The Grim Reaper Of Technical Support

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Ah, the eternal developer paradox! The junior dev is having an existential crisis about remembering what their code actually does, while the battle-hardened senior dev drops the ultimate truth bomb: you don't . This is why we have comments, people! Though let's be honest, even with meticulous documentation, we all eventually stare at our code from 3 months ago like it was written by a cryptic alien civilization. The title "Not Even With The Documentation" just twists the knife deeper - because even when you DO document, future-you will still have absolutely no idea what past-you was thinking. The true mark of seniority isn't remembering everything - it's embracing the chaos and accepting that code amnesia is just part of the job description!

The joke here is a brilliant double entendre about inheritance. The first person mentions inheriting a COBOL codebase last touched by someone's mom in the 90s (literal inheritance), while the reply points out that's not how programming inheritance works (you know, the OOP concept where Child extends Parent, not where your actual parent leaves you legacy code). Nothing says "congratulations on your new job" quite like being handed 30-year-old COBOL that nobody understands anymore. The real inheritance tax is the mental breakdown you'll have trying to figure out why everything is in ALL CAPS and what PERFORM VARYING actually does.

Content Margaret Hamilton, lead software engineer of the Apollo Project, stands next to the code she wrote by hand and that was used to take humanity to the moon. 1969

Content Top 20 Replies by Programmers when their programs don't work.. 20. That's weird. 19. It's never done that before. 18. It worked yesterday. 17. How is that possible? 16. It must be a hardware problem. 15. What did you type in wrong to get it to crash? 14. There has to be something funky in your data. 13. I haven't touched that module in weeks! 12. You must have the wrong version. 11. It's just some unlucky coincidence. 10. I can't test everything! 9. THIS can't be the source of THAT. 8. It works, but it hasn't been tested. 7. Somebody must have changed my code. 6. Did you check for a virus on your system? 5. Even though it doesn't work, how does it feel? 4. You can't use that version on your system. 3. Why do you want to do it that way? 2. Where were you when the program blew up? 1. It works on my machine.

The IDE has trust issues worse than my ex. It watches your every keystroke, ready to judge your code before you've even finished typing. Then the moment you complete the line, it suddenly retracts all its accusations like that coworker who talks behind your back then acts nice to your face. The digital equivalent of "I knew what you were doing all along" followed by the programmer's version of gaslighting. Classic Stockholm syndrome relationship between developer and tooling.