The other day I read about this fun bug story over at The Old New Thing. It’s an entertaining read if you have a few minutes downtime. Linked in that post, and even more entertaining, is “The Night Watch” by James Mickens. It’s a hilarious read about systems programming and the horrors therein. Be warned though: It is satire with a true core but a slightly black humor.
Here are some snippets to wet your appetite:
🧟 Choose your friends wisely for the apocalypse 🧟
[…] I think about what I’ll do when the weather forecast inevitably becomes RIVERS OF BLOOD ALL DAY EVERY DAY. The main thing that I ponder is who will be in my gang, because the likelihood of post-apocalyptic survival is directly related to the size and quality of your rag-tag group of associates.
🦸 …and make sure there’s a systems programmer among them 🦸
However, the most important person in my gang will be a systems programmer. A person who can debug a device driver or a distributed system is a person who can be trusted in a Hobbesian nightmare of breathtaking scope; a systems programmer has seen the terrors of the world and understood the intrinsic horror of existence.
🥲 This may sounds familiar 🥲
[…] and the systems programmer has seen the comment in the scheduler that says “DOES THIS WORK LOL,” and the systems programmer has wept instead of LOLed […]
Lastly, here some of the more rude wisdoms about people working in PHP and HCI. But please, again, note that this is meant in a humorous, teasing way, not a mean one.
👻 Do PHP developers have a soul? 👻
Listen: I’m not saying that other kinds of computer people are useless. I believe (but cannot prove) that PHP developers have souls.
🔨 Username already taken. Choose another. 🔨
I can realistically give a kernel hacker a nickname like “Diamondback” or “Zeus Hammer.” In contrast, no one has ever said, “These semi-transparent icons are really semi-transparent! IS THIS THE WORK OF ZEUS HAMMER?"
If you have seen a few things in the software world I’m sure you can relate, whether you are a systems programmer or not. I think many have the nagging feeling that we are building paper castles on quicksand and then throw stones at them—you know…uhm…for the walls, for the walls!
In case you want more war stories leaving you in a state of marvelling disgust, I highly recommend one of my all-time favorites: Buttery Smooth Emacs. It has a very similar tone and humor.
And to round things off, here’s also a random, interesting piece of horror I
happened to stumble across just recently: Have you ever heard about the dark art
of the TEB and the
PEB? No? Well,
in a nutshell, drop down to raw assembly, juggle some pointers and start to
interpret what was1 essentially opaque memory. Fun times.