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 77 points 2 months 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 22 points 2 months 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 13 points 2 months ago

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

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 3 points 2 months ago

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

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

people really overthinking the joke in the comments huh

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] jve@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I hate the fucking eagles, man.

[–] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago

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

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

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

[–] ulterno@programming.dev -1 points 2 months ago

You seem the one bothered

[–] NaibofTabr 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

my bad, I thought this was a wendy's

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 14 points 2 months 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 63 points 2 months 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 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] mech@feddit.org 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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 6 points 2 months 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

[–] sping@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 2 months 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.

[–] dnick@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months 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 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Python, though the logic would be backwards:

milk_gallons = 6 if eggs > 0 else 1
[–] dnick@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 months 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 2 months 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 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

any language that allows ternary conditionals

[–] dnick@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months 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?

[–] joyofpeanuts@beehaw.org 11 points 2 months ago

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

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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^

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] slothrop@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 months ago

Careful, there, you could be overthinking it!