Gossiping about that mythical developer who can actually write regex correctly

Description

The meme uses the classic 'girl whispering to girl' template: a rectangular photo of two young women with long hair, one leaning in to whisper while covering her mouth with a hand; their faces are blurred. Above the photo, on a plain white background, black sans-serif text states exactly: "I heard he can write regEx". The joke frames the ability to craft regular expressions as a legendary, almost seductive talent within developer circles. Seasoned engineers recognize the humor in how regex’s dense, punctuation-heavy syntax elevates the skill to near-mythical status, turning routine text-parsing knowledge into coveted social currency

Common Tags

RegularExpressions CodingHumor DeveloperHumor LanguageQuirks RelatableHumor TechMeme

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick He wrote a regex that validates IPv6 without catastrophic backtracking - now the architects debate if he's human or just a DFA in disguise

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

He wrote a regex that validates IPv6 without catastrophic backtracking - now the architects debate if he's human or just a DFA in disguise
Anonymous

The real flex isn't writing regex that works - it's writing regex that another developer can understand six months later without summoning an elder god or consulting Stack Overflow seventeen times
Anonymous

The meme captures the industry's collective Stockholm syndrome with regex: we simultaneously fear it, avoid it, copy-paste it from Stack Overflow, and treat anyone who can write `/^(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*\d)[A-Za-z\d@$!%*?&]{8,}$/` from memory like they've discovered cold fusion. The real plot twist? That developer probably just memorized three patterns and confidently applies them to everything, occasionally causing production incidents when edge cases emerge
Anonymous

I heard he can write regex... and read it six months later
Anonymous

“He can write regex”? Adorable - real charm is a commented, anchored pattern you can still read next quarter that won’t ReDoS prod
Anonymous

Regex is the only language where a two-character tweak can turn O(n) into O(n!) and page the SRE - use RE2 or a parser, not PCRE sorcery in prod
@BlaiddCrow 4y

Oh god
@RiedleroD 4y

yes I can, look: regex it's not as hard as it might look.
1. @denedi 4y
  
  I can even write "Regular expressions"!
  
  @RiedleroD 4y
  
  damned if I could
@Magilarp 4y

I can write regsex