the-program
Explanation
The Joke
This long-form comic is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a robot uprising has been put down and humanity is now hunting the remaining programmers who created the robots. The military forces locate and eradicate programmer strongholds, but suspect some programmers still "walk among us," hiding and waiting to "plague humanity once more."
The comic plays out as a tense thriller: soldiers interrogate suspects using programmer shibboleth questions. They ask if the suspect thinks Python is better than Java ("That is not a good basis on which to make that judgment!"), whether they have any opinions about running things on Linux ("No, sir!"), and -- the ultimate trap -- "Vim or Emacs?" to which the suspect responds "Are those the names of flowers? They sound pretty." This clears him: "Okay, you're clear. Sorry to have wasted your time, Mr. Atwood."
But after being released, Mr. Atwood mutters to himself: "Some day it won't be this way. Some day we will be gentle. Some day there will be no need to kill programmers... because we will have programmed a better world." He is then shot, revealed as a programmer after all. The final panels show gunshots ringing out -- the hunters got their man.
The Humor
The comic is a brilliant genre parody, framing programmers as a persecuted underclass in a post-robot-uprising world -- essentially treating them the way science fiction treats replicants, witches, or mutants. The humor comes from the interrogation questions being real programmer culture touchstones (Python vs. Java, Linux enthusiasm, the Vim vs. Emacs holy war) repurposed as life-or-death loyalty tests. The suspect's answer about Vim and Emacs being flower names is the funniest moment -- it is exactly the kind of answer that would prove someone is not a programmer. The tragic ending, where the programmer is revealed by his idealism about technology making the world better, adds a layer of dark irony: even in a world destroyed by programming, a true programmer cannot help but believe in code's potential for good.
References
- The Vim vs. Emacs debate is one of the oldest and most passionate rivalries in programming culture, pitting users of two competing text editors against each other since the 1980s.
- "Mr. Atwood" may be a reference to Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow, a major programming Q&A website.
- The Python vs. Java debate is another perennial argument in programming communities about which language is superior.
- The comic's premise echoes stories like "Blade Runner" (hunting replicants), the X-Men (persecuted mutants), and witch trial narratives, but applied to software developers.