C++ With Seatbelts

This Magic: The Gathering card parody perfectly skewers the JavaScript elitism paradox. JS devs looking down on C++ programmers from their "ivory towers" while conveniently ignoring that V8, SpiderMonkey, and every other JS engine is built with the very C++ they mock. It's like criticizing plumbers while living in a house with running water. The pseudo-Shakespearean quote at the bottom is the chef's kiss - a pretentious garnish on an already delicious serving of irony. The mana cost of "1" is perfect too - minimal effort required to maintain this level of cognitive dissonance!

Finally, someone said the quiet part out loud. Every time management pushes for a shiny new tech stack, my bank account feels a disturbance in the force. That moment when your 15 years of C++ wizardry becomes less valuable than a junior who completed "Rust in 30 Days" on Udemy. Memory safety? More like salary safety... for the company. The tech industry's greatest magic trick: convincing us that rewriting perfectly functional systems is about "innovation" rather than resetting the salary clock. Same playbook as when they renamed "programmers" to "software engineers" to "developers" to "ninjas" - different title, same work, fresh salary bands. Guess I'll start learning Rust while updating my LinkedIn to "Blockchain AI Quantum Rust Developer" to stay relevant until the next language comes to destroy my market value.

Someone at Microsoft thought writing C code in PowerShell was a brilliant idea. That's like trying to perform brain surgery with a pizza cutter. The tab literally says "PowerShell" but they're writing C code with main() and argc/argv parameters—the terminal equivalent of wearing socks with sandals. Microsoft finally upgrading the default terminal while developers everywhere scream internally at whoever created this promo image. Ten bucks says the person who made this screenshot has "proficient in C++" on their resume but thinks pointers are what you use to click things.

Left side: Scratch mascot saying "Error? What's an error?" because it's designed for beginners with training wheels and bubble wrap. Right side: Java, C++, Python, and JavaScript screaming "Kill yourself" because they'll happily let you run headfirst into a wall of cryptic exceptions that make you question your career choices. Ten years in and I'm still not sure which approach is more psychologically damaging.

Two types of C programmers in the wild. On the left, the algorithm purist who builds a nested loop monstrosity with variables like "i" and "j" because apparently naming variables is too mainstream. On the right, the pragmatist who just hardcodes the damn star pattern and goes home early. The left guy is still debugging his loop indices while the right guy is already enjoying his weekend. Sure, it's not "elegant" or "scalable," but it works and nobody's going to maintain this code anyway. Let's be honest, we've all been both of these people at different points in our careers.

That thousand-yard stare of a developer who just hit "Rebuild All" right before a meeting. Now he's trapped in his own personal prison, watching helplessly as his CPU melts, fans scream, and battery drains faster than his will to live. The compiler is probably still on file 3 of 9,457. He's calculating whether he has time to get coffee, update his resume, or possibly move to a new country before it finishes.