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Comment by K-Wall | Hacker News Reader

This is one story I always enjoy when it is brought up.

Me too. Are there any others you could recommend?

Real programmers don't use PASCAL never fails to crack me up. A bit closer to the grandparent comment is the famous story of Mel.

http://web.mit.edu/humor/Computers/real.programmers https://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html

Real programmers was the funniest shit I've read in a while. Even had jokes embedded in the references like the Lucasfilms one. I needed that laugh. :)

Some of my favorite hacker folklore:

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey http://edp.org/monkey.htm

The Magic Switch https://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/magic.html

Quake3's Fast InvSqrt() https://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/8/

The Battle Chess Duck http://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/ (#5)

and of course, The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer https://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html

edit to add: Ford and the $10,000 chalk mark (Ctrl+F Ford) http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinm...

Big second for Quake's Fast InvSqrt, that is a really cool story.

Another favorite of mine. I won't spoil it, it's an entertaining read: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/recovery.html

That is awful. Surely there was a sign attached saying that this equipment is attached to live Monkeys - not just a "do not remove" sign.

I just love the magic switch.

It's so obviously impossible, yet anybody that built complex hardware has seen equally impossible things happen.

That was so fun and a great prank whether true or not. Like you, I've seen enough oddities to think it's possible. I'm going to challenge two hardware guys I know... one an expert on esoteric stuff. to come up with a way to make that happen. Maybe I'll do it to a RaspPI at a maker space near MIT to screw with them. ;)

If the case of the switch was connected to the unused terminal it may have served a purpose by connecting signal and chassis grounds.

I prefer the idea that it was magic :)

This one too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp0_on_fire

Sometimes Wikipedia does have a sense of humour:

> While modern inkjet and laser printers are nowhere near as flammable as their mainframe ancestors,[citation needed].

Here's the car allergic to vanilla ice cream. http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/smann/IceCream/humor.html

Some more:

The disappearing Polish S https://medium.engineering/the-curious-case-of-disappearing-...

System Shock "A story of a 25-year-old font coming back with a vengeance" https://medium.com/designing-medium/system-shock-6b1dc6d6596...

The fact that Polish language has 2 keyboard layouts installed by default probably costed humanity millions of dollars in wasted time, helpdesk calls, etc.

You see - the "typist layout" (the one nobody uses) has "z" and "y" switched. And by default both layouts are enabled, and the shortcut to switch between them is Alt+Space (or Ctrl+Space - I think it changed at some point?). So when you have "z" or "y" in your password and you accidently pressed "alt+space" - your password "stops working". But you won't see why - because it's all stars. So you try 3 times and you have to call helpdesk.

“COMPUTER-RELATED HORROR STORIES, FOLKLORE, AND ANECDOTES”

http://wiretap.area.com/Gopher/Library/Techdoc/Lore/rumor.ne...

“Computer Stupidities”

http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/

Computer stupidities almost gave me a case of fatal hilarity when I first discovered it. Especially the section about smoke is priceless.

http://www.jakepoz.com/debugging-behind-the-iron-curtain/

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