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<@otras> Fun names are OK, but only if they don't introduce ambiguity. In this case the change wasn't so much anti-fun as anti-ambiguity.

<@otras> Could have added a futurama reference to it

__SECRET_INTERNALS_DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED_______OUT_OF_A_CANNON___INTO_THE_SUN

<@throw74848484> Sleep / hibernate doesn't change anything here - if the computer is in those states, no code is running so it doesn't make sense to query for it, which is the joke. The function isn't called was_computer_running().

<@throw74848484> Unlikely. Nothing is specced beyond 140 Celsius and many parts not beyond 80.

<@yomimiva> looking around a bit, it's used as an example in the documentation:

https://github.com/haiku/haiku/blob/7d07c4bc739dbf90159a5c02...

This is actually a great reason to keep it around; it's as simple as possible, and nothing uses it so it's easy to find the relevant bits of code.

<@yomimiva> Makes sense:

is_computer_on() int32 is_computer_on(); Returns 1 if the computer is on. If the computer isn't on, the value returned by this function is undefined.

<@Sohcahtoa82> Why would this be in a Disney Star Wars movie?

<@mixermachine> If you check the app description, there's a GitHub link, which in turn has an f-droid link you can use.

But you're not missing out since `isUserAGoat()` will return false on Android >=11 anyway and `isUserAMonkey()` will return true if and only if you're using the monkey test suite.

<@GuB-42> Oh man. Early in my career I was working a job I didn't like and doing work that was by necessity incredibly hacky and tedious—not an interesting challenge, just a grinding one. It involved overwriting template files that weren't supposed to be overwritten and essentially writing multiple versions of the same code in multiple places because the system was so kludgey.

This project stretched on and on with brutally painstaking iteration, long hours, fires happening with other clients, etc, etc, long story short, I sort of lost my mind and left an Easter egg comment in the code in a state of minor madness.

Years after I had left the job, I got a message from a former coworker that said "Do you know anything about MOOL?"

I said I didn't know anything about something called MOOL, and he said, the client had found a long diatribe about a bovine god named MOOL in an obscure template file deep in the codebase, and I said, "ah, yeah, that was probably me."

The head of IT for the former client had found the code and gotten in touch with my coworker and said, "I assume this isn't a security breach, but I also don't know what the hell it is." He thankfully had a sense of humor about it, and it ended up being a nice opportunity to catch up. Pretty much the best possible outcome.

Now adays I would never do that, after experiencing real security breaches and dealing with that nightmare. But it was fun knowing A. My ancient horrible code was still in production and B. The comment I had left, which I'd forgotten about, and probably assumed no one would ever read, had been found like a flag in the moon or at least a time capsule.

<@owebmaster> So I know which of the 2 kinds of people in the world they are.

<@objclxt> That makes more sense. Thanks.

<@fredoralive> I assume that's the "The Monkey" testing tool for the original Mac that's mentioned in the footnotes in the Androids book. Supposedly goes back to the infinite monkey theorem that makes monkeys act as a metaphor for randomness, and it was also mentioned that one of the developers of Android had used the same kind of monkey testing for WebTV and Palm OS.

<@znpy> that's because you're not a monkey

<@fredoralive> True, it has never been in an HTML standard, however it was definitely a documented part of early HTML.

The blink element was in Netscape Navigator's HTML dialect in 1993/94, when early HTML was still just hitting IETF RFCs / DRAFTs, you can find blink in the Netscape HTML developer documentation from just after that era, DevEdge. It was never in NCSA Mosaic, the other big GUI browser of the era.

Later on in the process of being standardized, when it was more W3C than IETF albeit still mainly the same people, Netscape agreed to drop blink from the proposals if Microsoft dropped marquee, so in that sense yes, it was never in a standardized version of HTML, but many tags in active use at the time were never in a standards doc.

See here https://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html for some history from w3c, who went on to become the formal custodians of HTML after the IETF days.

Edit: here's the earliest Netscape Developer Docs I can see on archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/19961115043739/http://developer....

<@tuveson> Disappointing, the result HTML doesn't actually use <blink> tags.

<@anal_reactor> Yes, it like a rite of passage from a startup to “mature” company. It’s like Google’s or Reddit’s April Fools jokes. Actually, the novelty of April fools jokes can probably be a KPI of how corporatized a company is.

<@anal_reactor> > BTW I used to browse tcrf.net and it was so interesting that video game developers would leave pieces of themselves in their work. Love letters, old memes, angry letters, random shit, whatever.

This is quite dependent on the games you play. Modern games are becoming larger, which makes the project overall more serious and makes it harder to hide easter eggs. That being said, Indie games with small teams still contain a lot of fun and even AAAs can still contain some goodies.

<@anal_reactor> I think it really is up to us to make things as fun as we want to see... There may be more minefields as we grow old (Can a senior pull a harmless prank on newly joined juniors without coming off as mean/threatening?), but at the same time these little joke comments/commit messages, pranks etc.. are what brought people closer together in every place I worked at so far...

I mean what other choice do we really have? let the fun police win?

<@rendaw> > humor is highly contextual.

This is key. Writing jokes is easy, but it is much harder to guarantee that your joke is only displayed in appropriate contexts in the future. When what the author thought was a witty joke shows up in a new and inappropriate context, they no longer look very witty, but instead like a fool. What is funny in developer documentation on a normal Tuesday might not be funny in a negative article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

<@rendaw> Sounds like a problem for outrage culture grumps, not something people having fun with their code should care about.

<@aaronbrethorst> Ah I see you're one of those who would enable `UserManager.DISALLOW_FUN`!

I personally quite enjoy a bit of whimsy in code. What we do (mostly) isn't that serious (modulo those, including me once upon a time, who work on literal life and death software)

<@aaronbrethorst> Live a little. When you've passed away, was all the seriousness paid off?

That said, funny code should still work

<@aaronbrethorst> I couldn’t agree more. I work in a codebase that has a handful of these “fun”-named functions/concepts and I hate it. It wasn’t funny the first time I came across it (just very confusing) and it’s not fun having to explain to new hires why a few things are named the way they are.

It needlessly complicates reading/following the code. Even if you explain the naming back at where you define the function/variable it add an extra click-through/hover to read that and an extra translation you have to do in your head when you read the “fun” variable name in the future.

One example is we have a flag called “dinnerbell”. What does that do? It tells the server receiving that flag to “come and get it”, “it” being the full data object instead of just getting a delta. It could have been called a whole slew of other things that would make more sense.

<@aaronbrethorst> I am in this camp as well. Even worse are cute error messages.

If software actually worked, then I'd be fine with more whimsy. But it doesn't, so I'm not.

<@aaronbrethorst> Me too. Professional code isn’t the right place to insert your personality or sense of humour.

<@aaronbrethorst> It's even worse when you stumble upon a repo with already poor documentation, only to find it filled with silly jokes e.g. "You thought this would be easy, right? Well, that's what X thought too, but..." yeah, leave the storytelling aside please.

<@kretaceous> Funny, when I was in my 20s and not British, I knew what a Dalek was because it was just part of the zeitgeist. Tricoders are frequently mentioned as one of the life imitating art type of things that modern tech is striving to take from sci-fi to IRL. I had never even seen an episode of Dr Who, but I was familiar with it because of all the other sci-fi/nerdy stuff I was into. Ironically, I did know what someone wearing an H on their forehead meant from watching Red Dwarf, but that’s a tangent. It just seems like a strange Venn diagram where source code android and Star Trek tricoder do not intersect would be a very odd diagram

<@kretaceous> The age makes sense, but Swedes are definitely into Star Trek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.P.O.C.K

<@kretaceous> I think you're underestimating how Americanized Swedes are.

<@CobrastanJorji> You are aware that there a number of contemporary star trek movies and tv-series (as much as I wish they wouldn't exist), right?

Besides, real nerds very much are into older media and not just current pop culture. Which is why things like trek (and blade runner for that matter) end up getting sequels - because there is an audience for it.

<@Agentlien> Probably because it was dormant for a long time. And then when it was brought back, it was brought back by people who have no clue what made Star Trek good so it has largely sucked.

<@Agentlien> > Star Trek really doesn't seem to be as big as it used to be.

Hint: it was never big outside of the USA. If anything, Internet and the Hollywood reboots is the way most people outside of the USA learnt about it.

Also try to find Europe in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_influence_of_Star_Tre...

<@rs186> China I would expect not to know about Western cultural phenomena. But Star Trek references made it into Japanese animation like the Daicon IV opening (1983) and Dirty Pair (1985?) and quite a few others. It was a globally popular series.

<@la_oveja> I'm sorry... please take this adorable tribble as a consolation!

<@filoleg> You don't really need to be into Star Trek to know what a tricorder is (or at least have heard the term) any more than you need to be into Star Wars to know what a lightsaber is.

<@filoleg> About a decade ago I started watching Star Wars movies for the first time, when there were "only" 6 movies to finish. But by then there were already 12+ Star Trek movies plus TV series. I decided that I'd "choose" Star Wars, and that was enough for me. I am sure Star Trek is a fascinating universe, and I see it mentioned all the time, but I don't think I care about it enough to ever go into that world.

<@readthenotes1> This is so american/age centric please reconsider dispensing respect based on who watched the same TV shows as you growing up