this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
212 points (89.3% liked)

Programmer Humor

30203 readers
2686 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Feyter@programming.dev
anzo@programming.dev
BurningTurtle@programming.dev
pylapp@programming.dev
212
French programmers be like: (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 day ago by Ragdoll_X@sh.itjust.works to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
42 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

~~For all I care this is the funniest joke I've ever told~~

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 25 points 1 day ago (3 children)

The venerable Jargon File has the French metasyntactic variables (i.e. the equivalents to foo and bar) as toto, titi, tata and tutu.

Or to take this in another direction: foo sounds like French "fou" which means "mad" (as in "insane"), so "coucou" might be an interesting alternative.

[–] Venator@lemmy.nz 1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Or maybe something like "Foutu en l'air" and "Au-delà de tout irréparable"?

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Kansas doggie, titties, indian car, pink skirt are strange metasyntactic variables.

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago

I figure they're more likely related, in spirit and vocalisation if not etymologically, to the French phrase «et patati, et patata», translatable as "blah blah blah" or "yada yada yada".