The Programmer's Secret Weapon

The four horsemen of Stack Overflow responses! You ask a simple question and get hit with "Sounds like a skill issue" or my personal favorite: "This problem wouldn't exist if you knew what you were doing." Meanwhile, the same developers who refuse to help are furiously bookmarking other people's answers for their own projects. The digital equivalent of throwing someone into the deep end while screaming "just swim better!" Nothing says coding community quite like gatekeeping basic knowledge behind a wall of condescension.

Content 4414 8 Locked. There are disputes about this answer's content being resolved at this time. It is not currently accepting new interactions. You can't parse XHTML with regex. Because HTML can't be parsed by regex. Regex is not a tool that can be used to correctly parse HTML. As I have answered in HTML-and-regex questions here so many times before, the use of regex will not allow you to consume HTML. Regular expressions are a tool that is insufficiently sophisticated to understand the constructs employed by HTML. HTML is not a regular language and hence cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Regex queries are not equipped to break down HTML into its meaningful parts. so many times but it is not getting to me. Even enhanced irregular regular expressions as used by Perl are not up to the task of parsing HTML. You will never make me crack. HTML is a language of sufficient complexity that it cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Even Jon Skeet cannot parse HTML using regular expressions. Every time you attempt to parse HTML with regular expressions, the unholy child weeps the blood of virgins, and Russian hackers pwn your webapp. Parsing HTML with regex summons tainted souls into the realm of the living. HTML and regex go together like love, marriage, and ritual infanticide. The center cannot hold it is too late. The force of regex and HTML together in the same conceptual space will destroy your mind like so much watery putty. If you parse HTML with regex you are giving in to Them and their blasphemous ways which doom us all to inhuman toil for the One whose Name cannot be expressed in the Basic Multilingual Plane, he comes. HTML-plus-regexp will liquify the nerves of the sentient whilst you observe, your psyche withering in the onslaught of horror. Regex-based HTML parsers are the cancer that is killing StackOverflow it is too late it is too late we cannot be saved the trangession of a child ensures regex will consume all living tissue (except for HTML which it cannot, as previously prophesied) dear lord help us how can anyone survive this scourge using regex to parse HTML has doomed humanity to an eternity of dread torture and security holes using regex a a tool to process HTML establishes a breach between this world and the dread realm of corrupt entities (like SGML entities, but more corrupt) a mere glimpse of the world of regex parsers for HTML will instantly transport a programmer's consciousness into a world of ceaseless screaming, he comes, the pestilent stithy regex-infection will devour your HTML parser, application and existence for all time like Visual Basic only worse he comes he comes do not fight he comes, his unholy radiance destroving all enlightenment, HTML tags leaking from your eyeslike liquid pain, the song of regular expression parsing- will extinguish the voices of mortal man from the sphere I can see it can you see it it is beautiful the final snuffing of the lies of Man ALL IS LOST ALL IS LOST the pony he comes he comes he comes the ichor; permeates all MY FACE MY FACE higed no NO NOOOO NO stop the an ales ZALGO IS TONY THE FNY, HE ICON Have you tried using an XML parser instead? Moderator's Note This post is locked to prevent inappropriate edits to its content. The post looks exactly as it is supposed to look - there are no problems with its content. Please do not flag it for our attention. share edit follow flag edited Jun 20 at 9:12 community wiki 7 revs, 5 users 36 bobince

Content You're working on a legacy program, and bump into a problem You find the exact problem, and a working solution on Stack Overflow It's the solution YOU posted, last time you worked on this app; 4 years ago.

The circle of life in programming forums! First panel: pure dopamine rush when discovering that rare, actually funny coding joke. Second panel: soul-crushing realization as it gets copy-pasted across 17 subreddits, 9 Discord servers, and your team's Slack channel for the next 30 days. It's like npm dependencies—once something works, everyone imports it until it's completely overdone. The irony of this meme complaining about reposts while itself becoming one of the most reposted memes isn't lost on anyone with a functioning git blame command.

The classic developer dismissal cycle in its natural habitat. First dev smugly declares "sounds like a skill issue tbh" - the universal code for "your problem is you, not the code." Two weeks later, karma strikes when they hit the exact same wall and suddenly it's "wait no it doesn't work for me either." Nothing humbles a programmer faster than having to eat their own snarky comments when facing the same bug they previously mocked. The circle of dev life is complete.

OMG, the SHEER DRAMA of developer life! 😱 The first search looks like a crime, but add "process stackoverflow" and suddenly it's just another Tuesday in programming! In Unix/Linux systems, "killing a child process" is literally just terminating a subprocess spawned by a parent process. And stackoverflow? That's when your call stack exceeds its limit and crashes! The FBI agent monitoring your searches goes from ABSOLUTE PANIC to "oh, just another developer having a mental breakdown." The struggle is REAL, people! Next time your program spawns too many processes, remember some poor FBI agent is having heart palpitations!