Pick Your Party: From VIM Barbarian to TCP-Tracing Druid, Dev Edition
Description
The image is laid out like an 8-bit RPG character select screen. Five small pixel-art sprites line the left margin: a bare-chested, axe-holding barbarian; a black-and-yellow hooded rogue; a blue-robed, long-bearded wizard with staff; a haloed cleric in silver mail; and a green-cloaked druid gripping a crook. To each sprite’s right, bold headers label the class and three bullet points describe a developer archetype in black text. Barbarian - Only trusts programming languages written before 1990 - Can recite man pages from memory - Only uses VIM; removing hands from keyboard is considered failure Rogue - Spends their day trying to find compromised servers for crypto mining - Outsources their work to low-income contractors - Has never paid for a software license Wizard - Somehow knows every library and framework - Delivers new features daily using the most advanced methods - Their code requires at least 3 developers to debug Cleric - Speaks entirely in references to Clean Code and Design Patterns - Has never written a line of production code without a test - Takes months to deliver a feature, but the edge cases are covered Druid - Manages infra for the entire org - Reads TCP traces all day for fun - Insists to be addressed by their fursona after hours The meme lampoons well-known senior-engineering stereotypes: the legacy-language zealot, the ethically flexible growth hacker, the framework polymath, the test-driven purity evangelist, and the infrastructure hermit. Seasoned engineers will recognize each “class” from real-world incident bridges and code-review dungeons, making the RPG metaphor both humorous and painfully relatable
Comments
37Comment deleted
If the sprint ever hits production chaos, just remember: the Wizard will ship a new framework before the Barbarian finishes his :wq, but the Druid already rolled advantage on tcpdump and silently patched the cluster
The real boss fight isn't in production - it's getting the Barbarian to approve a PR that uses async/await, the Wizard to write documentation anyone else can understand, and the Cleric to ship anything before achieving 100% mutation test coverage
The Barbarian still writes in C because 'if it was good enough for Kernighan and Ritchie, it's good enough for production,' while the Wizard's microservice architecture is so cutting-edge it requires a dedicated team just to understand the dependency graph - proving that sometimes the real dungeon isn't the legacy codebase, it's the 47-layer abstraction you built last sprint
Our ideal team mix is Barbarian (Vim), Rogue (license‑optional), Wizard (framework hoarder), Cleric (TDD zealot), and Druid (tcpdump whisperer) - which explains why retros need a Dungeon Master more than a Scrum Master
Wizard knows every library, but code needs five devs to debug - classic case of framework polyglot turning architecture into spaghetti
A balanced party ships daily: Barbarian writes it in C, Wizard wraps it in two frameworks, Cleric drapes it in tests, Druid keeps packets flowing - and the Rogue’s “observability agent” mysteriously exposes a hashrate metric
Only using your fursona name after hours? Must be a junior dev Comment deleted
Multiclassing, huh? Comment deleted
Ok, nevermind, I've just never paid for any software Comment deleted
why i should do if i did not match on any of these ? 😢 Comment deleted
It means you’re playing on a custom character which is a pretty good too ;) Comment deleted
that makes you an NPC Comment deleted
cruel Comment deleted
but true Comment deleted
I use outdated methods like ftp and scp to deliver code on production Features take weeks to be done, edge cases are not covered, because "cmon, you ain't big enough to hit 600r in any 5 second window API rate limit" Don't even know the libs and frameworks I work with, still manage to succeed with any languages and frameworks, cause they're all the same Debug code of three wizards simultaneously, never coming down to rewrite-from-scratch Maybe I'm just a low-income contractor after all Comment deleted
I learned a new word today. Comment deleted
Which is it? Comment deleted
Fursona 😄 Comment deleted
Sorcerer: - Copies the code from Stack Overflow or uses ChatGPT for fixing bugs - Learns new languages by watching tutorials on Youtube - "It just works" Comment deleted
I'm a humble corporate tetragrammaton cleric. I don't just deliver perfect new code - I also insist that the old code, along with its authors, should be burned. Comment deleted
Archer: - launched hundreds requests from postman every day - can shuffle json on the fly - have different microservice on any task in his quiver Comment deleted
warrior: - power in unity, power in monolith - SOLID discipline - trained OOP his entire life Comment deleted
me: use JavaFX WebView to run a Vue webpage and spend hundreds MBs memory to show a HelloWorld string on screen i am definately the king Comment deleted
Ninja: default GitHub avatar no social media no LinkedIn (or LinkedIn with Lucky Star/OniMai avi) makes $300,000 a year minimum for some company you’ve never heard of Cherry switches, 200+ WPM no clear job description signs in, fixes 5 lines of code, leaves Comment deleted
I know at least one person for each of these :3 all of them are fun to be around and work with; every programming style has its advantages and disadvantages ^^ Comment deleted
Warlock: workflow is half Copilot in Visual Studio, half obscure utils left over from Win95, to write .NET code deployed on an Azure server. Actually uses Cortana and Edge. Believes open-source is a sin. Comment deleted
Bard: writes Swift, uses emoji for variable names Comment deleted
Devil: Knows every malware inside-out Does some suspicious commits into prod, refuses to elaborate. Without it prod fails Any code he writes compiles on the first attemt Was never seen in person last 7 years Former colleagues afraid to talk about him Comment deleted
Post-Apocalypse Wanderer -Insists on writing everything from scratch -wants to have a team, but doesn't like being in someone's team -downloads offline version of docs, but never reads them Comment deleted
Nah, post-apocalypse coding is all about using old tech without understanding how it works: - Grabs modules and snippets from every dumpster on the internet - The uglier it looks, the better - Can't read docs because... well, can't read - Sometimes the code he crafts explodes and takes down the entire system Comment deleted
Just @ me next time Comment deleted
Please define: • Deity • Dementor • Dragonslayer • Dwarf • Heretic • Witcher Comment deleted
are these from a specific game or novel? Comment deleted
Everything you listed is not a class. Dragonslayer is job, heretic is sort of religion cultist, everything else is creature Comment deleted
But still: Deity - client, hard to satisfy, easy to angry Dementor - scrum master, drain your soul on each daily meeting Dragonslayer - guy, who rewrite legacy project Dwarf - guy, who laid the cables Heretic - functional programming enjoyer Witcher - same as dragonslayer Comment deleted
Witcher is full-stack dragonslayer - one IDE for the frontend, one for the backend. Comment deleted
Wizard/Cleric dual class - I've often been complimented on knowing a library/package/framework-feature for every solution - Though people tend to hold off reviewing my PRs... - I really hammer down Design Patterns and value Clean Code - I take far too long on some features to cover edge cases LMAO Comment deleted