h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Do you still get Friday afternoon joke e-mails in the office?

You know the sort: 'How to give a cat a pill', 'Why God is a woman', that sort of thing? They arrived not long after e-mail did (mid-1990s), but in fact many of these stories had been circulating for years before, sometimes on internal bulletin boards, or sometimes the old-fashioned way, using paper photocopies.

I particularly remember a couple of them which made me laugh a lot at the time. I probably copied them and saved the sheets to read again, or to share with others I met in other spheres. One of them was about macho computer programmers. The other was advice for new parents. I couldn't remember what the titles were, just a few snippets. I've just set out to find if they still existed, and if so, whether they were still as funny - these things do get embellished and rewritten after all. But would I remember enough of them to Google them?

* * *

The first was pretty easy to find. I remembered enough of the title "Real Programmers Don't Eat Quiche":

http://www.bernstein-plus-sons.com/RPDEQ.html

This one's been around since 1984, it says. I suspect it's a lot older still; it looked somewhat dated when I first saw it a couple of years later. It's still very good in parts, and I'm delighted this line is still in it - one I still use to this day:

"Real programmers don't read manuals. Reliance on a reference is the hallmark of the novice and the coward."

* * *

The second Friday afternoon e-mail was more difficult to locate, but I found it here:

"Are you Ready for Parenthood"

http://www.thelaboroflove.com/forum/nick/parenthood.html

This has hardly changed from what I remember, and it's still just as astute.

The bit I remember most is in item 10: "Go to your local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child. A fully grown goat is excellent…"

* * *

Oh, so true...

So, do you still receive and propagate these? What were your favourites?

Not had a Friday Afternoon joke in the workplace for ages. The ones I did like ended up on h2g2 here: A227440 So Long, And Thanks For Laughing

<BB<

I've got a copy of "Real Programmers" here on my PC, which I e-mailed to myself on 16 May 1989, transferring it from an older pre-PC system. The bibliography at the bottom of the article cites articles as recent as 1982, so I'd say it was probably written in 1982 or 1983.

I've also got "The Story of Mel, another Real Programmer" which won't mean much to you unless you are a real programmer yourself.

Other things I kept are:

Santa's Cost-Cutting Exercises (1999?)
The announcement that C and Unix were invented as a hoax (2000?)
How to be annoying (1997)
Hunting Elephants (1995)
Shooting yourself in the foot in various programming languages (1999)
The Year 1000 problem (1999)
Your co-worker could be a space alien (1994)

Nowadays it's FB picture hack sharing. And, of course, xk 'someo ne on the Internet is wrong' cd. Both of which I adore.

Hehe for the parenthood one. I particularly like the one about taking the kid for a walk. Spot on.

I've just checked my "Real Programmers" file and it's different from your link. Mine is a much more elaborate article. I'll quote the first two paragraphs to give you a flavour:

Back in the good old days - the "Golden Era" of computers - it was easy to separate the men from the boys (sometimes called "Real Men" and "Quiche Eaters" in the literature). During this period, the Real Men were the ones that understood computer programming and the Quiche Eaters were the ones that didn't. A real computer programmer said things like "DO 10 I=1,10" and "ABEND" (they actually talked in capital letters, you understand) and the rest of the world said things like "computers are too complicated for me" and "I can't relate to computers - they're so impersonal". A previous work [1] points out that Real Men don't "relate" to anything and aren't afraid
of being impersonal.

But, as usual, times change. We are faced today with a world in which little old ladies can get computers in their microwave ovens, 12-year-old kids can blow Real Men out of the water playing Asteroids and Pac-Man and anyone can buy and even understand their very own Personal Computer. The Real Programmer is in danger of becoming extinct, of being replaced by high-school students with TRASH-80's.

I suspect (but I'm not 100% sure) that the elaboration you quoted was added later. Prior to the internet, there was no easy way of spotting plagiarism, and I suspect someone was trying to pass off the stuff as their own.

Oh, and that hunting elephants was huge - it turned up everywhere!

Never enjoyed it, though.

#5 (of the parenthood one) should read "baby" instead of "small child". Substitute a declawed cat for the octopus--cats run faster.

#9--yes.

The Story of Mel is an absolute classic. Do you have it in the original prose format, or in the verse libre format which became popular later?



Our workplace has never done joke e-mails, perhaps because we're too small.

TRiG.

I got the Story of Mel in the verse format, but didn't like it so I reformatted it back into prose.

I hope we get to see this story one day

The only person I know who still does them is my father in law, who forwards them to everyone on his list. Thankfully, I am not on the list (although I get and musical or baby ones anyway). Occasionally they're good, but usually...

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