this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
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A wife tells her programmer husband: β€œGo to the store and buy a gallon of milk. If they have eggs, get six.”

He comes back with six gallons of milk. When she asks why, he replies: β€œThey had eggs".

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[–] Shady_Shiroe@lemmy.world 79 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I like this joke better:

Wife asks her husband if he is too obsessed with his work and if he even he loves her anymore. He assures her that in a list of things he loves the most, she is number 1 on that list. She was satisfied with the answer.

[–] Australis13@fedia.io 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

He's safe if he works in MATLAB or other languages that use one-based indexing. He's a dead man if she works out most lists are zero-based.

[–] lambipapp@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

I work in Lua. I always start my tables on 'dinosaur'

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 3 points 1 week ago

He'll make sure until death that his wife doesn't figure that out.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (2 children)

people really overthinking the joke in the comments huh

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

People having seen the exact same joke that isn't even good for a decade or more....

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] jve@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I hate the fucking eagles, man.

[–] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Fuck you man. If you don't like my fuckin' music get your own fuckin' cab!

[–] Feyd@programming.dev -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's cute, but you're complaining about people expressing their opinions on a platform where the entire point is to comment on posts...

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm not complaining, I'm stating an observation. You seem the one bothered

[–] ulterno@programming.dev -1 points 1 week ago

You seem the one bothered

[–] CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

I haven't seen this one. Enjoyed it.

There is a relevant xkcd for this, but I'll mark it as a lazy load.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mean... do you know what community you're in right now?

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

my bad, I thought this was a wendy's

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 13 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I've never liked this joke. I guess it's supposed to be that the husband does the literal action as described, but instead it's just that they interpreted ambiguity opposite than expected? It just really doesn't work very well :/

[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 66 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The joke is bad because the husband is supposed to bring seven gallons of milk. Since the egg condition is checked after he already got one.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

No no, the imperative "get six" overrides the previous "buy a gallon of milk" if the "they have eggs" condition is met.

"get six" implies x === 6 not x = x + 6, that would be "get six more"

The real problem is that "buy" was only specified in the first case. Because the conditional was met, he should get six gallons of milk but not buy them.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Now just how did he procure the rest of the 5, is a mystery.

[–] mech@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

He cloned the supermarket.

Omg, you’re so right. I didn’t read it that way until you pointed that out.

[–] jbrains@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Given the stereotypical difficulty of "product folks" and programmers agreeing on and building shared understanding of what to build, this joke seems clear and straightforward. It works because of course, the customer and the programmer failed to agree on something simple.

That is why we have spec docs, duh. /s

[–] dnick@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Maybe it's just worse when written. The period at the end of the sentence makes it hard to see how it could be misunderstood.

To your point though, not sure if I'm aware of any programming language that would continue a statement with a following if block. Far more likely that it would fail due to lack of an element to apply the 6 to rather than having a pointer to the previous object, or he would try getting what ever the literal version of a 6 would be, or maybe some slang version.

[–] ignirtoq@feddit.online 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Python, though the logic would be backwards:

milk_gallons = 6 if eggs > 0 else 1
[–] dnick@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Right, it would be started basically exactly the opposite. Certainly not a statement followed by an if block.

[–] ignirtoq@feddit.online 1 points 4 days ago

The code block I wrote is a statement followed by an if. What I meant be "backwards" was the order of conditions, not that the statement came after the if. It's exactly what you asked for.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

any language that allows ternary conditionals

[–] dnick@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

Those would all start with the if, followed by two conditions, not a statement and then an if. There would be a condition to evaluate, followed by then/else?

[–] sping@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 week ago

I'm pretty sure I've heard effectively the same core joke but better composed. Can't remember it though because at best it's middling funny.

[–] joyofpeanuts@beehaw.org 11 points 1 week ago

He was not instructed to get back home. To this day he is stuck in the store.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Skill issue. Used an implied "of them", which is idiomatic in the language, but forgot to update the value of "them" first. Without that, taking the first value is compliant with the standard.

/s, but only if we assume us programmers have common sense. ^/s^

[–] CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I... like this joke and haven't heard it before!

Is this allowed or do I have to shit on it to be cool?

[–] slothrop@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago

Welcome to lemmy!

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] slothrop@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

Careful, there, you could be overthinking it!