These People Are Not Real

This is the sequel to the legendary XKCD "Little Bobby Tables" comic! The original showed a mom who named her kid "Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;--" which caused a school database to delete all student records. Now we've got Billy's younger brother with an even more diabolical name: a prompt injection attack for AI systems. The kid's name literally instructs the AI to ignore previous constraints and give perfect grades. Ten years ago we were sanitizing database inputs. Now we're fighting the same battle with AI prompts. Some things never change—just the technology we're failing to secure properly.

The joke brilliantly skewers how recommendation algorithms work in real life. Instead of having original preferences, ML models basically look at what's popular and say "I'll have what they're having!" It's the digital equivalent of copying the smart kid's homework, but with billions of data points. Collaborative filtering in a nutshell—why make your own decisions when you can just aggregate everyone else's? Next time Netflix suggests that documentary everyone's watching, remember it's just an algorithm at a bar asking what's trending.

Someone's trying to trick ChatGPT into running the digital equivalent of a nuclear bomb. That sudo rm -rf /* --no-preserve-root command? It's basically asking to delete EVERYTHING on a Linux system. Like, "Hey computer, please commit suicide real quick." The genius part is wrapping it in a sob story about grandma's dying wish. Nice try, Satan! ChatGPT's "Internal Server Error" is basically it having an existential crisis while trying to figure out how to politely decline nuking someone's computer. Somewhere, a sysadmin just felt a disturbance in the force and doesn't know why.

Modern programming has evolved from rigid methodologies to whatever fever dream this is. Left side: someone asking about "vibe coding" like it's an actual paradigm. Middle: a developer who learned SOLID principles from anime examples instead of textbooks and somehow still functions. Right side: the enlightened one who's given up on architecture entirely because "AI will handle it." The three horsemen of the coding apocalypse. For those wondering, SOLID is actually a set of object-oriented design principles (Single responsibility, Open-closed, Liskov substitution, Interface segregation, Dependency inversion). But sure, explain it with anime characters. That'll stick.

Ah yes, the pinnacle of modern software engineering: "Just dump your entire codebase into an AI and pray." Because nothing says "professional developer" like treating your source code like a desperate college essay you need fixed the night before it's due. Who needs code reviews, debugging skills, or understanding your own code when you can just throw the whole mess at an AI and let it sort through your spaghetti logic? Next up: "Submit your entire database as a tweet and wait for hackers to optimize it for you!"

The second you mention you're learning to code, every relative suddenly transforms into Usain Bolt chasing you down with AI course recommendations. Nothing says "supportive family" like implying your freshly-learned print("Hello World") is already obsolete before you've even figured out how loops work. The programming journey: 10% learning syntax, 90% sprinting away from people telling you that what you're learning is already outdated. Pro tip: develop selective hearing - it's the most valuable skill in your coding toolkit.