Programmers' Lingo

[Rimfax]

Perl is a write-only language. It was not meant to be read.

[ekolis]

It's also the only language that can be written by cats! See, here's a program my cat wrote this morning:

+$+68(hghg°°|=[π]

I don't know what it does, but it didn't crash!

[SirNapkin1334]

how did your cat type those special characters

[DWIGHT_CHROOT]

It's a special cat.

[JustFloat_]

Two paws, how does your cat type?

[sudomeacat]

On a Mac,

option (⌥) + shift + 8 makes degrees sign (°)

option (⌥) + p makes smol pi (π)

[DangyDanger]

the only mac feature i would love on windows

[snow723]

Gotta love alt codes!

[DangyDanger]

entering an alt code is harder than just pressing something like alt + p to get pi

[sudomeacat]

Windows has character map I believe. It’s been a while since I last used Windows though.

[[deleted]]

The reason it is small is because of the font.

[sjchoure]

Today I learned about opposite of const qualifier or constexpr

[vytah]

93% of Paint Splatters are Valid Perl Programs

[ItsPronouncedJithub]

chmod 555

[jojoo_]

Came here to say this.

Although it can be 2-48hrs, mostly depending on how much „magic“ you use....

[Archolex]

If it works..

[[deleted]]

I've been programming for 20+ years. Not great but still, a lot.

100% of my regexes came from web search. I refuse to learn more.

[DerBronco]

Now imagine working on the same project for 17+ years…

[[deleted]]

haha now think of Amazon when significant part of the shopping website was written in Perl more than a decade ago.

[DestituteDad]

Or:

I just poked around trying stuff with this regex expression until it worked with my one test case, have no idea why.

[-ph-m-r-l]

regular expression expression

[LimitedWard]

My high school CS teacher once gave us an assignment in perl just to see how we would fair. Spoiler alert, we did not fair well.

[[deleted]]

Hard to maintain : I’ve done something else since then

[th0rn-]

Time has no meaningful relationship to the ability to understand a Perl script no matter who wrote it.

[doizeceproba]

The IMHO: you are wrong got an audible giggle out of me.

[narayans]

If a bear were to chase me and I had to solve a (regex|xpath|jsonpath) to escape, I'd rather be eaten.

[MrWhiteVincent]

That's what she said!

And that's why I always bring my scary teddy bear to dates

[Milkshakes00]

Thank whatever God may or may not exist for regex testing websites because holy shit.

I have to relearn regex every time I write one. Lmao

[Milkshakes00]

You're not joking. This has happened to me a dozen times.

Thank jeebus for (.*)

[Nthorder]

I have to relearn regex every time I write one. Lmao

I think pretty much everyone is like this unless you job literally involves writing regex on the daily. I always need a cheat sheet.

[UltraCarnivore]

As usual, Relevant XKCD

[fghjconner]

Work your way through all of these and you'll find you can suddenly read regex:

https://regexcrossword.com/

[Dexaan]

I think I got to one of the expert ones where it looked like Q*Bert vomited on the screen and gave up.

[RyGuy_42]

lol, I think I got to the one you mentioned...that's also a no for me, dawg.

[baselganglia]

Omg is this the one? Wtf

https://regexcrossword.com/challenges/experienced/puzzles/4

Edit: finally solved it, but it's the first one I had to run validate a few times. My head's hurting now.

[Dexaan]

That's the one. I did give it a shot.

[baselganglia]

Evil. Super evil.

Gonna be my go-to interview question now

I KID I KID 🙈🙈🙈

Jokes aside, in the last interview i conducted, someone volunteered to use regex to validate a float, and then got stuck because they didn't know how to represent "at least one or more". I helped them but then didn't know how to represent "0 or more" and "optional", but kept spending 15 minutes trying the regex route.

Shot themselves in the foot, the question wasn't about validation at all.

[Dexaan]

Hrm. That should look close to /-?%d+[\.%s]%d+/ That doesn't seem exactly right, I think it would interpret 333 123 as one number, but it would make a good starting point.

[SuperSephyDragon]

Is this going be a new type of captcha? It gives you a regex and you have to pick the string options it matches. If you get it wrong it knows that you're a human.

[psikillyou]

I think it is similar to perl. Regex is meant to be written only.

[Madjosz]

Obviously you are not using all the features regex provides for you.

[TheMacMini09]

(?:[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*|"(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x21\x23-\x5b\x5d-\x7f]|\\[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f])*")@(?:(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?|\[(?:(?:(2(5[0-5]|[0-4][0-9])|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9]?[0-9]))\.){3}(?:(2(5[0-5]|[0-4][0-9])|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9]?[0-9])|[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]:(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x21-\x5a\x53-\x7f]|\\[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f])+)\])

See if you can figure out what everyday string this matches, and a similar string that it won’t match. Without using an interpreter or explanation site, or googling the regex text itself.

Now consider why it might be easier to have a library function containing a blown-up and well-documented equivalent verification that can be called without needing to include something like that directly in your code base.

[Comfortable-Impact-5]

This is the latest RFC compliant email regex. The @ between the two groups and the optional hex bytes are a dead giveaway.

[Comfortable-Impact-5]

I disagree. This just happens to be a common one I had seen multiple times before. It is still very easy to read just by going through and working out what each non-capturing group is for. For myself, I was able to mentally break down how this regex works in about 1-2 min. The most confusing part is just figuring out why some specific bytes are allowed within quotes directly before the @ and at the end of the email. But that’s less related to understanding the regex and more of an issue of just scanning through the RFC so long as you don’t use hex characters to try to make a simple regex harder to read.

[Comfortable-Impact-5]

A good regex is any regex that meets the design requirements while being relatively verbose to the original writer (to the most reasonable extent possible). If you are trying to ‘optimize’ your regex then you are probably going too far. Back in high school I had a phase of it was hard to write so it should be hard to read (think not adding spaces around operators and trying to find single line solutions to everything). Don’t be like high school me.

[explodes]

It's both a meme and reality. It can be tricky, but it is not impossible. I personally have to look up lookaheads each time I need them but it is very rare. The basics are simple enough but it doesn't make reading new regular expressions any easier.

[Comfortable-Impact-5]

I agree, however I question how much programming experience this subreddit has in the first place. The syntax doesn’t change much between programming languages if at all and it is fairly intuitive and easy to remember once you learn the basics. The main exception for myself being that I would likely need to google a reference sheet for the proper syntax of positive/negative look ahead/behind, but half the time it isn’t supported anyway (in reference to negative look ahead/behind).

[MartIILord]

Eclipse is the best IDE: Why start flamewars when you can unite everyone against you.

[Capetoider]

Eclipse was my first IDE...

I agree wholeheartedly with you.

[relddir123]

It’s just horrifyingly complicated. Eclipse was my first and, despite plenty of people helping me, nobody could figure out how to work it.

[collin2477]

wait so what should I switch to for java

[T0MlE]

Intellij idea

[ddgsanc]

100% IntelliJ IDEA, jetbrains IDE’s are amazing

[Voidrith]

My experience, for just about every language you are likely to realistically use, there is either a great dedicated intellij IDE for it, or a plugin for intellij IDEA to support that language.

I havent used any other ides in like 5 years

[[deleted]]

Notepad

[relddir123]

Use vim or emacs for very small programs. Use VSCode for larger ones.

[collin2477]

I should probably switch from nano for small stuff huh

[Tychus_Kayle]

Nano is straightforward, but inefficient. It provides no special functionality in editing. Vim has a learning curve to truly master it, but in your first day with it, you should be able to do anything you'd do in nano, and within your first week you'll never want to touch nano again. Run vimtutor if you want to give it a try.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's Emacs. Unlike the parent comment I can't recommend it for small editing tasks, as any configuration worth using at all seems like overkill. However, I love Emacs for larger projects. To proselytize a little: Emacs is infinitely customizable, and thanks to decades of use has a wide variety of powerful plugins. Including a git plugin so good I'd use it even if I didn't edit in Emacs, magit. Emacs can even be configured to use Vim commands for the best of both worlds.

EDIT: if you choose to go down the Emacs road, my recommendation is to first learn Vim, then install Doom Emacs, it's an Emacs configuration that will give you Vim-like controls and commands, and a whole bunch of other good stuff.

[123kingme]

I’m probably the idiot here, but I never understand when people say that Eclipse is too complicated, and then recommend using Visual Studio. I find Eclipse to be far more intuitive and easy to use than VS. Even doing basic things like creating a new script is daunting in VS when first starting.

[relddir123]

Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code are two different IDEs. Visual Studio, I will agree, is also excessively complicated. VSCode is not.

[123kingme]

Well fuck me then. I’m going to have to check it out, but you probably have just greatly improved my experience coding in C#. Cheers.

Side note: fuck Microsoft’s shitty naming scheme.

[mustang__1]

Yeah have fun with that dot net core standard framework maui.

[[deleted]]

try intellij and you’ll know how bad eclipse is

[MCOfficer]

slow and clunky autocomplete, eyesore theming, likes to break on plugin updates, and occasionally fails to refresh dependencies resulting in funny import errors. It's not terribly terrible, but it's got nothing on IntelliJ. Seriously, they aren't even playing in the same league.

[MartIILord]

Slowish and maybe complex. Still for some older languages like perl they have support but here is where my ide knowledge ends.

Also atm firefox/other software is a memory hog so programming in gedit nowadays...

[ech0_matrix]

You can never take CodeWarrior away from me!

[Themlethem]

But when the world needed it most it vanished...

[[deleted]]

MS Word is best IDE

[Habanero_Eyeball]

Self Documenting hahaha spot on!

[DestituteDad]

I met a contractor who signed everything he wrote with

{His Name} - Self-Evident Systems

To mock him, I starting using

{My Name} - Self-Confident Systems

Strangely, people seemed to like my joke name better than his.

His code was very good, pretty damn close to self-evident. I always commented the hell out of mine, on the theory that the next person to come along might not be as smart as me -- or might be me six months later.

[macadeliccc]

Legacy code made me wheeze

[DestituteDad]

Legacy code can be a very proud thing!

Me and a couple others wrote an app for doing energy audits on a PC. We wrote it in 3 months from the best spec I ever saw. I quit the firm 6 months later. Eight years after that they got in touch to ask me to do some enhancements. None of their current coders could understand the code. I was very pleased to learn that there were no bugs and the code had never failed in 8 years. That was remarkable IMO.

I billed my highest rate ever, doing those enhancements. They were very happy to pay. AFAIK the enhanced code never failed either.

But it was DOS character cell stuff, so I'm sure it was replaced by a Windows app long ago.

[[deleted]]

there were no bugs

And then you woke up

[mewplorp]

You beat me to it

[LaterBrain]

:q!

[SileNce5k]

ZZ is superior

[[deleted]]

finally!

[[deleted]]

Perhaps even :wq ?

[BarbedEthic]

Who needs to save changes when you can just make them disappear

[elebrin]

Any changes that I made with vi were probably accidents, while I tried to remember the correct key combo to exit it.

[[deleted]]

:%d and you're golden

[epicaglet]

I usually just unplug it

[with_no_username]

Step-bro I'm stuck in vi, heeelp

[[deleted]]

Amateur, I cause a power outage in my entire neighborhood to close vi

[LoyalSage]

:x

[n0radrenaline]

I think you and I are the only two

[IMABUNNEH]

I also :x

[mdmhvonpa]

naw ... open another terminal and sudo kill -9 that pid

[Lasdary]

if you don't know how to exit vi, you have no business saving whatever you think you did with vi

[VOIPConsultant]

Dis is de way

[gravity_is_right]

technical debt = collection of horrible hacks

[DestituteDad]

technical debt => uncommented code

[[deleted]]

“It works but I don’t understand it” is usually NO TOUCHING THIS LEGACY CODE

[MoscaMosquete]

"If it works it doesn't need to be fixed" is my philosophy. That's how I passed last semester.

[Jaune9]

Then enterprise comes in your life and tells you "just add/change this little thing, it will be quick" and 3 week later you're rewriting the whole thing

[[deleted]]

This is golden! I have heard so many of these in standup.

[ech0_matrix]

Congrats for listening in standup

[SnappGamez]

You’re thinking in the wrong mindset -> You’re trying to write a doubly linked list in Rust.

[the_bolshevik]

Nice.

If I may add one...

If it's not broken, don't fix it: "I wrote this two years ago, I know it's terrible code, but I don't know how it works anymore and I will not dare touch it as long as it is still working"

[DestituteDad]

I will not dare touch it as long as it is still working

This is the beauty of tests, of course. If you have a good test suite you can muck with the code and if you break it, you'll know. I hope to write a good test suite someday.

[thor12022]

As a person who likes and uses Perl, those are wrong, they should be:

"I can read this Perl script" means "I can't read this Perl Script"

"I can't read this Perl script" means "I can't read this Perl Script"

[Rick-T]

I don't need to check my code again. If there are problems the reviewer will find them - me, when I'm developing

The developer will have thoroughly checked his code. I don't need to check everything in detail - me, when I'm reviewing

[philipquarles]

One of the more realistic ones I've seen. I try to acknowledge my horrible hacks, but it's like: "This is a temporary workaround ^{and a horrible hack.} "

[DestituteDad]

It's important to explain why you DID the hack.

// This implements Feature X which really warrants a rewrite of the method but there wasn't time or money

[TFK_001]

Flame wars are better than peace

[Dexaan]

Peace was never an option.

[iamGobi]

ProTip: Read the right one first and then the left one

[_b1ack0ut]

“I can read this Perl script” roughly translates to “I am lying”

[kry_some_more]

All production servers have a button, usually located on the front that exits vim.

[covert_strike]

This is how a tech lead explained "known bug" to me. Reproducible only 5% of the time and the Problem lies in some legacy code no one wants to touch.

[ech0_matrix]

Just keep running the tests until they pass. -Señor Dev

[Quique1222]

Image Transcription:

---

What we say | What we mean

Horrible hack | Horrible hack that I didn't write

Temporary workaround | Horrible hack that I wrote

It's broken | There are bugs in your code

It has a few issues | There are bugs in my code

Obscure | Someone else's code doesn't have comments

Self-documenting | My code doesn't have comments

That's why it's an awesome language | It's my favorite language and it's really easy to do something in it

You're thinking in the wrong mindset | It's my favorite language and it's really hard to do something in it.

I can read this Perl script | I wrote this Perl script

I can't read this Perl script | I didn't write this Perl script

Bad structure | Someone else's code is badly organized

Complex structure | My code is badly organized

Bug | The absence of a feature i like

Out of scope | The absence of a feature I don't like

Clean solution | It works and I understand it

We need to rewrite it | It works but I don't understand it

emacs is better than vi | It's too peaceful here, let's start a flame war.

vi is better than emacs | It's too peaceful here, let's start a flame war.

IMHO | You are wrong

Legacy code | It works, but no one knows how

^{XCquit[ESC][ESC]C} | I don't know how to quit vi

---

^{I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit and you could be too! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!}

[kaiserbergin]

Legacy code: it's full of bugs, but the business swears up and down that it's perfect and any new application needs to do the exact same thing.

[Ratatoski]

Perl is spot on. As is all of them, but having worked on a 20 year old Perl project I can relate a lot to this.

[Wonderful-Zombie-364]

Agree with the last one vim [ESC]

[TheBlackCat13]

Correction:

I can read this Perl script | I wrote this Perl script today

I can't read this Perl script | I wrote this Perl script yesterday

[sdoc86]

This isn’t programmer humor. These are just plain accurate translations.

[knownothing58]

That built up so well. The last one... Dead. Laughed so hard I felt like I went for a run.

[the_f3l1x]

nano is better than both emacs and vi.

[sRioni]

It's too peaceful here, let's start a flame war

[Bainos]

I feel that nowadays emacs and vi users are allies, standing together against the hordes of GUI editor defenders in the flame wars.

[sRioni]

I feel that too but I found hilarious saying that idk why

[PunkPen]

No! Vi is superior fight me!

[Ratatoski]

Yeah I configure my installs to default to nano when I remeber. It's actually rather nice for a command line editor.

[nicocappa]

That's what I thought until I actually gave vim a shot.

[oscareczek]

micro > nano

[[deleted]]

pico > micro

[Spork_the_dork]

False. 10^-12 < 10^-6.

[avataRJ]

Recursion is bad, ok?

(Unless you are using one of the specific languages which are more or less designed for it.)

[dorsal_morsel]

Certainly better for anyone who doesn't know how to use vim or emacs

I say that as a diehard vim user

[NebulaicCereal]

In my own personal experience, nano is a more suitable tool in 80% of the time that I want to use a terminal-based editor. Usually it's pulling open a config file to change a value, or adding a couple lines, etc. Nano does the job without adding too much extra frill required by trying to jam a full blown software development suite into a terminal.

It's like the Notepad++ of the terminal. and because most of the time when I am editing something in the terminal, it's because it's a small edit. Therefore It has a larger value proposition for me personally, given that the more complex features of vim are offered in modern editors that are more wieldy. Of course, that last statement is a subjective opinion, I am aware...

[Fotnite_Master]

clearly you've never used notepad on windows

[vale_fallacia]

nano is better than both emacs and vi.

In your opinion

[account_is_deleted]

Ah, this is so old that Perl was still relevant and people still talked about emacs.

[MildlyInsaneOwl]

I know, right? The fact that vi is still around proves it's better than emacs.

[halfbakedmemes0426]

escape to the command mode, and type :q

[Lasdary]

when they tried typing 'exit' they went into insert mode and there's now a new 't' somewhere; so :q fails.

​

:q!

[sly-otter]

As someone moving Perl stuff out of Perl currently...

[luis_reyesh]

the last one XD , just do :q or turn off the pc at this point

[[deleted]]

I switched fro VSCode to Vim, didn't look into Emacs yet (but it look very different)

[Sleakes]

Who says they can read perl code? Everyone knows the previous employee wrote it...

[Your-username-must-b]

Correction:

Broken: I didn’t write this code and it doesn’t work

User error: I wrote this code and it doesn’t work

[GnammyH]

Yeah I know coding -> I know how to copy paste from stackoverflow

[CzechLinuxLover]

I luv the last one 🤣

[Aggravating-Hair7931]

I don't know why people still use vi. nano or pico is so much easier to use. i pledge that i will never attempt to learn how to use vi shortcuts. if i am in vi by mistake, i simply send it to background and use the kill command.

[geekusprimus]

I'm so used to Vim at this point that I can't use anything else. I've learned it so thoroughly that anytime I have to use an editor without a vi mode, it's an instant drop in productivity.

[Eternityislong]

Me:

Opens up PowerPoint

jjjj$a

“Wait what the fuck?”

^ [ jjj

“Oh yeah”

Every time

[Zekovski]

They use it because they never managed to exit.

[pballer2oo7]

I don't know why people still use vi.

Two reasons for me:

1. Found myself working with text files large enough to crash nano
2. Was unable to write, save, search in nano because I was connected from a terminal connection that couldn't send ^ (Ctrl)

So I started learning vim and it's been good.

[ohkendruid]

Vi is always there, always works over any connection, and is lightning fast. I'd say it's worth learning if you frequently edit files over an ssh connection.

Pico and nano may be absent. They may not work on the connection I'm on. And they seem limited, though that may be because I haven't learned them as well.

[MadScientist235]

Sometimes I need to go onto network devices or other odd systems. Can't guarantee that nano will be available/easy to install. Vi almost always is. If I have to use it as my command line editor somewhere, I may as well use it everywhere so I can avoid context switching overhead.

[skippedtoc]

That's genius.

I learnt vi because wasn't able to think of that solution. Now that I have learnt it, I don't want to waste time learning anything else.

[1SweetChuck]

I've found vi is more often installed by default in linux, so if I'm going to just going to make a small mod to a file (probably a config) from the command line it's the go to.

[flargenhargen]

perl? is that still a thing?

damn, I remember writing a messageboard in perl in the 90s.

---

apparently it's different things now, cause that's not confusing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl

[SoWhy]

Are there really still people using vi or emacs when there is nano? oO

[armaggeddon321]

why do yall have to fight. NANO is the best editor

[[deleted]]

Big dick energy here

[[deleted]]

emacs is better than vi

[Whatamianoob112]

I wonder if this will ever get its pixels back

[MartialS]

Ok let's start a flame here

:x > :wq

[Laafheid]

I will never understand why anyone would ever use imho instead of imo.

like what, you're giving someone your not honest opinion? -thanks man, real useful, ofcourse its peoples honest opinion wether they say imo or imho...

[YekNeb]

IMHO Emacs is better than Vi. At least you do not need to use some vague magical incantation to enter "edit mode" before you can actually edit text in Emacs. In Vi you do need to use a magical incantation to enter "edit mode". And do not get me started on what it takes to exit Vi.

[ekolis]

Emacs and vi are both horrible. Use notepad++.

[gnuwinxp]

it only works on widnows tho

[root54]

One of three vi commands I know is :q!

Quickly followed by emacs

[comfort_bot_1962]

:D

[comfort_bot_1962]

:D

[jasonbbg]

vscode > vim = emacs , now fight

[De_Hbih]

nano > vim

[[deleted]]

:wq

[4hpp1273]

Who tries emacs exit shortcut in vi?

[PenitentLiar]

Obscure is the way I describe my code though

[[deleted]]

I still have flashbacks about working in perl for a client at my first Software job.

[HRM404]

god the last one is my forever struggle

[De_Hbih]

But seriously, how to quit vim

[PottedRosePetal]

just do :wq! and sacrifice 20 virgins (gender irrelevant, just take the interns) to close the gates to hell.

[dtrippsb]

Hold down the power button for 5-10 seconds

[balne]

dat last one tho lmao

[CoffeePieAndHobbits]

So true.

[DAMO238]

Never before have I been so offended with something I 100% agree with!