this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
306 points (96.6% liked)

Programmer Humor

25827 readers
3006 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
anzo@programming.dev
Feyter@programming.dev
BurningTurtle@programming.dev
pylapp@programming.dev
306
arcane terminals (file.garden)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by dosuser123456@lemmy.sdf.org to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
37 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

"oh, you know so much! howd you do that?"

"grandma, i literally only typed dir."

all 38 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

One of my favorite comparisons is computing to magic. They say that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

A lot of people have a hard time drawing that comparison, but if you tell them that there are very special, rare ~~silica~~ rocks that you can only find in specific places on earth, and that if you inscribe one of these rocks with billions of tiny ~~transistors~~ runes and then ~~power~~ infuse the rock with ~~electricity~~ lightning you can actually ~~make~~ trick the rock into ~~a processor~~ thinking, and that this now let's you create ~~software~~ incantations which explain to the ~~processor~~ thinking rock how to ~~execute a program~~ do specific things for you, then they begin to see why.

[–] rmuk@feddit.uk 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

"I'm gonna pop out and get some lunch because this is going to take a while and definitely isn't just an SSH into an Ubuntu box running apt update/upgrade in a loop."

[–] alezyn@feddit.org 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

My wife calls it “the app with lots of text”. She’s very beautiful.

[–] czardestructo@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

At least she even comments. Mine just waves her hand in disgust. She knows it enables her whole technological life, but couldn't give a shit.

[–] dosuser123456@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 day ago

yes thats what my music teacher calls trackers too

[–] AmazingAwesomator@lemmy.world 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

y'all motherfuckers need Bash

[–] bombadil@feddit.org 11 points 1 day ago

Give someone bash, and they'll shell for a day. Teach them fish and they'll shell for the rest of their lives.

[–] napkin2020@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wait until you type top

[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 points 13 hours ago

as a bottom i refuse

[–] justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Jokes on you, my Oma worked in Dos until her retirement.

She was an absolute master at it.

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Jokes on you, my Oma worked in Dos until her retirement.

I bet one of her previous titles was literally "computer"

[–] dosuser123456@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 day ago

thats one of the nicknames the school jocks came up with about me

and i just accepted it bc i actually found it fitting so they had to think of another one lol

[–] dosuser123456@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 day ago (3 children)

mine doesnt even know how to add a custom ringtone to her phone

[–] Ziglin@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

Do be fair that took me longer than installing the operating system too.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 1 points 13 hours ago

Do you?

[–] Tanoh@lemmy.world 2 points 21 hours ago

Mine was convinced that cell phones and landlines were two different networks. Like you couldn't call a landline from a cell and vice versa. This went on for decades, even after we infront of her proved it worked.

[–] 11111one11111@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago (3 children)

As someone living in more rural demographic, replace grandma with every person with a cpu driven device. To quote my dad regarding his cellular trailcams "Wtf is updatefirmware? Stop making up words."

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 30 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The whole "old people are bad at tech" thing is a bit long in the tooth now. Many people who grew up with computers are now old, and many young people are just as baffled by the command line as any grandmother.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

There really was a magic learning window 1990-2010, I think. Some people who were there are still bad at technology, and a select few from before are good at it and maybe even helped build those systems, but the prevalence is night and day.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yes but I'd say it started 10 years before that, growing in numbers through the first few years of the 1980s.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

That could be, it was a rough period. I wasn't around for the beginning, and even the end is approximate as locked down mobile OSs and similarly user-opaque systems gradually came to dominate.

Kids today can still learn computers, but they have to explicitly try. I think something analogous happened with early cars. The first guys had to be able to personally maintain and repair the whole thing, and then over time it gradually became an area for experts and the odd enthusiast only.

[–] dosuser123456@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago

i didnt say any grandma, i said specifically mine, who follows that trope. idk how yours is but mine is like that

[–] SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Reminds me of the Hollywood trope of a character saying “In English please” after any reference to something on a computer.

I hate it so much when they do it. The writers should just say it the way an IT admin would and move on. Pretending that the character is speaking another language is just anti intellectual bullshit.

[–] rmuk@feddit.uk 1 points 8 hours ago

Have you ever seen A Touch Of Cloth? It's a superb send-up of police procedurals. There's a scene where the main character, Cloth, is explaining some not-very-complex idea like you said and one of his lackeys replies, "Can you explain it like I'm some kind of viewer, guv?".

[–] dosuser123456@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 day ago

in my case replacing my grandma with "everyone at my school" also works, i chose my grandma just to vary a bit

[–] devilish666@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It same when i was called by friend who worked at police HQ, updating linux with showing terminal at full screen because i want to know if udate successful or not while i reinstal windows at some computer in that room.
all police that station almost killed me because they tough i hacked police database just because they saw terminal with some progress bar installing linux update.

[–] st3ph3n@midwest.social 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thanks, Hollywood!

[–] lemmyng@piefed.ca 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's because the default color scheme is white on black. Just change it and Poof! Blue magic, red magic, yellow magic... so many possibilities!

[–] dosuser123456@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 day ago

is the blue magic another name for the bsod

[–] exu@feditown.com 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Batch is a very cursed shell/scripting language though

[–] obstbert@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I like typing arcane runes.

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 1 points 9 hours ago

Nah, that's APL.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Just wait until she hears about the Linux shell.

[–] somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

pacman -S neovim

-"Are you trying to play pacman?"

[–] dosuser123456@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

yes my favorite game is the arch package manager

[–] Ziglin@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

yum