A Procedural Approach to a Social Problem
Description
A three-panel comic strip in the 'Boardroom Suggestion' meme format, where the characters are personified programming languages, their faces replaced with their respective logos. In the first panel, Java, C++, and Python are at a meeting table. Java asks, 'Okay, any ideas on how to make women more interested in us?'. In the second panel, the languages offer suggestions based on their technical paradigms: C++ asks, 'Make more exceptions?', Python asks, 'Redefine our methods?'. A new character, ANSI C, offers a different take: 'Stop treating them like objects?'. The third and final panel shows the ANSI C character being thrown out of a high-rise office window by the other languages. This meme is a clever, multi-layered joke for developers. It satirizes the object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm, where everything is treated as an 'object', by applying it to a social context. The suggestions from the OOP languages (Java, C++, Python) are technical puns. C, being a procedural language and not object-oriented, provides a solution that is both a critique of the OOP worldview and sound social advice. The punchline is the violent rejection of this simple, non-OOP solution, humorously depicting the dogmatic nature of programming language debates
Comments
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The problem is that Java tried to solve the problem with a RelationshipFactorySingleton, C++ passed women by const reference but forgot to handle the dangling pointer, and C just offered a struct and a function pointer, which was honest, but not what the stakeholders wanted to hear
In an all-OOP boardroom, suggesting that not everything should be an object just triggers Java’s hidden defenestrate() method - followed immediately by an implicit System.gc()
The irony of Java throwing out C for suggesting we stop treating women like objects when Java literally won't let you pass primitives by reference because everything else has to be an object
Of course C got defenestrated - it's the only one in the room that ever handled anything by reference to reality instead of wrapping it in six layers of abstraction
The irony here is exquisite: Java throwing C out the window for suggesting not to treat women like objects, when Java's entire existence is predicated on treating *everything* as objects. Meanwhile, C++ is over there suggesting more exceptions - which is rich coming from a language where exception handling was bolted on as an afterthought and half the codebase still uses error codes. Python's 'redefine our methods' is actually the most sensible suggestion, but in typical fashion, the enterprise language with the most verbose syntax makes the executive decision. Classic case of 'do as I say, not as I instanceof.'
Java asked for ideas; C said “maybe not everything should be an object” - so Java did a throw(C). When reality won’t fit the class diagram, OOP handles it as an exception and defenestrates the pointer
Telling Java to “stop treating things like objects” is like asking a Spring shop to ditch beans - the DI graph collapses and someone gets defenestrated
C++ preaches anti-objectification, but C's structs whisper: 'PODs forever - no vtables in love.'