Off-by-one Memes

Posts tagged with Off-by-one

My Zeroth Meme Of 26

My Zeroth Meme Of 26
Nothing says "I've chosen chaos" quite like starting your year on Day 0 instead of Day 1. The zero-indexing gang is out here living their best life, celebrating New Year's on what normies call December 31st, while the one-indexing peasants are just... wrong. The skeleton villain dramatically retreating is basically every zero-indexer when confronted with the reality that the rest of humanity starts counting at 1. They'll be back next year though, still insisting that arrays should start at 0 and so should calendars, apparently. The commitment to the bit is honestly impressive.

It May Have Been Chucked Out The Window

It May Have Been Chucked Out The Window
You give the computer explicit instructions. The computer, being the literal-minded silicon brick it is, executes exactly what you typed—not what you meant, not what you needed, but what you actually told it to do . And now it's sitting there with that smug look, waiting for you to realize the bug isn't in the machine. The gap between "what I told it to do" and "what I wanted it to do" is where every developer's sanity goes to die. You spend three hours debugging only to discover you wrote i++ instead of j++ in a nested loop. The computer did its job flawlessly. You, however, did not. Welcome to programming, where the machine is always right and you're always wrong, but somehow it's still the computer's fault.

My Entire Life😭🤷🏻‍♀️

My Entire Life😭🤷🏻‍♀️
Congratulations, you've discovered Schrödinger's grade—simultaneously failing and passing until someone observes your code logic. The developer who wrote this clearly believes that 85 exists in some quantum superposition where it's both less than AND greater than or equal to 85. The real tragedy here isn't just the missing else statement—it's that both conditions will execute, concatenating "FAILED" and "PASSED" into the beautiful Frankenstein's monster that is "FAILEDPASSED". It's like the universe couldn't decide what you deserved, so it gave you both. Very existential. Pro tip: If your grading system outputs "FAILEDPASSED", you might want to reconsider your career choices. Or just learn about mutually exclusive conditions. Either works.

When You Post Increment Too Early

When You Post Increment Too Early
Someone updated that drowning counter with count++ instead of ++count and now zero people have drowned wearing lifejackets. Technically correct is the best kind of correct, right? The sign maker probably tested it once, saw it worked, shipped it to production, and went home early. Meanwhile, the lifejacket stat is sitting there at zero like "not my problem." Fun fact: The difference between i++ and ++i has caused more bugs than anyone wants to admit. Post-increment returns the value THEN increments it, while pre-increment does it the other way around. It's the programming equivalent of putting your shoes on before your socks—technically you did both things, just in the wrong order.

Kyoto Train Station Has Zero Indexed Platforms

Kyoto Train Station Has Zero Indexed Platforms
Finally, a train station designed by programmers. While the rest of humanity insists on starting their platform numbers at 1 like absolute savages, Kyoto Train Station said "nah, we're doing this right" and went with Platform 0. Every developer who's ever had to explain why arrays start at 0 to a confused product manager just found their spiritual homeland. The Japanese really do think of everything—they've got bullet trains that arrive on the second, toilets that play music, and now platforms that actually make sense to anyone who's written a for loop. Meanwhile, the rest of the world's train stations are out here living in 1-indexed chaos like it's still the Middle Ages.

Zero-Indexed Relationship

Zero-Indexed Relationship
Ah, the classic zero-indexed array defense. Technically correct but emotionally questionable. The guy told his girlfriend she's at index [1] in his array of interests, thinking he's being clever because that means she's his #2 priority after programming. But she's happy because she thinks 1 means first place. Nobody tell her that arrays start at 0 in most programming languages. That relationship is running on a critical misunderstanding that's somehow working. It's like production code that functions despite a lurking off-by-one error.

When Zero-Indexing Meets The Real World

When Zero-Indexing Meets The Real World
Ah, the classic "array starts at 0" bug manifesting in the wild. Some poor dev clearly implemented the ranking system with proper zero-indexing, but forgot that humans count from 1. Now we've got this beautiful disaster where 0th place pays more than 1st place, and the gold medal goes to... whatever the hell "0th" is. The best part? The prize money actually makes sense if you shift everything up one position. This is what happens when you let backend engineers design UI without supervision. Ten bucks says there's a comment in the code that reads "TODO: fix this later" from 2019.

I Wrote My Own Calendar Library

I Wrote My Own Calendar Library
So you wrote your own calendar library and now December has 34 days. Classic. This is why we don't reinvent wheels that track the rotation of our planet. Next you'll tell me you've optimized February to have -3 days to compensate. Somewhere, a project manager is wondering why Q4 reports are delayed while you explain that technically, the year isn't over yet according to your implementation.

Zero Place

Zero Place
Ah, the classic programmer joke about array indexing! The medal shows "1 Place" but someone cuts out the "1" to make it "0 Place" - because in most programming languages, arrays start at index 0, not 1. The programmer's smug face in the final panel says it all. He's not celebrating second place, he's celebrating the technically correct place. This is peak programmer pedantry that only true code jockeys would appreciate. The kind of person who'd correct you mid-conversation about proper variable naming conventions.