What Programmers Say & What They Mean

What Developers Say vs. What They Mean

Programmers are a cagey lot, and most are quite opinionated in their own sort of way. But when a programmer says something it more often than not means something entirely different. Here's a translation guide that I found initially on Google+ and which I modified & extended.

These little hints about the hidden meaning in the language of developers is IMHO hilarious, and hopefully also understandable for neophytes! I hope all programmers out there take it with a very humorous grain of salt. I'm sure somebody could do a similar graphic for just about any profession on Gods green earth.

Programmer-English explanatory dictionary. Finally, programmers can make themselves understood.

Programmer — Translation Guide
What Progammers Say	What Progammers Mean
Horrible hack	Horrible hack that I didn't write
Temporary workaraound	Horrible hack that I wrote
It's broken	There are bugs in your code
It has a few issues	There are bugs in my code
Obscure	Someone else's code doesn't have comments
Self-documenting	My code doesn't have comments
That's why it's an awesome language	It's my favorite language and it's really easy to do something in it
You're thinking in the wrong mindset	It's my favourite language and it's really hard to do something in it
I can read this Perl script	I wrote this Perl script
I can't read this Perl script	I didn't write this Perl script
Bad structure	Someone else's code is badly organised
Complex structure	My code is badly organised
Bug	The absence of a feature I like
Out of scope	The absence of a feature I don't like
Clean solution	It works and I understand it
We need to rewrite it	It works but I don't understand it
emacs is better than vi	It's too peaceful here, let's start a flame war
vi is better than emacs	It's too peaceful here, let's start a flame war
IMHO	You are wrong
Legacy code	It works, but no one knows how
^X^Cquit^\[ESC][ESC]^C	I don't know how to quit vi
Suboptimal implementation	The worst code ever inflicted on humankind
That can't be done	It can be done, but it's boring and I don't want to do it
No problem, people do this all the time. It's an easy fix.	You might be the most idiotic person I've ever encountered
Put that bug in the backlog with low priority	Let's agree: nobody ever mention it again and ppl who do, will be shot
These test environments are too brittle	Works on my machine. Have you tried re-starting yours?
Proof-of-Concept	What I wrote
Perfect solution	How Sales & Marketing are promoting it