this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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[–] [email protected] 196 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 106 points 1 week ago (7 children)

This comic is so old, that both should be rather easy now

[–] [email protected] 177 points 1 week ago (1 children)

She did get her research team after all :)

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Now try to identify if it's a fish

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 week ago

Oh, yeah, the specific example listed was solved within roughly a month of the comic being posted. But the idea still applies, as seen with the twitter post above.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Well, sure, with an image classifier, the bird identification is doable. I'm sure I could implement that if I went looking for some open source thingamabob that does that. But it's still not something I could actually understand. That part definitely hasn't changed over the years.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Having taken an ML class, with some of my college notes I could do this and "understand" it... but the weights would still be a black box. AI training is black (box) magic.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago

only because people never stopped asking it to be able to id birds.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

It took almost exactly 5 years from publication for that to be commonplace.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Can't wait for the Disney live action movie remake of XKDC comics!

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (17 children)

Well yeah, we have a character model for the giant demon and the giant demon has a huge use case.

A scarf? That's a model extension. Either you're asking me to create a whole new character with a scarf baked into the mesh that will deform weirdly as the character moves, or you're asking me to implement an accessory-anchor system all for the sake of a scarf (albeit other accessories might use this new framework) which will then need a physics/cloth sim to even look half good.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You could import fabric physics and just have it lie there, but that's going to be a bigger hit on performance than you possibly can imagine and it will move weirdly (in large part becomes we're not modeling wind, just fabric in a vacuum) and the model features it will lie on top of won't deform accurately from the simulated weight, etc...

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

Feature requests never account for the performance hit.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 week ago (2 children)
  • "Can you make the player be able to summon a monster from the fifth dimension?" "Yes ok ez lol"
  • "Can you make the player able to exist in the world without having it fall though the ground?" "You are asking too much mate"
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Player: Can you make it so that a 3 inch drop won't kill me?

DayZ Standalone dev: .........

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Oof, this reminds me of a personal experience.

Me: Oh this grapple system is easy, we'll just push the player's vector towards the destination vector.

Game: Oh but there's a small object in the way that cannot be moved. This will make an immense amount of collision data per tick.

Me: Can't we just ignore-

Game:

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 week ago (9 children)

Game director : we’re gonna add interact-able doors with proper door opening animations for the characters

The game designers:

The programmers and artists:

The producers:

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Now we need to decide in the case of collisions if:

  • Doors violently push anyone out of the way, possibly "crushing" them into walls or
  • Force themselves back closed, turning any random NPC / obstacle on the other side into an unbeatable lock or
  • Just trap an unfortunate NPC in a corner on the other side, or
  • If they use the physics system to swing open, in which case they'll look smooth but possibly bonk the player/actor going through them a few times and could potentially (and comically) insta-kill them if physics is feeling grumpy.

The frustratingly comedic unintended results of any choice makes for great organic marketing though.

Gamedev is magical.

Aside: Know what did this really well though? Resident Evil games after RE:4.

The ability to "slowly quietly open", and then at any time decide to violently action-hero kick it open to send a zombie on the other side flying, was genius.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

PM: You know real world?

Make it like that

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

FROM Software: Fuck that, we're doing fog-walls.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

Way back in the 90s I did a contract job at MS Research on a project called "V-Worlds" - a world simulator similar to the Doom or Quake engine, but it was browser-based and everything was a script, so changing how the world worked didn't mean you had to restart a server, just change the scripts and new stuff would appear right in front of you.

Anyway the concept of adding accessories to the player's avatar and even having a pet follow you around came up, and I remember there was an involved discussion of how difficult/impossible that would be. The player's avatar was a special object class that represented a user, and didn't have the same capabilities as ordinary objects in the world. I remember asking, "Why isn't the avatar just a world object the player happens to control? Then you could do all kinds of cool stuff like let the player transform into something else just by switching objects, or let another player run your character." Dead silence. I was just a contractor, what did I know?

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

https://xkcd.com/1425

Alt text: In the 60s, Marvin Minsky assigned a couple of undergrads to spend the summer programming a computer to use a camera to identify objects in a scene. He figured they'd have the problem solved by the end of the summer. Half a century later, we're still working on it.


Edit: seems I'm the third person to comment this! :')

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

I love how this is actually an example of progress. These days, ML can be used for this kinda thing and it's not too bad at it even.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Always have to remind myself of this when managers ask me if something could be done. If it's easy, I naturally get a little annoyed that they're even asking. But knowing that is my job, not theirs, and it's good that they ask. There's lots of places where they assume and things go badly.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago (14 children)

I just want a game that lets my avatar be left handed.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (6 children)

As a gameplay programmer, I got anxiety from reading this (and I think the animators are already in a fetal position on the floor)

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Can't you just swap x for -x. Run some unit tests just in case. We'll push to prod next Wednesday. Sound good? Got to dash, strategy meeting started 5 minutes ago. Seeyoubye.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

As a programmer, I've learned to cringe at any suggestion from someone that starts with "can't you just". Cause I guarantee you, I can't "just" do that. It's way more complicated than just.

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[–] LillyPip 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There’s already a codebase for bursting from the ground in an explosion of lava. Everyone wants that.

You’re the first person asking for a scarf, and our system doesn’t even know what a neck is.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Time for the old NPC-with-a-train-for-a-hat trick.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I worked at a company that made IoT stuff (which is an increasingly archaic term). The web team was pitching using a third party tool called ThingSpace to view and manage the things. The web dev said ThingSpace could do all these amazing things automatically. The manager said “can we change the color of the background?” The web dev said “…. no.”

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Only in 3D. In 2D, you slap some pixels on top and there's your scarf:

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I tend to find it's the other way around. Once you've got a scarf modelled and rigged, it'll work* for all animations, but for animated 2D sprites you have a lot more things to do.

* May have visual artifacts like clipping

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Player? Easy. Scarf? Easy. Wearing a scarf? That depends on a lot of factors such as which part of the body, how the models were made and rigged, etc.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I want dresses, and I don't care if they clip through literally everything!

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Shadows in the real world a lack of energy Shadows in games imma need it all boss

[–] usualsuspect191 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

The logical answer is that too many Computer Science majors loved Silver Age comic books.

The Martian Manhunter was stronger than superman, but couldn't handle fire. Green Lantern was similarly godlike, but was unable to control anything colored yellow.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The giant is easy. The ground is easy. The lava though... Do you want the particles to stick together? To visually connect? To collide with each other? To interact with dynamic objects?

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