
Moderator of r/ProgrammerHumor+

What qualifies as programmer humor, updates to rule 0 and our moderation philosophy

Over the past few weeks we've been working on expanding our mod team and scaling up our moderation efforts in order to increase the quality of the subreddit to accommodate it's growth in the past few months.

Recently, multiple popular posts such as the following that normally fall under rule 0 for not being directly related to programming (programming analogies and jokes vaguely related to the field), but were funny and original, and were liked by the community and some of the moderators. Previously, we've been making exceptions for such posts on a case by case basis, however as more and more of those posts pop up we thought it was time to update our rules instead.

While changing our rules and policies, we consider the following points:

  1. Rules should be short, concise and easy to understand. Our current rules are long and cumbersome, and people tend not to read them at all but later come complaining about their posts being removed.

  2. Enforcement of the rules should be consistent and scalable. If a rule is interpreted differently by each moderator, inconsistent enforcement is bound to happen, which is unfair towards our users and creates confusion and distrust in the moderator team.

Do you think the posts linked above, and posts like this should be allowed? If so, where would you draw the line between keeping the content relevant and letting original, funny and popular posts stay up? Remember that it's quite difficult for a person to objectively say whether a post is original or funny.

We'd love to hear your feedback.

98% Upvoted
What are your thoughts? Log in or Sign uplog insign up
level 1
172 points · 21 days ago

If it has nothing to do with programming, it's better suited on other subs. This is ProgrammerHumor, not tech humor. However posts that are related to programming (even slightly) should be kept. This includes post linked 1st and 2nd post but not 0th one.

level 2
22 points · 18 days ago

100% agree, the first one should be removed, as good as it is, it had nothing to do with programming, the last two do

level 3
-6 points · 13 days ago(6 children)
level 4
17 points · 13 days ago

and the first one has NOTHING to do with programmers. thank you for making my point even while u try to be pedantic.

level 5
-1 points · 13 days ago

Isn't this the first one?

It's definitely a very common experience among programmers. More so than among surgeons, pilots and most other professions.

level 6

I mean. On my first day there's no chance I kill someone so I'm sure surgeons probably have this feeling as an industry requirement. That post has nothing to do with programming and isn't specific to programming as a profession.

level 7
Comment deleted by user10 days ago(0 children)
level 8

Stack overflow is specific to programming. The stack exchange network isn't but that's not joked about so I'm not really sure I follow.

level 6

"Haha! Man that time I had too much coffee and had to go pee!" (pretend this was funny for the sake of argument)

Very common experience among programmers. Shouldn't be on this sub.

level 2

Semantic question, reading 1st as "first" and 2nd as "second" makes me think they shouldn't represent the elements following 0, but rather [0] and [1]. Though they're represented with the numbers 1 and 2, "first" is derived from "forest" as in "most fore" or "at the front", and "second" comes from Latin, meaning "coming directly after", and therefore neither the word "first" nor "second" have any direct connections with the numbers 1 or 2, only the property of being the initial and next element in any list.

ie, if you really wanted to refer to the element after the 0th element, I would say it would be the 1th and 2th elements...

level 2

What are your thoughts on this post of mine that was removed for rule 0 violation? While the content itself was not at all related to programming, the title placed it in the context of programming in a creative and funny way (at least I and 1300 other people thought so).

level 3

You took a funny gif and just added "fix bug" to the title. IMO such posts are very low effort.

From rule #0:


If the title is the only thing that makes a submission related to programming, it's by definition an analogy.

level 4
2 points · 5 days ago · edited 5 days ago

What made it a good post was that it turned an unrelated gif of an unfortunate accident into a relevant joke about a common bug fixing scenario. The setup is that you innocently try to solve a bug, you trust your patch and focus your attention elsewhere. The punchline follows as the whole program fails catastrophically. Such an analogy requires higher thinking, so I wouldn't label it "low effort."

Besides, the point of this post is discussing changes to rule #0. Quoting rule #0 as an opposition to changing rule #0 is nonsense.

Edit: My apologies if I sound gruff. I realize I asked you for your input and I thank you for it, but I thought I'd leave my two cents.

level 3


This rule is for both programming related and humorous content. The latter is subjective, you and I may find a post humorous but someone may not.

level 1

I honestly don't think posts like the 0th one should stay. It has nothing to do with programming and could apply to almost all jobs. Also, can anything be done about the "pRoGrAmMiNg hArD, sTaCkOvErFlOw gOoD" posts? I know it's sort of trendy to talk about how hard programming is (and it is) but quite a lot of programmers are actually pretty decent at their jobs and don't need stackoverflow to do their work for them.

level 2

oh man that and the constant mIsSiNg SeMiColOnS jokes. Semicolons aren't that hard!!!!
literally most of the time, the compiler, ide, or interpreter will tell you exactly where the missing semicolon is - you just have to read.
This is only a problem for either really new programmers ( who'll quickly grow out of this - I did this too) or people who gave up on programming after the if statement came into play.

level 3

Very true. In fact, in general, I feel like there is just an ungodly amount of "relatable" posts in this sub that are only really relatable to new programmers like the ones you mentioned; also the rEcUrSiOn HaRd posts etc.

level 1

As a non programmer I would like to see this sort of content but it's kinda plentiful like every fucking sub has this type shit , I would keep your sub strict and unique

level 2
Yellow security clearance
Moderator of r/ProgrammerHumor, speaking officially+ 51 points · 21 days ago

I second this. In the past the sub used to have a lot of programmer humor (humor that only programmers understood) and in the comments there was people asking, getting an answer, and learning something.

level 2

Just to make sure, so you believe all the posts mentioned should have been removed?

level 3

I feel like you should keep the posts because they directly relate to programming.

level 4

What did you mean by "this sort of content" then?

level 5

Memes and such

level 6
level 7

Only if you're a fine arts major working as a programmer

level 8

I was a graphic design major working as a programmer.

Granted I got my first job as a "web designer" and I had about 1 year before getting my second job as a "front-end developer", but that's not too far that lol.

That being said, that post should be removed. I think there should be at least some effort in making the image content linked to programming somehow, i'm ok with images[images.length - 1] one that OP shared but not the scuba diver one.

level 1

@1: totally agree. Just use one sentence per rule, and a short one at that.

0. If it does not relate to the act of programming, do not post here.

  1. No hotlinks except Imgur or other image hosting services.
    (Sidenote: is this rule still needed?)

  2. No reposts of the last month

  3. Don't (re-) post these things: common posts
    (Also make the image/meme section more descriptive: some of these are already removed)

  4. Titles must be descriptive, and relevant to the content.

An addition to rule 4 (in combination with 0) that i'd like to see is that the content should be able to stand on its own, without the title. There's way too many posts here of some funny image crossposted from elsewhere with the title "coding in notepad" or something similar.

@2 and the question below it:


Just because its related to computers does not make it programming. Using a computer is not programming. Using Linux ("sudo" omg how funny /s) or using any other program (I'm looking at you, vim jokes) is not programming.
IMO the first example is not programming at all. It's a funny image with a funny title – and not even the title is related to programming. This image violates rules #0 and #4.
The second example is suitable for the sub (although I don't particularly find it funny). It relates to programming, allures to "rubber-duck programming" and mentions different programming languages.

I think the current rules already reflect that but, as OP remarks on, are not consistently enforced. And if they are it takes many hours if not days (and people see these posts & keep posting similar things).
So all in all, I agree with the two points mentioned: make the rules more concise, and tighten the enforcement of them.

level 2

You missed that it must be humorous! that's also part of rule 0 as of now

level 3

Humor is necessary, but subjective. We should let the upvotes speak to the "humor-value" of a post.

level 2

Why does it have to be related to programming, and not programmers? The subreddit is called programmer humor, so why should we exclude humor related to programmers, like the education meme?

More posts from the ProgrammerHumor community
Continue browsing in r/ProgrammerHumor
Community Details


HTML Programmers


Slacking Off at Work

Dedicated to humor and jokes relating to programmers and programming.

r/ProgrammerHumor Rules
Rules[0] (related to programming)
Rules[1] (hotlinking)
Rules[2] (reposts)
Rules[3] (common posts)
Rules[4] (titles)
perhaps more apt subs to post

612k members


2.5m members


133k members


182k members


50.7k members


6.4k members


976k members

related subreddits

42.5k members


12.4k members


70.9k members


27.3k members