The Impostor Among Programming Languages

Government agencies finally entering the digital age but making the worst possible tech choices? *Chef's kiss* Nothing says "we hired consultants from 2003" quite like rejecting clean, lightweight JSON in favor of bloated XML files that require a PhD to parse. The kind of decision that makes developers contemplate career changes to literally anything else. Fun fact: Some government systems still use COBOL, a language older than the moon landing. At this rate, they'll discover JSON around the same time we colonize Mars.

Ah, the classic "I know a programmer" tax in action! Nothing says friendship like asking for a free app at 8 AM and expecting you to both design AND build it. The smooth "That's where you come in!" is basically code for "I have absolutely no idea how this works but I'm sure you can whip it up by lunchtime." This is the digital equivalent of asking a doctor friend to check out your weird rash at a dinner party. Bonus points for the early morning ambush when your defenses are down and you haven't had enough coffee to calculate the 300+ hours of unpaid labor they're casually requesting.

The absolute madlad who hard-codes their API keys directly into the front-end JavaScript where anyone can see it with a quick inspect element. Security? What's that? Just a suggestion, like speed limits and code comments. Nothing says "I trust the internet" like broadcasting your AWS credentials to every single visitor. Next level: storing passwords in plaintext because "hashing is just extra work."

Ah, the joys of automated username generation! When your name is Megan Finger and the system decides your identity should be "fingerme" at every possible level. Nothing says "professional student email" quite like an accidental innuendo that'll haunt you through four years of college. This is why we need humans reviewing these things... or at least regex that catches unfortunate combinations. That poor student is now forever explaining to professors why her email sounds like a proposition.

Every developer's internal reaction when a non-technical friend starts with "I've got an app idea." The threatening pose perfectly captures that mix of dread and irritation we feel when someone's about to pitch their "revolutionary" app that's basically "Uber but for hamsters" or "Facebook but people are nice." What they don't realize is they're the 500th person to think they're the first to come up with it, and no, we don't want to build it for free in exchange for "exposure" or a mythical 2% equity that'll totally make us rich someday.

Ah yes, academic literature—where JavaScript and Java are basically the same thing. Nothing says "I've thoroughly researched programming" like casually dropping "(or Java)" as if they're interchangeable aliases. That's like saying "I'll drive my Ferrari (or bicycle)" to work today. This is the same energy as textbooks claiming HTML is a programming language or that "the hacker known as 4chan" is a person. No wonder Stack Overflow exists—it's to recover from the brain damage caused by reading these educational masterpieces.