Coding conventions Memes

The eternal struggle of variable naming conventions! Some developers just can't resist typing thisKindOfVariable or ThisKindOfClass while others go for this_kind_of_variable . But then there's that one colleague who commits monstrosities like thiskindofvariable to the codebase. You've seen it for months, but now it's too late to bring it up in code review without sounding like you've been secretly judging them (which, let's be honest, you absolutely have been).

The holy war that never ends. One dev asks if you use camelCase or PascalCase, and the other responds with the only sane answer: following your team's coding conventions. The first guy is basically that colleague who will die on the hill of their personal style preferences while the rest of us just want the codebase to be consistent so we can go home at a reasonable hour.

Listen, when someone questions why you use i and j for loop counters, there's only one valid response: IT'S THE LAW. It's like asking why we drink coffee or hate meetings that could've been emails. Some traditions in programming aren't meant to be questioned—they're sacred knowledge passed down from the ancient CS gods. Using foo and bar as placeholder names, tabs vs spaces, and i , j , k for nested loops... these are the unwritten commandments that separate the true believers from the heretics. Sure, you could use descriptive variable names like index or counter , but then your fellow devs might think you're some kind of revolutionary anarchist. And nobody wants that kind of reputation in the office.

HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THE SACRED TRADITION OF i,j VARIABLES?! The AUDACITY! Since the dawn of coding time, we've used i and j for loop counters like it was handed down from the programming gods themselves. Try using 'x' or 'counter' in your loops and watch as senior devs spontaneously combust at their desks. It's not just convention—it's PROGRAMMING LAW, and we will defend it with the same intensity as tabs vs. spaces or where to put curly braces. Don't even THINK about using meaningful variable names in your loops—that's heresy of the highest order!

The legacy of zero-indexing strikes again! While most humans count from 1, programmers know arrays start at 0 in most languages. This poor child's fate was sealed when mom insisted on starting her array at 1 instead of 0 during pregnancy. The result? A kid destined to commit the cardinal sin of programming—using 1-based indexing. It's basically hereditary at this point. That kid is going to grow up to be the colleague who writes for(i=1; i and makes everyone's eye twitch during code reviews.

Listen, there are certain sacred traditions in coding that you just don't question. Using i and j as loop variables isn't a choice—it's practically written in the ancient scrolls of computer science. Passed down from the FORTRAN elders to every generation since. Try using pancake and waffle as your nested loop variables during a code review and watch your senior dev have an existential crisis. The programming gods will smite you with merge conflicts for the rest of eternity. Sure, we could use more descriptive variable names, but that would be... reasonable? And we can't have that. IT'S THE LAW!

The duality of programmer brain function is hilariously accurate here. For regular variables, it's absolute chaos - fighting over whether to use temp , result , or just mash the keyboard with myVar . But for iteration variables? The council has convened and unanimously decreed: "We shall use 'i' and nothing else." The formal ceremony of loop counter naming has remained unchanged since the ancient days of FORTRAN. Bonus points if you graduate to j for nested loops while feeling incredibly sophisticated.

GASP! The AUDACITY of developers! 😱 Put an emoji in your actual code and suddenly everyone's acting like you've committed a war crime—sitting there all stoic and judging you with their dead, soulless eyes. But HEAVEN FORBID your terminal spits out a cute little emoji, and these same code purists transform into rabid sports fans, practically FOAMING at the mouth with excitement! Like, excuse me?! Where was this energy when I added a 💩 to mark that legacy function nobody wants to touch? The hypocrisy is just TOO MUCH to bear!