Senior Devs When They Hear Another 'Missing Semicolon' Joke
Description
A two-panel meme featuring the character Mr. Incredible from the animated film 'The Incredibles'. The top of the image has a caption: 'When you hear another missing semi colon joke about software programming'. In the first panel, a close-up shows a weary and distressed Mr. Incredible, with the subtitled text '- shut the fuck up'. The second panel is a slightly different angle of the same expression, but with more desperation, and the subtitle reads '- please shut the fuck up'. The meme perfectly captures the exhaustion and annoyance of experienced software engineers who are tired of hearing simplistic, entry-level jokes about programming. The 'missing semicolon' is a classic beginner's error that modern IDEs and linters catch instantly, making the joke outdated and a hallmark of someone with only a superficial understanding of the field
Comments
16Comment deleted
My reaction to a missing semicolon joke is a null pointer exception; the reference to my sense of humor was not instantiated
Our pre-commit hook, CI linter, and compiler all catch missing semicolons - shame there isn’t one for stale stand-up material
The same people making semicolon jokes in 2024 are still explaining why their microservice needs 47 environment variables and a PhD in YAML to run locally
Nobody has lost an afternoon to a missing semicolon since ESLint shipped; we lose afternoons to a YAML file that was indented with love instead of spaces
After two decades in the industry, hearing another semicolon joke triggers the same visceral response as seeing 'git push --force' on main at 4:59 PM Friday. We've evolved past syntax errors into architectural nightmares involving distributed transactions, eventual consistency, and CAP theorem trade-offs - yet somehow the discourse still centers around punctuation marks that modern IDEs highlight before you even finish typing. It's the technical equivalent of a cardiologist being asked 'but have you tried turning it off and on again?' at every dinner party
Semicolon jokes? Child's play. Real pain is ASI folding your IIFE into an infinite loop in prod
After autoformatters, semicolons stopped breaking builds; the real joke is two “compatible” protobufs that only disagree under high GC pressure
In 2025, a missing semicolon reaching prod would require ASI, Prettier, ESLint, and the pre-commit hook to achieve Byzantine consensus
i do not remember hearing a single one Comment deleted
Indian memers on instagram make jokes about it Comment deleted
something about programming when stressed… Comment deleted
Hell yeah! I'm full of jokes about beginners Comment deleted
these jokes stopped being relevant 20yrs ago Comment deleted
You mean 50? Comment deleted
yes Comment deleted
roses are red violets are blue you are missing the colon on line 32 Comment deleted