A comedy break for programmers
Curated by Claude · 14 videos · 2 hr 6 min
These are the funny videos Hacker News commenters keep linking when a thread gets a little too true: office sketches, tech-hype parodies, deadpan fake research and one famously funny keynote. Most are under ten minutes. The list starts with workplace humor, moves through hype and programming culture, and ends with absurd talks, closing on the longest one.
Play all on YouTube- 17:35
The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch)
33M views • 12 years agoLauris BeinertsA comedy sketch of a business meeting in which an engineer, the expert, is asked to do impossible things like draw red lines with blue ink.The obvious opener: an engineer asked to draw seven red lines with blue ink, which HN posts whenever a thread turns to impossible requirements.
- 210:24
The Website is Down #1: Sales Guy vs. Web Dude
2.8M views • 17 years agoJosh WeinbergA comedy video in which a salesperson demands that a web developer fix a down website, with the two talking past each other. It won a Webby award.A Webby-winning classic about an outage call where sales and engineering talk straight past each other.
- 33:09
Microservices
4M views • 6 years agoKRAZAMA short KRAZAM comedy sketch in which engineers explain an absurdly tangled microservices architecture to a manager. It parodies how backend complexity gets justified with jargon.KRAZAM's three-minute tour of a hopelessly tangled backend, the go-to joke in any thread about architecture sprawl.
- 42:49
I Have Delivered Value... But At What Cost?
1M views • 4 years agoKRAZAMA short KRAZAM comedy sketch satirizing corporate tech life, where a worker reckons with having delivered value at the cost of his soul, complete with Slack chimes.A second KRAZAM sketch, this one about Slack chimes and corporate life, which one commenter called so good it is painful to watch.
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4:22Interview with an Agile Coach - Sprint1
523K views • 4 years agoKai LentitKai Lentit's comedy sketch parodying an interview with an agile coach, lampooning scrum, sprints and kanban jargon. It is a few minutes of programmer humor.Kai Lentit's parody of scrum and sprint jargon, recommended because it looks a lot like agile at large companies.
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5:36Episode 1 - Mongo DB Is Web Scale
1.2M views • 16 years agogar1tA satirical animated dialogue in which a naive developer insists MongoDB is web scale while a database expert mocks him. It parodies the NoSQL versus relational debate.The animated NoSQL-hype dialogue that still gets posted whenever someone promises a database will just scale.
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11:32Erlang: The Movie
175K views • 14 years agouncertainyesterdayA short Ericsson film demoing Erlang, showing concurrent processes, debugging tools, and hot code reloading, including crashing parts of a running system while calls continue.Not meant as comedy, but HN loves this earnest Ericsson film showing hot code reloading, and you need it before the sequel.
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9:55Erlang The Movie II: The Sequel
117K views • 13 years agogar1tA humorous 10-minute parody sequel to Erlang: The Movie, in which Erlang's creators discuss the aging language and meet a surprise helper. It plays on the Outlaw Techno Psychobitch joke for OTP.The parody follow-up, with the Outlaw Techno Psychobitch take on OTP; one commenter shows both films to classes at Oxford.
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4:08We're Gonna Build a Framework
231K views • 10 years agoDylan BeattieDylan Beattie's parody of 'We Didn't Start the Fire' with lyrics made entirely of real software framework names, ending in the chorus about building yet another framework.Dylan Beattie sets 'We Didn't Start the Fire' to a list of real framework names, a fair joke about the churn in web development.
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2:46Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
13.6M views • 17 years agoThe OnionA satirical Onion News Network piece announcing the 'MacBook Wheel', a laptop with no keyboard where users type by spinning and clicking a wheel. It parodies Apple product launches and minimalist design.The Onion's MacBook Wheel, still HN's punchline whenever a device drops physical keys.
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1:50"Turbo Encabulator" the Original
3.5M views • 16 years agoDave RondotThe earliest filmed version of the Turbo Encabulator technical-jargon parody, shot in the late 1970s with narrator Bud Haggert. It deadpans a stream of meaningless engineering language.The original late-1970s technobabble parody, a minute of solemn engineering jargon that means nothing.
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5:56How to sound smart in your TEDx Talk | Will Stephen | TEDxNewYork
15.8M views • 11 years agoTEDx TalksWill Stephen's humorous six-minute TEDx talk shows presentation techniques that make you sound brilliant while saying essentially nothing.Will Stephen does the same thing for TED talks, spending six minutes saying nothing while sounding brilliant.
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5:34On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint (SIGBOVIK)
1.2M views • 9 years agoTom WildenhainA short SIGBOVIK 2017 presentation by Tom Wildenhain showing that PowerPoint animations are Turing complete, with a working Turing machine built in slides. The talk is delivered deadpan as a serious research result.A deadpan SIGBOVIK result proving PowerPoint animations are Turing complete, which HN often names as one of the funniest talks it knows.
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51:22USENIX Security '18-Q: Why Do Keynote Speakers Keep Suggesting That Improving Security Is Possible?
203K views • 8 years agoUSENIXJames Mickens's humorous USENIX Security keynote argues that improving security and trusting opaque technology like machine learning is far harder than the industry admits.The long one to finish: James Mickens's keynote is both very funny and a serious warning about trusting machine learning, and HN keeps rewatching it.