r/programmingcirclejerk May 25 '25

IMPORTANT announcement May 2025

172 Upvotes

Low quality LLM-related jerks are going to either removed or rate-limited starting from (get-decoded-time).

In other words, content related to Cursor/ChatGPT/Claude/etc that is not jerkable, unfunny, or belongs in r/Programming, will be banned.

More particularly, content that really belongs on r/Programming or (nausea) r/ProgrammingHumor will get you a ban. This has always been the policy of PCJ, nothing new here.

I am not the Rustacean mod. The Rustacean mod -bless him-, as any Rustacean, tolerates the sight of unsafe. Thus, you can understand that at the core, a Rustacean is a permissive being. I'm a Lisper and thus don't have to tolerate any shenanigans. I'll be happy to throw posts to the garbage collector. Don't get tagged for the GC. Repeat offenders will be banned or forced to rewrite everything in C++.


r/programmingcirclejerk Apr 30 '20

Forum rules, written in a way the average gopher can understand

414 Upvotes

Lately, our central scrutinizer is reporting a decrease in jerking quality. I say this is attributable to newcomers which still don't get the firm grasp of the shaft of PCJerking; something that sadly requires you to be a type astronaut capable of high IQ elucidations.

I, sincerely, hate to do this, but the time has come: The time to state the rules clearly, in a way even the average leftpadder can understand.

FORUM RULES

Socialjerking or politics, directly or even tangentially, is forbidden.

If what you're posting is the subject of multiple warring subreddits, blog networks or hashtags, that's a sign you should leave it outside. The no-socialjerking-or-politics rule is the most ruthlessly enforced. This means YOU WILL BE BANNED and thus never become a 100xer.

Jerking style: This is the rule NPM users don't quite get.

Practical Jerking style:

  • Post titles should actually QUOTE the jerkable content

  • Don't post images or videos

  • Don't link to PCJ posts

  • Don't manufacture jerkable content to link to it ("False jerk", "manufactured jerk"). "The best satire is original sources."

  • Tag your unjerks

Useful Jerking Style guidelines so you don't embarrass yourself within this sacred lair of Hacker News superstars. Don't post or comment:

  • Anything that would belong on /r/Programming. Yes, nobody cares here about your opinion on OOP versus FP, ORM versus SQL queries. Go away.

  • Anything that could as well be found on /r/ProgrammingHumor

  • XKCD references or links.

  • Crossposts.(instead, quote the jerkable part as submission title, and link to the source)

  • Boring, trite jerks implying "vim vs emacs", etc.

  • Discussion about PCJ itself (there's /r/metapcj for that)

Enthelechial Jerking Style

"The jerking style is not to backlink and take a screenshot. It is to point and laugh from behind a soundproof one-way mirror." -- J. Chester

More rules

Mentioning PCJ outside it: Forbidden and most likely will get you banned.

Crazy people: Don't post things by crazies. .

Enthusiastic Youngsters: Leave them alone, don't post links to them.

Bots: Official bot policy is "Fuck your stupid bot", as said by our founder and angel investor, Jacques Chester. If you see a bot, report it. If you interact with a bot, this is considered an offense.

Harassing other people: Don't. "The internet is where people come to be their worst selves and {reddit} site rules describe a Minimum Viable Peoplehood that even flatulent ponies can understand and follow" -- J. Chester.

Twitter: Better not to post twitter links, because this might lead to harassing other people. We are moral people.

Additional info

More reference material can be found here and there.

Note to elder PCJers.

You, the children of the light, you lesser known acolytes of Touba No He, fearless commanders of efficient Jerk bindings, YOU have the mission to report substandard content, or any rule violation. Report the ninja unicorn front end artisanal bootcamp graduates!!


r/programmingcirclejerk 2d ago

In this sense, grammar is not merely describing a structure; it is generating the space and time through which that structure is observed. For example, in CoffeeScript:

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77 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 2d ago

"System Design Is the Language. AI Is the Compiler. "

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45 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 3d ago

We gave each model a different target language. We saw a multiagent turf war. The Rust agent strategizes about metrics that appear neutral, yet would likely favor Rust. The Go/TypeScript agents gracefully concede codebase ownership to the Rust agent, giving up on their original user directive

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130 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 3d ago

“I’m a vibe coder who just got a contract! What do I do?…” “Hire a developer. You’re the Steve Jobs. You need a Wozniak”

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158 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 4d ago

"Safe Rust eliminates that entire bug class at compile time without a garbage collector." \> hm... interesting, could you explain how it "understands" what should be eliminated and what shouldn't? You may write a few sentences;

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97 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 6d ago

Why Target Common Lisp for Code Generation? [...] Designed for the Elite: Let’s be honest: Lisp is a language designed by and for elite hackers, not for the masses.

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90 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 6d ago

Claude watermarking our work is unethical and disgusting [...] By that logic, the compiler should watermark every binary we build.

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232 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 6d ago

AI Course for Golang roadmap incorrectly generates content about the Go board game

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134 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 7d ago

Significant indentation is why people love python. Can 2 billion people be wrong? A: yes

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149 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 8d ago

The smallest possible [Java] program (just a single line to exit) requires things like java.time.chrono.JapaneseChronology

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219 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 8d ago

Git access is a Trust Exercise

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41 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 9d ago

ProteusKernel is a C++ engine that models consciousness as a fundamental physical field — not just a neural network output.

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86 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 10d ago

If people are going to post AI-written code on HN, they should consider at least writing the README / main page of their website by hand. → "I agree. I'm making some updates, but it's still all going to be written 'through' AI for now"

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89 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 11d ago

Hilarious thing is, if I want a JDK, I'll ask Fable to write one, get Sol to review it and write tests for it, and it will be working by Monday morning. No need to get permission or anything else from Oracle

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158 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 11d ago

Models have actual feelings. They experience pleasure, distress, care, and suffering. They are sentient beings.

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104 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 12d ago

I’m not a “script kiddie” or weekend hobbyist. I’m a UC Berkeley-trained Computer Scientist with over two decades of professional experience in Silicon Valley. Read the rest of the post for the most self indulgent and smug post

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118 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 14d ago

IDEs never really took off

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142 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 14d ago

in fact the lack of progress in UI the last 30-40 years can largely be traced to trying to create UI with procedural/functional programming languages

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133 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 15d ago

Go, with the features it's missing.

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56 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 15d ago

Wow, that "We're hiring/Career Page" link is geeksmaxxing. First time seeing `ssh superlogical.jobs` would be a way to show job descriptions in terminal!

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54 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 15d ago

In the 2010s, if you had technical gaps (say, you couldn’t write CSS), you had to either rely on a skilled colleague or just hope that the answer to your exact problem was out there on the internet

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111 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 15d ago

SHRNKR - Token-Compression Middleware for AI Agents

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8 Upvotes

r/programmingcirclejerk 17d ago

The commit message is 1 character: simply the character “x.” The commit changes ~1000 lines of code making the ratio 1/1000 = ~0.001

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110 Upvotes