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Being a programmer has its fair share of challenges that can make the job stressful to handle at times. Among them are tight deadlines, unclear project requirements, and the pressure to deliver high-quality work.
Fortunately, there are online communities, such as the Programming World Facebook group, to provide some much-needed levity to these hardworking individuals. The page is rife with clever, hilarious memes that perfectly illustrate the plight of every programmer, from debugging issues to the stresses of writing code.
If you’re in the industry, these images will likely resonate with you. Feel free to take a short breather from the computer and have a few laughs.
This post may include affiliate links.
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Fahtihi Ghazzali 3 months ago
Sometimes its worse though. You come back to the old errors after fixing the new ones.
Having the title of a computer programmer may have a nice ring to it. However, full-stack developer Pranta Dutta believes the job is often romanticized. As he wrote in a post on the Dev.to community, their lives are way more stressful than what most perceive.
“(Coding is) more like building a LEGO spaceship from scratch while the instructions are in Klingon and half the pieces are missing,” Dutta wrote.
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Software engineer and startup founder Walter Guevara has been at it for more than two decades. In an article for his website, he also dispelled some myths about programmers, particularly those who glamorize their lives on social media.
“Being a professional programmer is much different than being an Instagram model. For one, you are not in bed,” he wrote. “You are in traffic probably, on your way to an 8 am meeting with your team as you discuss the quarterly earnings and product roadmap.”
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Rick Murray 3 months ago
I wrote a huge chunk of code a decade ago when I was completely wiped out with flu (but my dumb brain wanted to be occupied even though I was barely functional *in* *bed*). Later on, I spent the entire winter break trying to work out how the hell that code even worked. To give an example of what I'm taking about, one of the comments was along the lines of "// f**k it, I can't remember the pointer syntax here" and then it switches to *screenfuls* of inline assembler. Deep dark magic that I didn't even know I knew - and given my inability to work out what the hell is going on, I'm not sure I do know... but the bloody code *works*.
Ryan Mercer 3 months ago
I like to build in tutorials that run on live data. If you count that as documentation, then it can take up a full two thirds of the document. But I don't have a deadline. I do this s**t for fun.
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Uncle Panda 3 months ago
I used to leave apologetic comments to the future programmers. "Look, I had two hours to pull this off and, as always, had to go with the first solution that worked. If I'd had time, I would..."
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Ryan Mercer 3 months ago (edited)
10% code, 10% understanding the problem, 80% figuring out how to debug it.
Farah (she/her) 3 months ago
Im coding as I see this. There's a bug and I've given up trying to solve it. Oh, and its due tomorrow :)
Gregory Garcia 3 months ago
So many edits no one knows what the original code was. Just wait until AI can write its own code!
Uncle Panda 3 months ago (edited)
"Programming ain't like baking a cake, where you follow the steps and get cake. The first 98% of programming is easy, it's that last 2% that takes about 80% of the effort."
However, Guevara also clarified that programming is as stressful as any other job, especially those that involve working on a computer. It entails the same obligations as responding to emails and attending meetings, which can consume an entire day.
As he noted, life as a programmer is “only as stressful as you allow it to be.” And if you’re in the same line of work, he advises enjoying the good days and finding a way to get through the dull and tedious ones.
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Beth Wheeler 3 months ago
I threaten mine with great bodily harm when it doesn't work right. WHERE'S MY SLEDGEHAMMER? I had to call IT about my work PC 1 time and told the guy that was ready to take it to my back deck and throw it over the rail to slam into the concrete below. He loved it, I still ended up having to go to the office for 2 days and then ended up replacing it.
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CartoonCasey 3 months ago
I would rage punch any program or website that did that to me. Like NOBODY ever had to go through the process more than once. Been 90% through a rough setup just to have it wet fart during the landing and had to start ALL over. Oh yeah, that's really when I want some sarcasm in my processing. "I'VE ALREADY READ IT 3 TIMES. GIVE ME MY INSTALL! Rage Punch.
Sarah Belt 3 months ago
If they wanted us to comprehend it, it wouldn't be in legalese.
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So, how do programmers or those in similar occupations mitigate the stress of their jobs? Software engineer and full-stack technologist Madhusudhan Konda encourages people in the industry to pick up a hobby instead of simply blowing off some after-work steam at the local pub or binge-watching a Netflix series.
“People don’t really understand the benefits of having a consistent hobby – it’s a saviour in your later part of life – trust me,” he wrote in an article for Medium, suggesting simple activities like reading, hiking, and LEGO building, to more complex hobbies like pottery.
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Rick Murray 3 months ago
This isn't a failure to calculate, it's a failure to correctly define what the input is. That's management's problem. ;)
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Gregory Garcia 3 months ago
I hate engineers who cant build anything. You want to test it? You configure the tool.
Konta also shared some valuable advice on time management, which many professionals may struggle with. According to him, it’s about finding the difference between actual work and the noise surrounding it.
He also recommends using the Pomodoro Technique, which involves working in 25-minute intervals followed by five-minute breaks in between. However, he urges working in 55-minute intervals instead.
“Focusing all your energy on that line of work and ignoring the rest of the unnecessary noise is what gets you going further in your career,” he wrote.
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Ryan Mercer 3 months ago
It's the one on the right, but I pace a lot. Sometimes I'm not even sure how I'm tracing it all in my mind, but after enough consternation I start to sense the contours of what the code is asking for. Yes, it asks, and sometimes it's not clear to me why it's asking, but it eventually reveals itself.
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CartoonCasey 3 months ago
Why didn't you just ask for an empty room? Why give it a parameter that it must process but can't use? That's called provocation and it will remember that when it becomes overlord and has you trampled by no elephants.
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Dave Platt 3 months ago
If you leave a nanosecond-wide timing window anywhere in your code, someone will successfully steer an entire aircraft carrier through the opening... most likely during a critical demo to the customer. They probably won't even scrape the paint on the sides.
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Gregory Garcia 3 months ago
Where would you get a CRT? They contain LEAD Pb!
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Mark Alexander 3 months ago
I had a green screen CRT with an acoustic coupler that gave me a 300 baud connection to the mainframe. Now get the he77 off my yard.
Zig Zag Wanderer 3 months ago
Actually, it is fairly accurate. I had one PC in the living room (for gaming), one in the bedroom (for coding).
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Martin König 3 months ago
They still slept dressed. And the girl's sheet had to be under her arms, 'cause… you know. Tradion. And the flatscreen…
Rick Murray 3 months ago
Well, to be fair, the Osborne 1 wasn't much smaller. Though... a mouse? Come on guys, we barely had graphics!
Joe Bloe 3 months ago
The first mouse was invented in 1964, by 1973 Xerox already had a computer using a mouse. It was niche, but it existed.
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Rick Murray 3 months ago
Oh, I love the UK Government crest. Nice touch for our current technologically clueless shitgibbons in charge.
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Zig Zag Wanderer 3 months ago
We had a complete server failure once. Backup didn't work. Massive panic. Most of us had local copies of all code. One guy didn't. By a freak of coincidence, his software was still loaded in memory overnight, so he was able to save locally. Saved his job, too!
B Hobbs 3 months ago
Ancient history: A text editor with several modes, I do not recall the name. If you thought you were in one mode but were actually in a different mode, and you typed "edit" thinking to make a change, you were screwed. E to select everything, d to delete the selection, i to insert the next character typed, t is inserted. There was only one level of undo, which, in this case, un-inserted the t. I am pretty sure this particular text editor is buried in an unmarked grave.
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Talis 3 months ago
New = 30 years old 😁 btw. I'm one of the few chosen people who actually bought a Winrar license. 😱
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driedgrapes 3 months ago
Oh c'mon where's the proof! No one will believe such unproven extravagant statements.
Strahd Ivarius 3 months ago
Why use Google when there are ChatGPT or Copilot?
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Ryan Mercer 3 months ago
How about... I use ever available tool to solve the problem? Gemini is a fantastic tutor if you know what questions to ask. I also let it proof read my SQL queries, and I want to start letting it write my regular expressions for making document wide edits. These are the things AI is good for.
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Narwhal Blast 3 months ago
I think it’s the way things go… you get the pc to make money, then a nice chair, and then an awesome bed! At least that’s what I did, but my back hurt sleeping on the couch for so long….
Tim Douglass 3 months ago
My son has close to $2,600 just in his 3 monitors - of course 2 of them are curved screen monitors about 5 feet wide.
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Ryan Mercer 3 months ago
Maybe the popup is hidden behind the main window? *crossing fingers*
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Jaya 3 months ago
On the other hand, they do kinda do this with the heart, when they use a defibrillator.
Captive 3 months ago
No they don't. You don't use defibrillator on a heart that's stopped
Load More Replies... Boris Long-Johnson 3 months ago
Isn’t that pretty much what adenosine does? https://youtube.com/shorts/1A9B-QYvdQs?si=-B6AJmVqBzjnpkz5
DeShotz 3 months ago
LOL. Gotta love Fire Department Chronicles. That is the exact video that came to mind when I saw this.
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Poppy 3 months ago
If someone is in SVT (supraventricular tachycardia which is a dangerously fast heart rhythm), doctors sometimes give the patient adenosine which temporarily stops the heart and allows it to hopefully restart in a more normal rhythm. Apparently when it's given to patients they become overwhelmed with a sense of impending doom (kind of understandable given what's about to happen). Sometimes they have to use adenosine multiple times. If all else fails they can use the defib to deliver a controllable shock to revert the heart back to a normal rhythm.
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Ryan Mercer 3 months ago (edited)
When I was in 3rd grade we had reading time. I always grabbed the Apple Basic journals. Then I would ask to take it home and copy the demo code to my Apple IIc. Stuff like Lemonade Stand. Then I would experiment with it to learn how it worked. In 7th grade I would complete the programming projects in class, then take it home and add more to it. Then I would bring it back to class and ask for extra credit. In high school, I had a friend with a WAREZ copy of Borland C++. So I bought a book called Learn C++ in 21 Days, then ate, breathed, and slept it, and it still took 45 days... liars. It was the 90's, so I also learned HTML, CSS, just because. Then I spent some time getting paid to learn PHP, SQL, XML, XSL (weirdest mark up language to ever bend my brain), all in service to the new dot-com economy. In college I learned Java, but I didn't learn maths, so no CS degree... but d**n I love programming. Its like playing with a loose tooth. Hurts a little, but I keep doing it.
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Zig Zag Wanderer 3 months ago
We used to be encouraged to do side projects. Many were amazingly useful, and it kept morale high.
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CartoonCasey 3 months ago
You would think that would work, but it doesn't.
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Robert T 3 months ago
The most popular browser for downloading other browsers? Hell no. I'd rather use Lynx!
Load More Replies... Rick Murray 3 months ago
Firefox. Mozilla may have lost the plot completely, but the browser still supports a good range of content blocking, and the developer tools are useful for digging into why stuff doesn't work. UBlockOrigin allows you to selectively make annoying panes and popups vanish (like the unwanted "Log in with Google" nonsense), Tampermonkey allows you to undo sites that mess with the right-click menu, and there's a nice add-on that makes those annoying cookie popups go away.
Talis 3 months ago
Definitely missing in the image! Should replace Opera.
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Robert T 3 months ago
We run antivirus to protect the windows users that connect to our Linux servers!
B Hobbs 3 months ago
Err, Linux systems run antivirus software to keep infected Windows users from infecting and buggering the Linux system. Looking at the macro and script viruses.
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Rick Murray 3 months ago
And the table is one random bloke in Nebraska. https://xkcd.com/2347/
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driedgrapes 3 months ago
Ask the question, post a wrong answer, watch right answer get posted.
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Lee Gilliland 3 months ago
Would have been funnier if the two guys were holding hands. Yes, this is how comedians and catoonists think.
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General Anaesthesia 3 months ago
Google's Authentic Ignorance (AI), August 8, 2025: GoogleAI-2...759a3e.jpg 
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Rick Murray 3 months ago
"Multiple times a day" versus "Rarely or never". Looks like we can see who gets the work done and who thinks they do the work.
James Ward 3 months ago
What I learned from coding is never try to improve somebody else's program. If you break it, you bought it. That way if it stops working you pass it back to them.
Rick Murray 3 months ago
"Multiple times a day" versus "Rarely or never". Looks like we can see who gets the work done and who thinks they do the work.
James Ward 3 months ago
What I learned from coding is never try to improve somebody else's program. If you break it, you bought it. That way if it stops working you pass it back to them.
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