Backend Memes

While everyone's out here having a full-blown brawl over React vs Vue, microservices vs monoliths, and whether tabs or spaces will end civilization, there's some guy peacefully eating his lunch while maintaining a COBOL system that's been running since before the internet had opinions. The real kicker? That COBOL dev is probably making bank because there are like 12 people left on Earth who know how to maintain those ancient mainframes that still process 95% of ATM transactions and credit card swaps. Banks literally can't afford to let these systems die, so they're stuck paying premium rates for developers who learned programming when punch cards were still a thing. Meanwhile, the "modern stack" crowd is too busy fighting about which JavaScript framework will be obsolete next Tuesday to notice they're reinventing the wheel for the 47th time this year. Job security? That COBOL dev has it in spades while the rest of us are one npm audit away from an existential crisis.

The evolution of text editors told through the lens of broken friendships. We've all been there—you started coding with Notepad++ like it was your ride-or-die, then Sublime Text came along with its sleek UI and multi-cursor magic, and suddenly you're acting like Notepad++ never existed. Now Sublime Text is getting the same treatment because VS Code (represented by that orange Sublime logo) showed up with IntelliSense, integrated terminal, extensions for literally everything, and—oh yeah—it's free. No more "unregistered" popup guilt trips. The crossed-out Notepad++ at the bottom really drives home the point: it's not just replaced, it's erased from memory . The text editor graveyard is real, and we're all guilty of moving on without looking back. RIP to the tools that taught us to code before we got fancy with our IDEs.

The AI/ML revolution has created a new aristocracy in tech, and spoiler alert: traditional developers aren't invited to the palace. While ML Engineers, Data Scientists, and MLOps Engineers strut around like they're founding fathers of the digital age, the rest of us are down in the trenches just trying to get Docker to work on a Tuesday. Web Developers are fighting CSS battles and JavaScript framework fatigue. Software Developers are debugging legacy code written by someone who left the company in 2014. And DevOps Developers? They're just trying to explain to management why the CI/CD pipeline broke again after someone pushed directly to main. Meanwhile, the AI crowd gets to say "we trained a model" and suddenly they're tech royalty with VC funding and conference keynotes. The salary gap speaks for itself—one group is discussing their stock options over artisanal coffee, while the other is Googling "why is my build failing" for the 47th time today.

Oh the AUDACITY! You want your functions to be clean, readable, and self-documenting with proper parameter names? Well TOUGH LUCK because the dates package decided to go full minimalist mode and name everything like they're texting on a flip phone from 2003. But the MOMENT you try to feed it some actual shorthand notation, it throws a tantrum like "sorry sweetie, you're not my type" 💅 The absolute DRAMA of trying to validate dates with strict parameters while simultaneously dealing with cryptic abbreviated format strings. It's giving "I want my cake and eat it too" energy, except the cake is type safety and the eating is... well, also type safety. Choose your poison: either write "my_stinky_params" that look like a toddler named them, OR embrace the chaos of shorthand that the library won't even recognize. There is no middle ground, only suffering.

Oh honey, the AUDACITY. The sheer BLASPHEMY of suggesting JavaScript is the best language for backend development just sent this kid straight to the orphanage. Like, sure, Node.js exists and all, but calling it the *best*? That's not just wrong, that's a war crime in the developer community. The Terminator here said "nope, not my child" and yeeted that relationship into the void faster than you can say "callback hell." Nothing says "I'm disowning you" quite like your mom being a backend dev and hearing you praise JS for server-side work. Python, Java, Go, C#, Rust—they're all sobbing in the corner while this kid just torpedoed their entire family tree with one cursed opinion. RIP to those foster parents, they never stood a chance.

Friday deployments are the forbidden fruit of software development, and this developer just took a big ol' bite. Cruising along smoothly on a regular day? No problem! But the SECOND you decide to push that "deploy" button on a Friday afternoon, you've basically signed a blood oath to sacrifice your entire weekend to the bug gods. What could possibly go wrong, right? EVERYTHING. Everything can go wrong. Now instead of enjoying your Saturday brunch and Sunday Netflix binge, you're frantically SSH-ing into production servers at 2 AM in your pajamas, wondering why you didn't just wait until Monday like literally every senior dev warned you. The golden rule exists for a reason, folks—your weekend plans are NOT worth testing in production when nobody's around to help you clean up the mess.

You know that console.log() you threw in there to debug that one weird edge case six months ago? Yeah, it's still there. Chilling in production. Logging every single request like a chatty parrot. The brain's concern is totally valid—print statements in production are unprofessional, can leak sensitive data, and clutter your logs. But the developer's casual "I'll remove it next release" is the tech equivalent of "I'll start going to the gym next Monday." Spoiler: they won't. Then comes the plot twist: "It's javascript." And suddenly all bets are off. The brain just accepts defeat because in the Node.js ecosystem, console.log() is practically a feature at this point. Half the npm packages you're using probably have forgotten console.logs scattered throughout their codebases. Your production logs are basically a archaeological dig site of debugging statements from 2018. The real tragedy? That print statement will outlive the developer's tenure at the company.

Oh look, it's the classic SQL injection vulnerability that would make Bobby Tables proud, but with extra steps and worse syntax. The "AI-generated" query is literally concatenating user input directly into a SELECT statement, then somehow trying to GET values from variables that don't exist, AND mixing up assignment operators like it's having an identity crisis. But sure, "vibe coders" who learned from ChatGPT think this is perfectly fine production code. If those kids actually understood parameterized queries, prepared statements, or literally any basic security principle from the last 20 years, they'd realize this is a hacker's wet dream. One simple '; DROP TABLE users;-- and your entire database is toast. The real tragedy? AI code generators will confidently spit out garbage like this, and junior devs who don't know better will ship it straight to prod. Then they'll be shocked when their company makes headlines for a data breach. But hey, at least the code "works" in their local environment! 🎉

You know that feeling when you've got a function that somehow works despite violating every principle of clean code, defying all logic, and looking like it was assembled by a drunk architect? Yeah, that's this balcony. It serves its purpose—technically—but nobody understands how or why, and the structural integrity is... questionable at best. The best part? You're too terrified to refactor it because the moment you touch that one line, the entire application might collapse. So you just leave it there, add a comment like "// DO NOT TOUCH - it works, idk why", and slowly back away. Ship it to production and pray the next developer doesn't ask questions. Legacy code in its purest form—functional, horrifying, and absolutely untouchable.

So you're building your app and you're like "I'll use an ORM for database abstraction so I can switch databases later!" Sure, Jan. Sure you will. The brutal truth? Both the galaxy-brain geniuses writing raw SQL and the smooth-brain rebels who also write raw SQL have figured out what the ORM evangelists refuse to admit: you're NEVER switching databases . That Postgres instance you spun up on day one? That's your ride-or-die until the heat death of the universe. Meanwhile, the "average" developers are stuck in the middle with their ORMs, adding layers of abstraction for a migration that'll never happen, debugging cryptic ORM-generated queries, and pretending they're writing "portable" code. Spoiler alert: the only thing you're porting is technical debt. The real power move? Just admit you're married to your database and write those beautiful, optimized raw queries without shame. Your future self will thank you when you're not deciphering what monstrosity your ORM generated at 3 AM.

You know that moment when your brain is screaming "FFMPEG! IT'S FFMPEG!" but your fingers are already committed to typing FFMPREG? SpongeBob here perfectly captures that internal battle we all lose. The muscle memory just takes over and suddenly you're staring at "command not found" wondering why your terminal hates you. The worst part? You know it's wrong. You've typed ffmpeg a thousand times. But there's something about the MPEG part that makes your fingers want to throw in random letters like you're playing keyboard Scrabble. It's like your brain autocorrects to the most phonetically awkward version possible. Bonus points if you've also typed "ffpmeg" or "fmpeg" in the same session. At that point just alias it to "videothing" and call it a day.

Your manager wants you to deploy a microservices architecture with real-time data processing and AI-powered analytics. Meanwhile, your work laptop is still running on that Intel Core i3 from 2015 with 4GB of RAM and takes 10 minutes to boot up. The fan sounds like it's preparing for takeoff but never quite makes it. Sure, I'll just spin up those Docker containers on a machine that crashes when I open more than three Chrome tabs. No problem at all.