Anti-Pattern Alpha

Content Coworker: so how did you solve the bug? Me: Ostrich algorithm From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In computer science, the ostrich algorithm is a strategy of ignoring potential problems on the basis that they may be exceedingly rare. It is named for the ostrich effect which is defined as "to stick one's head in the sand and pretend there is no problem". It is used when it is more cost-effective to allow the problem to occur than to attempt its prevention.

Content the ONION LATEST POLITICS SPORTS LOCAL ENTERTAINMENT ONION GAMERS NEWS StackOverflow commenter cannot believe you would bother him with such a pathetic question 20413 3:45pm SEE MORE: NEWS v SAN FRANCISCO, CA- Taking time out of his busy day of browsing Hacker News and closing GitHub issues, senior software developer Jeff Corbett replied to your StackOverflow question this afternoon, to let you know that your question is a waste of his time. "This is answered in the spec, I suggest you read it", he wrote, without explaining to which spec he was referring, or what it said. At press time, Corbett had reportedly closed the issue as a duplicate, without linking to any related posts that might have helped answer the original question.

The perfect setup-punchline combo that hits every developer right in the terminal. The top panel builds suspense with "Wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?" (channeling Dumb and Dumber energy), only to deliver the devastating blow: "Why you don't use ChatGPT?" Complete with that perfect mix of judgment and horror on their faces. It's like that one coworker who won't shut up about their new tech stack while you're desperately trying to fix a production bug with good old reliable Stack Overflow and caffeine. The true horror isn't the question—it's the inevitable 20-minute lecture about prompt engineering that follows.

Ah yes, the annual ritual of updating the copyright year—the one task that makes you feel like you've actually accomplished something in January. Four whole keystrokes of productivity! Sure, you haven't fixed that memory leak or refactored that spaghetti code, but dammit, the footer is legally compliant now. Some devs even automate it with new Date().getFullYear() but that would rob them of this profound sense of achievement. Nothing says "I'm contributing to the codebase" quite like changing a single digit while ignoring the 147 open tickets in Jira.

Top panel shows assembly code with "is0dd" function checking if a number is odd by bitwise operations. Bottom panel shows someone who skipped all that and just lit up LEDs on a breadboard. Why write complex bitwise logic when electricity already knows if a current is odd or even? The universe's physics engine doesn't need your fancy algorithms - electrons have been doing modulo operations since the Big Bang.

The classic bait-and-switch of software development. The developer casually agrees to deliver five features by next week—a miracle in itself—but the moment unit tests are mentioned, reality hits harder than a production bug at 4:59 PM on Friday. It's like asking someone if they want dessert, waiting for them to get excited, and then adding "but you have to run a marathon first." Suddenly that chocolate cake doesn't seem worth it. The blank, horrified stare says it all. Writing code? Fun! Writing tests to prove your code actually works? Existential crisis territory.