The True Desire of Every Software Developer
Description
A two-panel meme that contrasts a popular internet trope with a developer-specific reality. The top panel is a screenshot of a tweet from a user named Ash (@ashcammm) which reads, 'guys literally only want one thing and it's fucking disgusting', dated 2017-10-22. The bottom panel displays a screenshot of a pull request history from a version control system like GitHub. It shows the lifecycle of a pull request through different statuses, indicated by colored lozenges: one is 'OPENED', two are marked as 'APPROVED', and the final, most desired state is 'MERGED'. The partially visible branch name is 'ArcGIS Pro feature/WAP-879-Update-'. The humor comes from subverting the original tweet's implication of a base desire, replacing it with the professional and deeply felt satisfaction a developer gets from having their code successfully reviewed, approved, and merged into the codebase, which is the culmination of their work
Comments
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Some chase fame, some chase fortune. Senior engineers? They just want to see that purple 'Merged' badge before the project gets re-platformed to a framework they've never heard of
After 20 years of debating Paxos vs. Raft I’ve realized developers already have a favorite consensus algorithm: two LGTMs and a glowing green “Merge” button
After 15 years in the industry, I've realized the dopamine hit from a green 'APPROVED' badge is stronger than any production deployment success - probably because it happens less frequently and doesn't come with a 3am PagerDuty follow-up
After 15 years in the industry, you realize the real endgame isn't clean architecture or zero technical debt - it's that dopamine hit when you see 'MERGED' in green on your PR at 4:59 PM on Friday, knowing you won't be the one debugging it Monday morning
Guys only want one thing: that green Merge button - two approvals, green checks, SAST quiet, and no Friday freeze; disgusting how much of our dopamine is gated by CI
We don’t want much - just two CODEOWNERS approvals, all checks green, and a merge queue that lands on trunk before the release train; call it continuous dopamine delivery
That rare PR approval sans 'nit: prefer const' - pure, unadulterated maintainer foreplay