Expletives in source code
Source code is in many ways a private hangout for developers. End users and management seldom if ever see the code, and when they do it’s so inscrutable they tend not to linger long.
As a result, developers are able to express themselves in source code with little oversight, apart from occassional reviews by fellow developers. This was demonstrated somewhat amusingly when the Windows 2000 source code was leaked, revealing ample profanity.
Now that Google has released a search engine for source code, open source developers can now be subject to the same scrutiny. It didn’t take long for someone to use Google code search for profanity. Some of my favorites:
- From
xscreensaver-3.02/hacks/xscreensaver-sgigl.c:If it dies, but the window ID is still valid, then that means the sub-process has forked itself (as those fuckwits at SGI are wont to do.) In that case, this process should go to sleep, and set up a signal handler
- From
iproxy-0.0.0/autogen.sh:#Running bash because /bin/sh is a complete piece of shit on solaris #I wonder how long it will take the fuckwits at Sun to wake up
- From
prboom-2.4.4/src/hu_stuff.c:message_on = false; message_dontfuckwithme = false; message_nottobefuckedwith = false;
I’d be lying if I said I’ve not done worse in my code now and again.
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