Build systems Memes

The universal hatred for CMake transcends all intelligence levels! The meme shows an IQ bell curve with people at every point—from 55 to 145—united in their collective trauma of writing CMakeLists.txt files at 3AM while sobbing uncontrollably. The "well ackchyually" guy at the bottom represents that one teammate who claims to understand CMake but still copy-pastes from StackOverflow like the rest of us. Nothing brings C++ developers together like the shared existential dread of finding yourself in dependency hell with zero documentation. It's the build system we all use and absolutely nobody enjoys!

The top panel shows the Rust experience: find a library on crates.io, run one command, import it, and you're done. The stick figure even has their arms outstretched in celebration. Meanwhile, C++ is depicted as the ninth circle of dependency hell. Finding libraries across random websites, manually downloading tar files, and engaging in ritual combat with CMake until your build inevitably fails. The stick figures are literally hanging themselves in despair. And this is why some of us drink heavily before attempting to add external libraries to C++ projects.