wat the wtf do programmers use as debug strings?

November 6, 2013 holman

Yesterday I tweeted this:

Programmers, ever lacking in productive things to do in life, started responding in droves.

The replies constituted the most important development in computer science since the GOTO statement. You can’t determine debug strings via static analysis, because hopefully no one’s checking these debug strings directly into source control.

Right?

RIGHT?

Top ten responses

I received 372 replies to this tweet. The top ten responses are:

15% of you mentioned or referenced swear words, and a full 5% were poo-related. Two people use “i like cheese” as their go-to debug phrase.

I’ve also dumped the full list as json and more-readable plaintext on Gist.

Programmers, go figure

I also got some responses that made me love programmers even more than I already do. You people are weird though. Some of you have anger problems. You should get those checked.

Happy debugging.