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0 pointsbillpatrianakos14y ago0 comments

Right. It was marginally informative, the meme pics were chuckle-in-my-head worthy but what really got me laughing was that it's on the front page of HN. Its so sad you have to laugh to keep from crying.

Anyway, guess I'm not a hacker either.

0 comments

lucisferre14y ago

Not even close to as sad as the fact that two most upvoted comments and their children (pun intended) are just a bunch of pompous whining.

Zancarius14y ago

"Pompous?" Perhaps, but I think you'll agree that there are far more redeeming and clever ways to construct a humorous commentary on the behavior of (for example) an interpreter.

To address your particular concern which I feel is somewhat misplaced: I think it would be more pertinent to classify individuals like myself and the others who have complained about the delivery of this particular piece as suffering from less patience, especially with the usage of "wat" throughout. There are reasons for this, and it likely depends on an individual's preferences, how one feels about the (mis)usage of language, or the (ab)use of memes to attempt the creation of a witty informational exchange. Note: I realize that I'm probably just slightly outside the target demographic of this video, which probably appeals more to individuals who are in their mid-twenties or younger, and I'm fully aware of this fact.

I apologize if I personally came off as a pompous whiner. This particular misspelling of "what" is a personal pet peeve that drives me absolutely insane, and it greatly reduces my mental perception of an item's quality (or the quality of an individual's speech). I suppose other complaints probably derive from its delivery as a meme-inspired video, which probably appeals to younger audiences as I've mentioned.

In other words: There are legitimate gripes about this form of video. I've seen similar ones that were indeed humorous, but they had a fantastic delivery that was well thought-out. Including a dozen absurd pictures that appear to be sourced from sites like Imgur with "WAT" emblazoned on them does not appeal to everyone, and I don't think it's useful to criticize others' opinions of this video as sorely lacking in humor as "sad" simply because we all have greatly different tastes and preferences. Moreover, these tastes and preferences are malleable; something you found hilarious when you were 22 might be head-shakingly awful by the time you're in your 30s.

I suspect this video is one of these. Save it and watch it again in ten or fifteen years.

Also, if you want a good example to serve as a useful benchmark for classical "hacker humor," I present to you this piece: http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html

billpatrianakosOP14y ago

I suppose I came off as snarky with my comment but I still don't think this was HM worthy. My reason for disliking it was because it simply showed a bunch of examples of obscure flaws in languages that aren't really useful. There wasn't enough substance to it. It was just "look at the weird result you get when you write code in a way that you never would in the real world. Wat?". Meme pics are funny. Meme pics and a good talk are funny. This was meme pics and a really useless, trying too hard talk. I've seen presentations that offer up a lot of value in terms of stuff you can actually use and topics that are really relevant. This was just language quirks and nothing more. No talk about why these quirks exist, uses for them, how they could affect you without knowing, none of that. It was just bad humor and no substance. I'm not against humor showing up on HN from time to time but this was more like something that belongs on Reddit or even any random forum. Oh, and the title too bothered me. It was kind of immature.

And for the record, I'm 25 so either I'm really mature or I have no sense of humor. The jury is out. I'm definitely still not hacker though as I watched it again and still barely chuckled.

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