Satan, Britney Spears Top Paris Hilton In OSS References

An anonymous reader writes "Krugle, a software search company, had some time on its hands — it compared frequency of mentions in open source code of presidential candidates, Beelzebub and yes, Britney Spears." I wish they'd link to a nice long list of the other terms this revealed — there are probably a lot of subtler funny references and asides.

Abbreviation:

[Stanistani (808333)]

Would 'BS' count as a reference to Ms. Spears? Just asking.

Am I missing something here?

[JCSoRocks (1142053)]

I've never included random crap like that in my code... even in college when I was pulling all nighters. Why on earth would I want to have to reference the ParisHilton class? and how would that be helpful to other developers? This is silliness.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[antifoidulus (807088)]

That class will show its privates to just about anyone who asks!

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Cornflake917 (515940)]

The problem is that the class has to use its inheritance to get what it wants.

Intuitive connections

[StreetStealth (980200)]

Your Paris Hilton example is funny, but it is why I actually do sometimes use amusing function names -- I can more easily remember what they do if their silly names actually reference their behavior.

Re:

[The Cydonian (603441)]

Back in the day, wrote a method called ReturnOfTheJedi() which had a parameter called theJediWhereTrick. Returned a search result, but with an optional where clause in the SQL query.

Kept fielding emails about that for six months straight, from the company's offices in Palo Alto and Singapore. Fun times.

Re:

[Cornflake917 (515940)]

Is there really a difference?

Re:Am I missing something here?

[alan_dershowitz (586542)]

Satan wasn't born in the USA and is thus ineligible.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[beckerist (985855)]

Only problem with that is that it saves the text in a green-on-black grainy medium. The producers only adjective to describe the tape is "hawt."

Re:Am I missing something here?

[gstoddart (321705)]

I've never included random crap like that in my code... even in college when I was pulling all nighters. Why on earth would I want to have to reference the ParisHilton class? and how would that be helpful to other developers? This is silliness.

I was thinking the same thing.

But, I guess when some people are coding they like to inject a little bit of silliness or vent their anger.

I once worked on a project where we were explicitly told our comments couldn't have profanity or other non-PC things in them. Apparently, one time during a customer-required code walkthrough, the developer had littered their code with all sorts of insulting things about the customers and their requirements out of frustration with tight timelines and bad specs. It caused quite a stir. Thereafter, they made sure all developers understood that such things would not be tolerated.

Me, I just couldn't fathom why I'd want to waste time putting vitriol into my code and comments. I need the comments to explain to me what I'm doing and why so that 2 months from now I know what I'd been trying to do.

However, having maintained a few legacy code-bases in my day, you'd be astonished what people actually do put into comments. I've seen some downright bizarre things, ranging from slagging the product to slagging people. Heck, I saw a haiku once, and it actually explained the function quite well.

I suspect a lot of OSS coders have a different view about what to put into their code and have lots of time on their hands to do it in.

Cheers

Re:

[SQLGuru (980662)]

Exactly. I save my useless comments for places like Slashdot. :D

I have written "lengthy" comments about how much of a hack something was or references to better ways of doing something, but none of them ever needed to reference Satan (maybe sacraficing live chickens, but never pacts with the devil).

Layne

in code, or in comments?

[Briden (1003105)]

what i'd like to know is, were these things discovered in comments, or actual code?

i've used some amusing code like:
itBroke = true;
but that still communicates something useful to me, (it indicates an unrecoverable error condition)

plus then i could write:
(itBroke) ? fixIt() : dontFixIt(); //(if it ain't broke don't fix it)

naming a class HillaryClinton is just ridiculous. I wonder if there are variables named intCheatCount in the diebold software?

currently i am working on a section of code littered with ninj

Re:in code, or in comments?

[Cro Magnon (467622)]

Well, I didn't see this first-hand, but I heard that one of my cow-orkers wrote some interesting COBOL code during his divorce. He had this line of code:

Perform Beat-my-wife Until She-Screams.

Sadly, I never got to work on any of his code before it was cleaned up.

Re:

[Frosty Piss (770223)]

But, I guess when some people are coding they like to inject a little bit of silliness or vent their anger.

Apparently, one time during a customer-required code walkthrough, the developer had littered their code with all sorts of insulting things about the customers and their requirements out of frustration with tight timelines and bad specs.

I've always said to myself that when I start thinking of my customers this way, I'll stop coding for them. It's not worth the neurosis.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[techpawn (969834)]

In one of my early programming classes my professor had a minimum length for hard copy code to be turned in. Let's just say my code worked, but my hard copy was too short. Rather than muck my code with unneeded calls and the like I did a lengthy comment about how I believed CS finding the most direct solution to problems even at the risk of upsetting the client.

The code got an A with the added comment from the Prof that the minimum hard copy length requirement for first years would be going away after this.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[spikedvodka (188722)]

honestly though... I'm a big fan of "//Magic happens here"

Re:

[Valdrax (32670)]

Actually, "here be dragons" is an old cartographers phrase used to denote unexplored and presumably dangerous areas on maps, in the same spirit as drawing sea serpents off the coast of unexplored water.

It's kind of a running joke in computer circles.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[RiotingPacifist (1228016)]

Might give that a shot, heres what had to be removed from mozilla before they opened the source
http://www.jwz.org/doc/censorzilla.html [jwz.org]

Re:Am I missing something here?

[vertinox (846076)]

Why on earth would I want to have to reference the ParisHilton class? and how would that be helpful to other developers? This is silliness.

I think the reason why so many open source projects have odd comments or funny comments is that its being made by people who aren't being paid and don't have a manager breathing down their necks so they'll use whatever they'd like at the time. Personally I think comments are the best part of open source code.

My fav so far:

/* DRUNK. FIX LATER */

Source and some more amusing comments. [everything2.com]

Re:

[metlin (258108)]

At my previous company, we were part of an R&D lab, so most folks had PhDs or graduate degrees in one form or another.

Anyway, every once in a while people would leave physics equations in the comments section of checked in code or documents. Once late at night, I was working on an architecture document that needed some major changes. So, I left a comment along the lines of, "Architecture changes complete. $change 1. $change 2. $change 3 etc. Also did $foobar, $foobar, $foobar. Also discovered warp drive

Re:Am I missing something here?

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

If you do a search on Krugle, you'll find that most of the references are in database files, not code. e.g. Public figures tend to show up in example data files. There were quite a few Clinton jokes back in the day, so Hillary shows up in a number of files. Paris Hilton is a common "adult" keyword, so you'll notice .htaccess files restricting it.

Here are a few examples:

http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Hillary%20Clinton [krugle.org]
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Paris%20Hilton [krugle.org]
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Barack%20Obama [krugle.org]
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Tooth%20fairy [krugle.org]

Even if you search for just code files, you sometimes find data inlined into a unit test:

http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Tooth%20fairy&lang=java [krugle.org]
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Hillary%20Clinton&lang=java [krugle.org]
http://www.krugle.org/kse/files?query=Paris%20Hilton&lang=java [krugle.org]

So there you go. A whole lot of non-news. :-)

Re:

[NewbieProgrammerMan (558327)]

Thanks for posting some links; I skimmed TFA and didn't see anything other than "zomg people reference famous people in their code, and somebody did a search for it, PONIES!!!1" and was going to judge the article/topic a WOMFT.

You'd think they could have included some sample search links in the article, no? Searching for "fuck" in Linux code turns up more entertaining stuff if I recall correctly. Actually, seaching for "fuck" in Krugle is more entertaining than Satan:

"Fuck GNOME!"
"public class FuckNut"
"fo

Re:Am I missing something here?

[ari_j (90255)]

Often, such things come from frustration or from humor starvation. One time, in a programming competition during college, we were required to do our work in Visual Studio. We implemented a sort routine and knew not to call it sort(), so we called it mysort(), which also turned out to be taken by MS. Out of frustration with the clock counting down, I gave it a name that I knew would not have any conflicts: myfuckingsort().

I figured I was in the clear, because the competition administrators and judges had told us that they do not read the code, they just run the program and check for correct output. However, they did quietly talk to us after we received our prize for winning the competition. Apparently, while they don't read the code as part of the competition, they do skim it out of curiosity sometimes.

For the remainder of my C.S. career, I was notorious for having invented the by-then-shortened "fucksort" routine. It still comes up in conversation from time to time.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Cowpat (788193)]

<boring nostalgic story>
I once wanted to name an module in some fortran code 'data', but, of course, that's a protected word, so I called it 'brentSpiner' instead. I don't think my supervisor watched star trek though, so he didn't really get the joke.
</boring nostalgic story>

Re:Am I missing something here?

[somersault (912633)]

$this = "madness";

if ($this eq "madness")
{
          $this = "sparta!!!! >(";
}

*snicker*

[krinderlin (1212738)]

A friend of mine got a call a few days ago from an old job of his doing some Access application development (*pukes*). Apparently they didn't appreciate the fact that the code was littered with references to the Spanish Inquisition, Spam, Grail Shaped Beacons, and so on.

Re:*snicker*

[njfuzzy (734116)]

What did they expect to accomplish by calling to scold a former employee?

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

I know, seriously. I wouldn't have expected that sort of Spanish inquisition.

Re:

[clickclickdrone (964164)]

And people wonder why CEO's etc don't consider IT people to be on their 'professional' level.

Re:*snicker*

[pAnkRat (639452)]

Ofcourse they were suprised to find these references in the code,
because "nobody expects the spanish inqusition!"

Re:*snicker*

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

Buy him a bumper sticker: "I wish I was coding Python."

Meaningful Comments

[by Anonymous Coward]

My Favorite comment came from the DEC PDP-11 Fortran compiler. After searching extensively for a bug in our code, we managed to get the compiler source, and at the location where our code imploded, the compiler author had inserted the comment,

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

Re:Meaningful Comments

[ddrichardson (869910)]

I rather like this one that I saw [debian.org] at the weekend. Sounds like an unpleasant way to go.

Satan I can understand ...

[trolltalk.com (1108067)]

Satan I can understand (BSD Devil, references to the Beast from Redmond, Chipzilla, etc), but Britney Speares? That's EVIL!

Hillary Clinton? Duh.

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

The fact that Hillary Clinton outstrips McCain and Obama should come as no surprise. She spent 8 years in the public eye, back when no one had even heard of the other two candidates. Expressing surprise that she is 'in the lead' as it were, is just silly.

Re:

[Holi (250190)]

I think McCain has been in the public eye a little longer than Mrs. Clinton, considering he's been a US Senator since 1986.

Re:

[fprintf (82740)]

And was a POW in Vietnam for several years, refusing to come home before other prisoners. The guy was a hero, all over the newspapers way back then. Not that it means much to modern day programmers (most likely demographic for OSS contributors) who weren't around or paying attention to such news in the early 70s.

Re:

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

Just because he's a senator doesn't mean that he's managed to stay in the public eye. He's managed to stay a public figure, but for the most part he's been ignored by the public at large.

Just try doing a search on Clinton jokes vs. McCain jokes. You'll get a LOT more Clinton jokes. (Most of which are based on the idea that it was Hillary running the Presidency, not Bill.)

Satan, Britney Spears

[towelie-ban (1234530)]

Those are just synonyms, right?

I predict that..

[Thelasko (1196535)]

Tipper Gore and the Parents Software Resource Center [wikipedia.org] are going to petition congress to ban open source software because the source code is explicit. The end result will be a warning label on all open source software available on the internet.

end sarcasm

Well, good!

[FatSean (18753)]

There is a large stack of evidence showing that warning labels don't work, and may in fact inspire more people to try the thing being warned against.

More developers is a good thing.

f[u#s]ck(ing)?

[El_Muerte_TDS (592157)]

... is a very useful regex to find problems and workarounds with (3rd party) frameworks and libraries

What, no examples?

[Frosty Piss (770223)]

The "article" (if you can call it that) shows neither neither charts of actual numbers, nore places the uses in context (with or without examples). Good grief.

Hee!

[Rob T Firefly (844560)]

Whenever I use a switch statement, I'm compelled to name its variable "jimmysmits." This results in the statement "switch(jimmysmits)", and never fails to make me chuckle.

...too obscure? [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[thatskinnyguy (1129515)]

Whenever I'm configuring a Cisco router for PAT, I have a similar compulsion to name the NAT pool "frustration" so that when I go to execute the command for PAT it will end with "frustration overload". I have done this on occasion. It all goes back to my days in the Networking Academy.

Knuth appears, but...

[serviscope_minor (664417)]

Knuth is on the list. That said, he appears in my code, without me making wierd references or easter-eggy comments.

//Implementation of Knuth's foo algorithm.
//See TAOCP Vol 3, Page ??

Is the summary wrong or is the article misleading?

[LighterShadeOfBlack (1011407)]

The summary suggests that they measured the frequency of mentions of these terms in the source code - the article seems to suggest that they measured the terms searched for using the Krugle search engine. The former would be interesting, the latter would not.

Amusing anagrams

[pandrijeczko (588093)]

Paris Hilton - Hail, it's porn!

Britney Spears - Prissy bra teen

Isn't that the same list as..

[tinkerton (199273)]

the list of commonly used passwords?

Binks variable...

[refactored (260886)]

My Java library path variable is called binks.

It's the place I store all my jarjars.

(Ooo, thats going to cost me! Don't you just love the smell of karma burning in the morning...)