Nation's Programmers Admit They're Just Good at Googling Things | Hacker News Reader

Nation's Programmers Admit They're Just Good at Googling Things

babylonbee.com

10 pointseplanit8 comments

Knowing how to look up information, distinguish good information from bad information, and then apply it to the particular problems you are trying to solve is a very valuable skill within of itself, one which a surprisingly small number of people are able to do well.

I think that many cultures have placed undue value on the ability to memorize and recall information due to the historical difficulty in getting access to information sources (think back several hundred years where only the rich would have access to books). With the availability of the internet, I think we need to start recognizing the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff on the internet (and other places) as a legitimate sign of education and wisdom.

Pretty cute satire, reminiscent of The Onion.

It’s funny because it’s mostly true. I think the other code monkey attribute that makes a “programmer” is the sick addiction/ability to track down a bug for hours or possibly days on end.

This plus Googling amounts to the lions share of my coding “prowess”.

How can you tell from this text that it is satire? Even with your hint, I do not see it evident.

From their About page: "The Babylon Bee is the world’s best satire site."

Ok, I see, thanks; even found a wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Babylon_Bee. "The Babylon Bee is a conservative Christian news satire website that publishes satirical articles on religion, politics, current events, and well-known public figures." Might explain why the text is not funny.

> Might explain why the text is not funny.

Why is open anti-Christian hatred like this allowed on a forum concerned about hate speech?

Well, apparently the sample of my take of satire is also not recognized as such; admittedly, without context, I would also take your comment as serious.

The Bee is terrible satire. This is a reasonably good joke, because they stole it[1].

Which they then made worse by adding some cruelty. "Admit" is their fantasy: "ha ha, you're not so great, you're not really that smart". The original gag "Computer Programming To Be Officially Renamed “Googling Stackoverflow”" is better: it's programmers being in on the joke instead of punching down.

Punching down is pretty much what The Babylon Bee does. Another of their articles is "Dumb AOC Accidentally Strangles Herself Tying Her Shoes (Because She Is So Stupid)". I literally thought that was somebody's parody of the Babylon Bee, but no, that's a real thing:

https://babylonbee.com/news/dumb-aoc-accidentally-strangles-...

I think that may be them attempting to parody themselves. But it's incredibly hard to tell.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/3dxkka/com...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com