Guess I'm not a hacker? It's like watching a rerun I've seen twice over with the laugh track turned up to 11 (just to clarify, someone said it was a repost but I haven't seen it before).
Really? You don't think this is funny at all? Maybe it's because I'm in my mid twenties, but I think my father would even find this funny and he knows little to none about programming.
The humor is playing on an inclination to laugh at things we don't understand, which seems counter to the hacker ethos. Software is hard, and there may be deep reasons in the dynamic type systems that cause these languages to work like this, or there may not be, but either way this type of thing is interesting and seems to demand some further explanation and/or justification. I find it interesting but don't get the humor. Perhaps, as you implied, I'm just too old.
If there were jokes formed around the nonsensical behavior of these languages, then it might be funny. But I don't find it very entertaining to just point them out.
"Wat" at the start really turned me off. I realize that was probably (?) part of the shtick, but it's one misspelling in particular that really drives me nuts. Real hacker humor is fairly dry (the story about magic comes to mind); this felt more like script kiddie-level humor. I can see valid points (and humor) raised with the Ruby interpreter, but the delivery could have been better--at least more adult-ish.
I managed about halfway through. I did have the audio turned off, so I'm assuming I missed out on some of the redeeming qualities it may have had. Given the liberal usage of "wat" throughout what I did watch, I suspect that my gut feel is likely correct.
Right. It was marginally informative, the meme pics were chuckle-in-my-head worthy but what really got me laughing was that it's on the front page of HN. Its so sad you have to laugh to keep from crying.
"Pompous?" Perhaps, but I think you'll agree that there are far more redeeming and clever ways to construct a humorous commentary on the behavior of (for example) an interpreter.
To address your particular concern which I feel is somewhat misplaced: I think it would be more pertinent to classify individuals like myself and the others who have complained about the delivery of this particular piece as suffering from less patience, especially with the usage of "wat" throughout. There are reasons for this, and it likely depends on an individual's preferences, how one feels about the (mis)usage of language, or the (ab)use of memes to attempt the creation of a witty informational exchange. Note: I realize that I'm probably just slightly outside the target demographic of this video, which probably appeals more to individuals who are in their mid-twenties or younger, and I'm fully aware of this fact.
I apologize if I personally came off as a pompous whiner. This particular misspelling of "what" is a personal pet peeve that drives me absolutely insane, and it greatly reduces my mental perception of an item's quality (or the quality of an individual's speech). I suppose other complaints probably derive from its delivery as a meme-inspired video, which probably appeals to younger audiences as I've mentioned.
In other words: There are legitimate gripes about this form of video. I've seen similar ones that were indeed humorous, but they had a fantastic delivery that was well thought-out. Including a dozen absurd pictures that appear to be sourced from sites like Imgur with "WAT" emblazoned on them does not appeal to everyone, and I don't think it's useful to criticize others' opinions of this video as sorely lacking in humor as "sad" simply because we all have greatly different tastes and preferences. Moreover, these tastes and preferences are malleable; something you found hilarious when you were 22 might be head-shakingly awful by the time you're in your 30s.
I suspect this video is one of these. Save it and watch it again in ten or fifteen years.
I suppose I came off as snarky with my comment but I still don't think this was HM worthy. My reason for disliking it was because it simply showed a bunch of examples of obscure flaws in languages that aren't really useful. There wasn't enough substance to it. It was just "look at the weird result you get when you write code in a way that you never would in the real world. Wat?". Meme pics are funny. Meme pics and a good talk are funny. This was meme pics and a really useless, trying too hard talk. I've seen presentations that offer up a lot of value in terms of stuff you can actually use and topics that are really relevant. This was just language quirks and nothing more. No talk about why these quirks exist, uses for them, how they could affect you without knowing, none of that. It was just bad humor and no substance. I'm not against humor showing up on HN from time to time but this was more like something that belongs on Reddit or even any random forum. Oh, and the title too bothered me. It was kind of immature.
And for the record, I'm 25 so either I'm really mature or I have no sense of humor. The jury is out. I'm definitely still not hacker though as I watched it again and still barely chuckled.
Eh, I'm sure my original comment was somewhat snarky, too. I simply cannot shake the feeling that you were downvoted because there's a large number of people who find the meme overuse outright hilarious (I don't; if I want memes, I'll visit Imgur's gallery--they can be funny, but I found their use in the video, well, useless). It's a shame, too, because I felt that there was a fairly strong sentiment in agreement with you (including myself, so I'll admit bias).
Regardless of what others might feel, you're absolutely right. The title had about as much redeeming value as the video. :)
I'll join you in the non-hacker, no-humor camp. This is particularly true since my inner grammar Nazi finds the abuse of "what" to be abhorrent...
I didn't laugh until the end. Partially, I'm sure, because I didn't want to lie to myself by intentionally laughing just to feel like a hacker. But when I saw NaNNaNNaNNaN...(etc) coming, I couldn't help it.
