I'm used to it. That's the trouble of having a surname like Git.

John (Michael Palin): Oh ... yes, yes.

Mr Git: We did think once of having it changed by deed-poll, you know - to Watson or something like that. But A Snivelling Little Rat-Faced Watson's just as bad eh?

John: Yes, yes, I suppose so, yes.

(Mrs Git approaches.)

Mr Git: Oh, that's my wife. Darling! Come and meet Mr... what was it?

John: Stokes. John Stokes.

Mr Git: Oh yes. John Stokes, this is my wife, Dreary Fat Boring Old.

John: Oh, er, how do you do.

Mrs Git (John Cleese): How do you do.

(Mrs Stokes appears.)

Mrs Stokes (Carol Cleveland): Darling, there you are!

John: Yes, yes, here I am, yes.

Mr Git: Oh, is this your wife?

John: Yes, yes, yes, this is the wife. Yes. Um darling, these, these are the Gits.

Mrs Stokes: (slightly shocked) What?

John: The Gits.

Mr Git: Oh, heaven's sakes we are being formal. Does it have to be surnames?

John: Oh, no, no. Not at all. No. Um, no, this... this... this is my wife Norah, er, Norah Jane, Norah Jane Stokes. This is A Snivelling Little Rat-Faced Git. And this is his wife Dreary Fat Boring Old Git.

Mr Git: I was just telling your husband what an awful bore it is having a surname like Git.

Mrs Stokes: (understanding at last) Oh. Oh well, it's not that bad.

Mr Git: Oh, you've no idea how the kids get taunted. Why, only last week Dirty Lying Little Two-Faced came running home from school, sobbing his eyes out, and our youngest, Ghastly Spotty Horrible Vicious Little is just at the age when taunts like 'she's a git' really hurt. Yes.

(Mrs Git gobs colourfully into her handbag.)

John: Do... do you live round here?

Mr Git: Yes, we live up the road, number 49 - you can't miss it. We've just had the outside painted with warm pus.

John: (with increasing embarrassment) Oh.

Mr Git: Yes. It's very nice actually. It goes nicely with the vomit and catarrh we've got smeared all over the front door.

Mrs Stokes: I think we ought to be going. We have two children to collect.

Mr Git: Oh, well, bring them round for tea tomorrow.

Mrs Stokes: Well...

Mr Git: It's Ghastly Spotty Cross-Eyed's birthday and she's having a disembowelling party for a few friends. The Nauseas will be there, and Doug and Janice Mucus, and the Rectums from Swanage.

Voice Over: (and caption) 'And Now a Nice Version of That Same Sketch' (Cut to exactly the same set-up as before.)

Host: John! Allow me to introduce our next-door neighhour. John, this is Mr Watson.

Watson: Hello. I noticed a slight look of anxiety cross your face just then but you needn't worry.

(Cut to nun.)

Nun: I preferred the dirty version.

(She is knocked out by the boxer. Cut to Women's Institute applause film.)

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[mikael_j]

Well, I don't really code in PHP much but I have seen some interesting abuses of source control.

It is by no means limited to PHP developers, especially in a corporate environment. It's lovely when you are told to make daily commits at the end of every day so there's a fuckload of "Daily commit, no changes" comments. Or the ever classic "syncing with production" which means someone made changes to the production code and six months down the line they realized they forgot to commit so they just dump a wildly different codebase into the repository.

Or the countless "bugs fixed" messages that have changes to a dozen different files, have fun figuring out which bugs were fixed in that one...

The worst part is that when that's what the commit logs look like you tend to just give up yourself, no point in even trying when your useful commit comments drown in useless comments (including your own "daily commit, nothing new or changed").

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[ardle]

Thanks for pointing this out.
In fact, it was the publisher who provided the misleading title and description instead of quoting or paraphrasing the original submission (or, god forbid, the original article, since that submission was a bit terse). At least the original submission was provided as "You may also like to read" at the top of this page, enabling me to discover the above...

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[Barryke]

Bleep "censor" is considered typical USA in most of the rest of the world.
Japan is no exception. Please do not assume the rest of the world (or the whole English-vocal part) is this prudish.

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[Vectormatic]

Dutch reader here, but i watch enough bbc/british shows to know the word, and it always struck me as a stupid name for the system. Whenever i hear someone talk about git i visualise an idiotic (twat-faced if you will) gnome sitting in a server-room trying to keep multiple versions of text organized...

Same goes for GIMP by the way.. it might be a fine image manipulation tool, but any software which makes you think of rubber full body suits and chains is gonna be difficult to market

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[AK Marc]

My understanding (which is often wrong) is that gathered inappropriate words make a swear, but that there aren't words themselves which are swearing words. "Penis breath" would be rude and inappropriate, but isn't a swear word. Penis is an organ which about 50% of the population possess and comes up in some circles quite commonly, like urologists discussing things with patients. But the combination, along with context, makes the comment itself inappropriate and offensive.

Thus there is no list of 7 words where the words themselves, regardless of context, would be considered profane. But that doesn't mean they can't say combinations of words which would result in a similar level of profanity.

Re:NOT CODE COMMENTS!!

[angus77]

Wanna mention a few? I can think of one word ("manko") I've never heard on TV here. I hear just about every foreigner claiming that "kuso" is a swear word (because it gets translated as "shit"), despite the fact that parents will use the word in front of their kids and even BaikinMan yells "KUSO!" when he's beaten by AnpanMan.

So what's the Japanese version of Carlin's list that you imply exists?

Margin of error

[nzap]

C++ came out on top

Actually, JavaScript, C++, and Ruby came out on top. The difference between them is virtually indistinguishable (error bars anyone?).

Re:Margin of error

[maliamnon]

A good estimate of the margin of error on binned data is the sqrt of the number of points in the bin. Should give a pretty good estimate without digging too far into the data, with this estimate we find the top 3 fall within 1 standard deviation. ((sqrt(45)~~6.5))

PHP For The Fucking Win

[Anonymous Coward]

As a goddamn PHP programmer, I am fucking glad that those cocksuckers don't put a lot of profane shit in the fucking comments. Unlike those asshole C++ programmer bastards. Goddamn cunts.

Re:PHP For The Fucking Win

[Anne_Nonymous]

I'm pretty sure that's the punchline to a Little Johnny joke.

Re:PHP For The Fucking Win

[Nimey]

Fuck! The fucking fucker's fucking fucked!

Re:PHP For The Fucking Win

[Anonymous Coward]

5 out of 6 Points! :-)

commit message, not code comment

[fermion]

These are commit comments, which I can hardly see worth the effort to curse. Maybe C++ and Ruby developers are more rule based than others so they are more dedicated to making entertaining commit messages?

Re:commit message, not code comment

[vlm]

These are commit comments, which I can hardly see worth the effort to curse. Maybe C++ and Ruby developers are more rule based than others so they are more dedicated to making entertaining commit messages?

Ruby mostly works by POLA principle of least astonishment so there's little reason to be shocked and swear. C++ seems to be the opposite in how it draws moths to the flame of weird language features (Overload the + operator into actually subtracting, that type of thing). There is no obfuscated C++ code competition because any large C++ project is inherently obfuscated already, so wheres the sport in that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment

Re:commit message, not code comment

[maxwell demon]

C++ seems to be the opposite in how it draws moths to the flame of weird language features (Overload the + operator into actually subtracting, that type of thing).

Yes, you can overload the + operator to subtract on your own type. Just as you can define the function "add" to subtract in about every language I know (except classic BASIC, which didn't have named functions at all). If you find a "+" that subtracts, it's not a language problem, it's a programmer problem.

Re:commit message, not code comment

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know that anyone would overload '+' to subtract unless it made really good sense or was really funny. OTOH, I don't see why, if I as a intelligent, professional, software developer should not be allowed to overload '+' in any way I choose. I appreciate safeguards and tools that may be available for my use, but really a lot of the forced protocol in modern languages looks like security theater, like making the pilot of plane go through the TSA. If a programmer wants to name a function asdf or combine data with policy, there is really nothing a language can do to prevent it.

Re:commit message, not code comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Ruby mostly works by POLA principle of least astonishment so there's little reason to be shocked and swear. C++ seems to be the opposite in how it draws moths to the flame of weird language features (Overload the + operator into actually subtracting, that type of thing).

You do realise that you can do literally the exact same thing in Ruby, right?

Re:commit message, not code comment

[Anonymous Coward]

C++ seems to be the opposite in how it draws moths to the flame of weird language features (Overload the + operator into actually subtracting, that type of thing)

That sounds like most problems with the C++ programming language are born between the chair and the monitor..

Re:commit message, not code comment

[osu-neko]

Very true. I used to comment to students that operator overloading should only be used when it naturally makes some sort of sense. For example, making the "+" operator add your class of complex numbers. You should never do anything with operator overloading where it isn't immediately obvious what it means -- the operator's normal meaning should make sense for the types involved, and should mean essentially the same thing.

Of course, then you get to the standard C++ library and have to explain why the language standard itself violates this very principle. (If you think otherwise, explain how bitshifting a file handle should cause output?)

Since the language standard itself encourages users to ignore any sane rules for proper operator overloading, it should hardly be surprising that this "programmer problem" is widespread.

Re:commit message, not code comment

[jgrahn]

Of course, then you get to the standard C++ library and have to explain why the language standard itself violates this very principle. (If you think otherwise, explain how bitshifting a file handle should cause output?)

Since the language standard itself encourages users to ignore any sane rules for proper operator overloading, it should hardly be surprising that this "programmer problem" is widespread.

First explain how C can define "x is less than is less than 2" to mean "multiply x by four".

No really, your argument is silly, and I'm happy I've never been one of your students. The left bitshift in C++ today has two different meanings: bitshift and stream output (or perhaps more generally "serialize these various things into the container" -- I wouldn't have a problem with code which overloaded it in such a way). This is a problem for approximately noone.

"Fixed shit yo"?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a tard.

Re:"Fixed shit yo"?

[e9th]

I think it's pretty cool that somebody gave Snoop Dogg commit access.

Re:"Fixed shit yo"?

[Vectormatic]

well they tried, but the system didnt accept the username "Snoop d o double gizzle" and he refuses to use underscores...

The only rapper i can think of responsible for that comment is eminem...

Visual Basic?

[PPH]

' Mom! Why doesn't this code work? Can I have a cookie and fix it later?

Re:Visual Basic?

[sqldr]

10 years later.. why DOES this code work? and what the hell was in those cookies?

Re:Visual Basic?

[PPH]

I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.

You need more cookies.

Wholesome AND perfect.

[quixote9]

PHP users are both. Obviously.

different strokes for different folks

[larry bagina]

If I have an expletive in c/c++ code, it's probably because it's a hard fucking problem. If I have an expletive in PHP, it's because PHP sucks shit straight from a donkey asshole. In other words, directed at the problem or directed at the fucking toy language.

Is this more about the languages then the coders?

[Required Snark]

This could be a crude (pun intended) reflection of how difficult the languages are to use.

It's how you use it

[Waccoon]

Maybe the PHP people just can't decide if the swears should be nouns or verbs.

Independent projects?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could there be a discrepancy between those languages that are used more often to create personal projects rather than for work? I can see cursing taking place when in an informal setting. Like that of a personal project with a friend or something. So the languages more often used for those kind of projects would have more cursing yeah? Plus all the documentation for Ruby is in moon runes so there's bound to be some cursing when you don't understand what you just did.

Re:Independent projects?

[Vectormatic]

insightfull right here!

I am not the kind of guy to swear in code (i prefer my code neat, my cursing is reserved for anyone within earshot), but if i were, i'd at least try to keep it to a minimum when working on work code, and i certainly wouldnt check any profane shit into source control. Hobby code that no-one else sees, pah who cares, just as long as you yourself dont start vomitting from reading it, it doesnt matter

Re:Is this more about the languages then the coder

[Dorkmaster Flek]

First thing I thought of, to be honest. As a Python programmer, I can say it makes me pretty happy as a language.

I remember having to do that once

[Cthefuture]

When I was in high school many moons ago I wanted to get into a programming class but my grades weren't good enough so I had to submit some programming work to the teacher. I gave her the source code for a BBS I had written. I remember having to go through the entire source base looking for profanity I had used in variable names, comments, etc. Being the teenager that I was I would sometimes just use them for no reason.

I remember laughing to myself when I handed her that code. It must have been over 200 pages of printed source and I could tell she probably couldn't even write a sort function. This was back in the 80's when the educational system had almost no computer classes, let alone programming.

It was at that time I realized that sometimes other people look at your code and it can reflect on you. I have never used profanity in source ever again. I also never berate other people's stuff in my code (like poorly written API's I have to use). Clean and professional makes for more readable code and keeps everyone happy, including myself.

Re:I remember having to do that once

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually berate Internet Explorer in my comments and aloud when writing any kind of javascript. Nothing profane, but usually, what were they thinking?

Re:I remember having to do that once

[HornWumpus]

I don't cuss much in comments.

But I do leave threats of bodily harm should some things be done again.

For example. The worst single line of code I have ever seen. In Access VBA.

Global Variant aLocalArray()

Re:I remember having to do that once

[Fallingcow]

I'm pretty sure the only reason you can comment in CSS is to say thing's like: /* The following section is to make IE unfuck itself. */

Re:I remember having to do that once

[Bill Dog]

Gee, thanks a lot. You might as well have posted an ASCII goatse. Now we're all scarred for life too.

Re:I remember having to do that once

[Anonymous Coward]

Many moons ago I wanted into computer programming in Jr High. They said no because my grades weren't good enough; so I told my mom I wasn't going back. Haven't been back since. ....Years later, I'm in college (for the hell of it); without even trying I place in the top 5 of every class, and I have globally distributed software with thousands of users. Most of my accomplishments put my professors to shame. Our "education" system sucks! I have proof.

Re:I remember having to do that once

[jgrahn]

Gee, thanks a lot. You might as well have posted an ASCII goatse. Now we're all scarred for life too.

Only those unfortunate enough to understand Visual Basic (or whatever Access VBA is).

No tits ?

[Yvanhoe]

As expected, no tits showed up in millions of git commits.

Re:No tits ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ternary digits? Is that like some quantum computing shit that us dudes dealing with binary digits don't have yet?

Re:No tits ?

[black3d]

All the female geeks migrated... http://xkcd.com/624/

Re:No tits ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately the program he wrote to retrieve his sample couldn't parse all the ASCII art in my commit messages.

Obligatory comic that's not Penny Arcade or xkcd

[An Ominous Coward]

Obligatory Leisuretown

http://www.leisuretown.com/library/qac/28.html

Yes, we had someone at work do this, and yes, from that day on we referenced him as F.B. (in polite company).

maybe php programs just don't comment?

[ludwigf]

> Note that I ripped an equal amount of commit messages per language

How about to normalize the numbers not per commit but per word? Maybe c++ programmers just happen to write a detailed commit message while php progammers tend to write "bugfix" without anything else.

Irkedness rating

[anyaristow]

Here's my comment irkedness rating:

// oink - a temporary piece of code - oinks need further attention
// crap - something I'd rather not have to do - needs further attention, and should be considered broken code
// shit - okay, now I'm pissed - if this gets to release, there's a major problem
// fuck - if these aren't resolved by the end of the day I'm giving the fuck up

general assesment

[tudorl]

- C++, JS and Ruby seem to generate most profanity
- Python & PHP compete for for least profanity
- C is somewhere in the middle :))

Re:general assesment

[maxwell demon]

Or maybe in Python and PHP the code is already such a profanity that the programmers don't consider it necessary to add more of it in the comments ...

Re:general assesment

[amicusNYCL]

Or maybe he was tracking commit messages and this has nothing to do with code comments.

Re:general assesment

[maxwell demon]

Commit messages are comments, too.

Re:general assesment

[amicusNYCL]

Commit messages and code comments are distinctly different. I know you just want to bash PHP, but how much are you willing to argue that commit messages and code comments are the same thing?

Re:general assesment

[maxwell demon]

Code comments comment the code. Commit messages comment code changes. They are not exactly the same thing, but the differences are mostly technical.

Why is Python so low?

[heretic108]

I would have expected a lot more bolorful language from the python bommunity.
Silly bunts!

Re:Why is Python so low?

[codepunk]

It's low because we don't have to waste our lives typing useless semi colons, curly braces and the word end.

must bring balance to the Force

[ChipMonk]

So how long will it be, before we see an influx of profanities in PHP and Python, just to ruin their squeaky-clean images?

Different kind of apps

[mysidia]

In PHP... your "comments" have a way of being read/interpreted by the web server, the same system that is displaying the web pages to users. Your comments are always in some danger of being exposed to humans (just like the source code).

Whereas, C++ programs are compiled, always. The end user never has access to comments in the source code, unless you have a very very strange compilation script that embeds some code as a string.

Also, there is the fact that PHP coders are notorious for confusing uncommented code. Instead of swearing in the comments, they make you swear after trying to read their code, which has zero meaningful comments, and possibly a few comments that will be just plain wrong or confuse the hell out of you.

Re:Different kind of apps

[Byrel]

Except that the article wasn't about comments at all. Its about commit messages, which the user never sees in any language.

Ruby is a 4-letter word

[Anonymous Coward]

Creator of Ruby? Dude's a hypocrite... Ruby is a 4-letter word after all.

Profanity directed at IE in Javavscript

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking back on my years writing JS for various web apps, I'm not surprised that JS is up there. If only that it were the comments for each of the many differences in IE's JS engine.

Jquery may be dumming down the new generation through abstraction, but I can't help feeling relief thinking about all those niggly little IEisms, which I no longer have to deal with.

Take into account

[Anonymous Coward]

I think most people don't consider that most of the projects at GitHub are written in Ruby and JS and in a very low percentage in PHP.

Re:Take into account

[Byrel]

No. They took an equal size sample of each language. Do read the article before commenting; it sometimes answers the questions and comments you have.

sample size, selection bias

[Anonymous Coward]

1) 1 million commit logs, but only 210 "hits" distributed among the 8 independent variable categories. Not great, since a couple "colorful" individuals, or developers with digestive tract problems or lots of baggage on their minds, could easily turn the graph.

2) I would expect that projects (and by extension, programming languages) that attract multiple developers, especially more than a handful, would be fertile ground for developer misunderstanding and/or disagreement and, hence profanity. So to some extent that's what these charts may be measuring.

Re:Obligatory comic that's not Penny Arcade or xkc

[gknoy]

Clearly, calling someone "fagbot" is a mature and professional response when someone criticizes your source code. I suppose if they actually found it funny, maybe it's OK, but I can't imagine deciding to call someone this.

Visual Basic

[confused one]

My first thought was, "What no Visual Basic"? Then I realized it was redundant, Visual Basic is profanity.

Re:Visual Basic

[shutdown -p now]

Me thinks you're gonna have a hard time finding a VB project on GitHub.

Re:Visual Basic

[enec]

Not really. "Visual Basic is the #26 most popular language on GitHub"

Re:Visual Basic

[marcosdumay]

What goes to show that there are at least 26 languages on GitHub. Thanks, if I had to guess, I'd try a much lower number.

Am I missing something?!

[twebb72]

Honestly. I wouldn't ever consider checking in code that contained profanities. Same goes for test data and exceptions. Honestly, when a program fails, its not acceptable that the user see profanities. Its the mark of a poor programmer.

A bad craftsman blames his tools. Cursing in code or in comments is about as unprofessional as you can get.

Re:Am I missing something?!

[Byrel]

Yes, you are missing two things.
One: Most of us have sworn or yelled at our computers (from a recent /. post) As programmers, we face the the additional twin stresses of debugging, and other people's interfaces. If the comment is meaningful, and you are in a profane mood, and not (as I am) religiously restrained, I have no problem with you putting it in the code. Generally speaking, the user will never see your comments. Furthermore, cursing need not be at your tools. I am personally quite curseworthy at times.

Two: This has absolutely nothing to do with comments anyway; it's commit messages! Whoever summarized it did a poor job.

Re:Am I missing something?!

[twebb72]

If I were a boilermaker and was assembling boilers (the inside of which is never seen by non-boilermakers), I have enough respect for my craft and other craftsmen not to stamp the lining with profanities.

However links to xkcd.com, would be tolerated on the inside of my water heater.

Re:Am I missing something?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Profanity is only natural in something as stressful as this, you';d have to be a goddammed idiot to not expect profanity to pop up with **some** frequency.

Re:Am I missing something?!

[Byrel]

:D I like your taste.

Nevertheless, I'm not sure that's completely comparable. However, that could be because I never fully bought into the notion that engineering is a profession (as distinct from an occupation.) To my mind, programming is something I do to accomplish tasks. I have no particular respect for my work; it is often worse than it could be on reflection.

Yours may be the more noble position, but I personally could care less what other people put in their comments, just so long as the comments are helpful. Most of the "profanity" was actually the word "shit", used to simply mean "stuff" or "things." Particularly in that context, I personally don't mind. But I suppose it is just that; a personal preference.

Re:Am I missing something?!

[twebb72]

You nailed it! I don't program to accomplish tasks. I do it for the paycheck :)

Re:Am I missing something?!

[TangoMargarine]

Obligatory XKCD about secrets. Leaving secret messages that other boilermakers may or may not ever see sounds like fun.

Re:Am I missing something?!

[Anonymous Coward]

32-bit addressing? That's so last decade.

not really surpricing

[Anonymous Coward]

The C++ developers are least likely to expect their code to be read by the end-user (or anyone else). While the PHP programmers are most likely to have their code read by the end-user.

Re:not really surpricing

[maxwell demon]

I would have expected the JavaScript programmers to have their code most likely to be read by the end-user. After all, unlike most other source code, sending the JavaScript source to the end user is mandatory.

Re:Obligatory comic that's not Penny Arcade or xkc

[Anonymous Coward]

gknoy@anasazisystems.com

Sample size

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of these were probably swayed by a single coder of that specific language. Duh.

Accessability

[Anonymous Coward]

I would hazard to guess that the accessability of the source files directly affects how relaxed an approach one takes to comments. I imagine that client-side scripting languages like javascript would have the least profanity, since the comments you write are delivered direct to your clients. PHP would probably carry a bit of this stigma, even though the comments are hidden in the server -- plus there's still a chance that the programmer's client is the guy running the server, so the client in that case can still see the comments. C++, however, not only protects its source files by multiple stages of compilation and obfuscation and magification, it is also the syntactically single worst programming language ever expressed upon the world*, so the programmer both: feels the desire to swear in comments, and is pretty damned sure the client won't ever see it.

* perl doesn't count, it's not even a language; it's an excuse for "certain types" to feel superior to the rest of society, while simultaneously protecting society from overexposure to those people

Re:Accessability

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA; javascript is way up there.

Alternate hypothesis: it's on GitHub.

I know TFA says "I ripped an equal amount of commit messages per language so the results aren't based on how many projects there are per language," suggesting that it's some sort of sample-based average; but actually it just tells me he's using a selective sample to produce his results. GitHub is full of Ruby-writing Why-fans and scripters. There will always be a bias towards Ruby and Javascript, not because of his randomly selected samples, but because of population bias. Call it "Comment Profanity by Language in GitHub" and I'd be happy.

Otherwise, if you were to let the article title imply "Comment Profanity of Language in Open Source Projects" you would have to expand the sample space to include all the other known source repositories out there.

I bet there'd be a lot more C and Perl* swears if you searched SourceForge.

*more than zero

personal explanations

[fusiongyro]

In my experience, Rubyists think profanity is cute ever since the famous DHH "Fuck You" slide.

Misconfigured Apaches dump PHP source code out all over the helpless user. Perhaps PHP developers swear less because they expect more eyes on the code due to this kind of accident.

Re:personal explanations

[heretic108]

Perhaps PHP developers swear less because they expect more eyes on the code due to this kind of accident.

Or maybe it's just because PHP itself is a vast profanity.
 
/me dons flameproof suit and steels himself for major karma loss

I love C++ Templates

[LordZardoz]

I am very comfortable implementing C++ templates.

The only issue I have is when I am trying to debug them, as most debuggers give output that is barely legible for non trivial template code.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:I love C++ Templates

[Svartalf]

I'm thinking that more a cowpiler problem than a debugger one...

Re:I love C++ Templates

[pclminion]

The only issue I have is when I am trying to debug them, as most debuggers give output that is barely legible for non trivial template code.

As was already pointed out, C++ template programming is more functional (or declarative, depending how you use it) than imperative. You really don't gain much understanding by single-stepping through it. Same goes for other similar languages. You're trying to think imperatively when that's not really the best mental model.

I don't really have a good suggestion for a debugger, but I've never really found myself needing one, even with complicated template class systems. The things are so strongly typed and explicitly specified that, most of the time, if it has a bug in it, it doesn't even compile.

Re:I love C++ Templates

[Anonymous Coward]

you ought to read Alexandrescu's book modern C++ design. He has some really great techniques on how to make the error messages mean something useful

Re:I love C++ Templates

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's C++'s fault?

Sounds like you need to use a better debugger.

To the uninformed:

[failedlogic]

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Tits

to you too!

Eh

[Anonymous Coward]

C, C++ and C# I'm not surprised about, you can't decompile them, so developers probably don't care.

... me gently ...

[Anonymous Coward]

linux-2.4.37 arch/sparc/kernel/ptrace.c line 69: /* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-2.4.37.y.git;a=blob_plain;f=arch/sparc/kernel/ptrace.c;hb=HEAD

I don't curse in comments...

[caywen]

... I curse in the actual code!

int *sh_ttyF_ckingPointer = &gSomeSh_ttyArray[MAGIC_F_CKING_NUMBER_A_SHOLE];

Not just the comments

[6Yankee]

On my last project, someone added a third-party Javascript calendar. I was horrified to discover that it had a function called continuationForTheFuckingKHTMLBrowser().

It's one thing if it's server-side code, and I'll occasionally slip up and put "wtf" in a PHP comment (usually in some "never happen" safety block). But don't do it where inquisitive and technical users (of which we had several) can get at it. And certainly not in code that's intended for others to expose to *their* users.

After I'd renamed that function and committed, I searched the entire project for every swear word I could think of. Amusingly, though the rest of the source was clean, buried in the bytecode of our packaged-up WAR file was the sequence upper-case F, lower-case u, c, k, exclamation mark. Even the compiler was at it!

Re:Not just the comments

[Anonymous Coward]

True this. At some point, it maybe too late to change the function name without breaking a lot of code. It's pretty interesting that programming languages do not have protection against borkage when there is a change in function name.

Re:Not just the comments

[ceoyoyo]

I have a friend who developed a technique to remove nonuniformity in MRIs. It's customary in the field to give your techniques a cute acronym. He tried hard to call it the Field Uniformity Correction Kit.

Re:Not just the comments

[Terrasque]

I'll occasionally slip up and put "wtf" in a PHP comment (usually in some "never happen" safety block).

I think you'll love this part of the android SDK :)

Re:Not just the comments

[Burps]

This happened recently for a French TV : the guy who coded the video player called one of his function, "visible" to the client (at least, for true geeks), is called "piegeacouillons()", which means "dummytrap()".
Actually it's activated when the user want to see the advertisement...
article (in french), or google translation

Nobody's perfect.

[Minwee]

Nah. PHP and Python users aren't wholesome, they just can't spell.

Few curse in their own code, mostly other's code

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suspect that the vast majority of profanity result from someone needing to read though some piece of code to determine what it does, and needing to waste the brain cells to fix some issue...

Not everyone.

[binary paladin]

Profanity is a way of life for me. I love seeing profane comments in code—especially when they are someone else's AND relevant.

Clean and professional might be fine for you, but for fucking assholes like myself, it's fucking boring.

(My commits aren't any better.)

Yuh Huh

[Greyfox]

Finding out that the H1B Programmer you just replaced on a project that was due a couple of weeks ago didn't understand the concept that C strings are null terminated is worthy of a profanity or two in comments. Having management need MORE than that to justify throwing everything away and starting over is grounds for a few more.

Ball's Screw Theory

[Latent Heat]

There was a British astronomer by the name of Sir Robert Ball, who published his Treatise on Screws in the early 1900's.

There has been a revival of screw theory in the study of robots and other machines. The basic idea is that any two rigid body postures can be connected by a helical (screw) motion along a single axis line -- this is attributed to Chasles (as in Chasles' Theorem).

Recently, a keyword search on this topic turned up a paper titled "Jerk Influence Coefficients, via Screw Theory, of Closed Chains." All of those words have an innocent meaning. Jerk is the derivative of acceleration as acceleration is in turn the derivative of velocity. Screw theory refers to Ball's Treatise on the parameterization of rigid body motions, and yes, a rigid body has a strict theoretical definition as well. A chain is a connection of links, such as in a robot or an automobile suspension mechanism, and a closed chain refers to where both ends are connected to the same reference body.

Yes, the people who publish in this field are not innocents and are fully aware of the cant meaning of all of these words and perhaps it is an inside joke in the community. But what was unexpected was that Google thought I was a leather-cruiser-culture gay person for turning up that paper (jerk, screw, chains), offering ads for "Find an HIV specialist near you", "HIV Treatment Basics", and the like.

Along those lines, I have gotten surprisingly little grief for my Slashdot handle, which derives from my geek interest in phase change as mediating heat transfer in heating, cooling and renewable energy systems. "Latent" is a somewhat archaic term for what people nowadays call "closeted", and "heat" has always meant "desire", and that double meaning is not what I had intended. But not that there is anything wrong with that!

Re:Ball's Screw Theory

[Asm-Coder]

Or maybe you underestimate the intelligence of the typical /.er.

Ok, I'm sorry, I couldn't even get to the preview button with a straight face.

C and C++

[Anonymous Coward]

C has less profanity than C++??? What the fuck is this world coming to?

frustration

[t2t10]

The top 3 are C++, C, and JavaScript, which are pretty much the three most badly designed and most frustrating languages on the list. No wonder they lead the list in profanity.

Re:frustration

[yurtinus]

Blasphemer!!! Shun the nonbeliever!!

Re:Obligatory comic that's not Penny Arcade or xkc

[xero314]

Obligatory Leisuretown

http://www.leisuretown.com/library/qac/28.html

WTF Was that jibberish?

What? No Perl? :P

[bgibby9]

Would be an interesting look at some of the reg ex debugging I've had to do!

English, Motherfucker!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd imagine most of the swearing in PHP is in Hindi these days.

What! No FORTRAN?

[jasnw]

When I read the title of the summary I was crushed when TFA didn't mention my Mother tongue, FORTRAN. I've seen some serious ranting in FORTRAN comments, but then I saw that it was "commits" and not "comments" and it became clear - no self-respecting FORTRAN programmer would have anything to do with something named "git" - I think that's covered in the classic "Real Programmers Don't Eat Quiche."

PHP profanity

[Slur]

$shit = new Piss($fuck, $cunt, $cocksucker, $motherfucker, $tits);

Vendors

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have had comment profanity based on modified vendor code. Though the best comment I saw was on a mud monster special code in C that basically questioned the honor of the woman's mother and her mother's mother in stuff I can't post on here.

One word

[TangoMargarine]

Refactor?

Not just code comments... ;)

[John Pfeiffer]

I was looking through some old 'desktop crap' folders the other day, when I found a screenshot I'd been looking for for a while now. I took this screenshot of an error message in the EVE-Online beta back in 2003. I'll tell ya, I laughed pretty damned hard the first time I read it. "Something is fucked." may be ambiguous, but it's certainly concise and to the point. ;) http://media.giantpachinkomachineofdoom.com/blog/2011-02/images/evebetaerror.png

What no FORTRAN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying to do text handling on FORTRAN IV or even FORTRAN 77 would make practically ANYONE swear! ;-)

Re:Is this more about the languages then the coder

[osu-neko]

First thing I thought of, to be honest. As a Python programmer, I can say it makes me pretty happy as a language.

I read that five times before I figured out what you just said. Past my bedtime. Just for shits & giggles, though, recognize the ambiguity in how the last sentence could be parsed (the way you obviously intended, vs. the alternative my sleep-deprived brain was trying to chew on, which can be made clearer by changing the word order slightly: "I can say as a language that it makes me pretty happy." (What, he's a langauge? I don't even... oh... my caffeine levels are dangerously low...)

FWIW, I hate Python, but it's better than PHP... ;p

Ugh

[Viol8]

I'm sorry , but function names that long just end up producing code that is a lump of unreadable text with each line wrapping around my terminal multiple times. I'm not advocating going back to single letter variables etc , but sometimes a reasonable amount of brevity is a good idea.

Re:Ugh

[maxwell demon]

I'm not advocating going back to single letter variables

Agreed. I've found that a letter followed by a three-digit number works much better. :-)

*sigh*

[balbord]

I am the sole responsible for:

1. "Foda-se mais esta merda! Desisto! Quem é que fez este XML?" (Fuck this shit! I give up! Who made this xml feed?" for two hours on the homepage of a major info site.
2. "A merda do webservice fodeu-se" (The shitty webservice fucked up!) for 4 or 5 days on teletext.

I now only curse on safe places. Like on places I *know* will never be seen. err....

Rolleyes

[Bigbutt]

Nothing like a programming language discussion to bring out the elitist snobs.

[John]

PHP users

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they're just not solving any difficult problems that require a healthy dose of profanity to fuel a proper solution?

This Comment is not Profane

[fast turtle]

The answer is 43

Sorry folks but everyone who thought the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything Else was 42 is incorrect. It's Odd

Past Perfect?

[hicksw]

how did you know it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do

It's supposed to do what I mean. Sometimes if doesn't even do what I say.
--
You must use your power of low standards -- Wally

the name was at least partly intentional

[Chirs]

Linus has said, "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', now 'git'"

Python vs Ruby

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this chart demonstrates that python is less annoying to use than ruby.

awesome commits

[morrison]

Some of the best stuff isn't in the commit message but obscured in the commit text. One of the best resentment commits I've seen:

http://brlcad.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/brlcad/brlcad/trunk/src/mged/mged.c?r1=31006&r2=31008&view=patch

Pure awesome.

Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

Great text editor but I was using it once and it threw a "Goddamn Exception". Not just in a comment but a popup window. I bet there are some real jewels in the comments...

FCKeditor...

[Anonymous Coward]

There must be something wrong w/ my team. When I first introduced them to the FCKEditor, they all read it as the Fuck Editor...