As if to refute the notion that developers have no capacity for humor, Janice J. Heiss caps off her four-part series on developer life with "Favorite and Funny Code," amusing anecdotes from three luminaries in the field: Joshua Bloch, Tom Ball and Masood Mortazavi. For the earlier parts of her series, see Parts 1 and 2 and Part 3.

Heiss summarizes her series, writing, "Over the years I've heard noted developers talk about their favorite code, funniest code, most beautiful code, how to write code, how not to write code, the obstacles to writing good code, what they love and hate about writing code, and so on. In the process, I've encountered a lot of insight that is worth preserving--and heard some funny stories.

"Parts One and Two of this series provided advice on how to write good code. In Part Three, developers reflect on the actual process of writing code, how it happens, what it feels like, and how they do it. In the fourth and final part of the series, three developers share their funniest and most favorite code, and tell funny stories."

Joshua Bloch contributes several examples of code that is by turns elegant, comic and exemplary.

Tom Ball's candidate example concerns an "Easter egg" that he inserted in the editor to commemorate the acquisition of Convergent Technologies by Unisys. "CT forever" became a morale builder until Unisys management tired of it, though traces remain if you know how to look for them, Ball says.

Masoos Mortazavi tells of being ushered out of an employment interview by a CTO skeptical of his ability to have written a Java program to implement a set of path-planning algorithms. When Mortazavi reproduced part of the program, the unbelievers among the interviewing staff sent him packing. Of this episode he says, "The story reflected the classic economic problem of asymmetric information in the concrete case of assessing people's skills before they have started working in a team."

More Information

Developer Insight Series, Part 4: Favorite and Funny Code

Dumb Code Has a Place in the Developers' World

The Process of Writing Code [...read more...]

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