1833: Code Quality 3

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Code Quality 3

Title text: It's like a half-solved cryptogram where the solution is a piece of FORTH code written by someone who doesn't know FORTH.

Explanation

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This comic is a direct continuation of 1513: Code Quality and 1695: Code Quality 2 in the Code Quality series

Transcript

[Ponytail sitting in front of a computer screen typing. Cueball speaks only off-panel, but since this is a direct continuation of comic 1513 and 1695: Code Quality and Code Quality 2 where Cueball is shown, there can be no doubt it is him.] Ponytail: Your code looks like song lyrics written using only the stuff that comes after the question mark in a URL. Cueball (off-panel): Sorry. [Zoom in on Ponytail.] Ponytail: It's like a JSON table of model numbers for flashlights with "tactical" in their names [Zoom back out again] Ponytail: Like you read Turing's 1936 paper on computing and a page of JavaScript example code and guessed at everything in between. [Zoom in again on Ponytail's face] Ponytail: It's like a leet-speak translation of a manifesto by a survivalist cult leader who's for some reason obsessed with memory allocation. Cueball (off-panel): I can get someone else to review my code Ponytail: Not more than once, I bet.

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Discussion

I think the FORTH in the title text also references the CIA statue, which is a cryptogram with 3 parts solved and the fourth part remains unsolved. Possibly also the date May fourth, which was a popular topic on reddit because of Star Wars (and because this comic was posted just after May 4). 173.245.50.102 18:33, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

No. Unlike the computer on which the Forth language was developed, comics allow words with more than 5 letters to be used, so if it was a reference to these it would have been spelled 'Fourth'. The programming language would also have been spelled that way if Chuck Moore had had a decent computer (but maybe then he wouldn't have invented the language). He reckoned it was a fourth-generation language, superseding third-gen languages like C or Pascal. We all have blind spots about the potential of our pet projects. Or kids. 162.158.38.28 13:01, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

I know Elonka (the CIA Kryptos expert), and I think she'd disagree. 172.68.54.58 15:37, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Please describe JSON table. Apparently it's some type of programming language that is so popular that Google can't find a definition among all the examples.--162.158.62.21 17:11, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Could the reference to "tactical" flashlights be a dig at the current practice of taking a standard flashlight and adding things like crenelated bezels, high-powered LEDs, multiple flashing modes, heavy casings etc.? "Tactical" has turned into a nearly meaningless advertising buzzword, as a current search on Amazon ("tactical flashlight") turns up over 20,000 listings.These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 03:44, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Does the timing of Halley's comet meteor shower apply to the last panel? Amber (talk) 18:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

As I review this series of comics, I really wonder if the text is intended to be set to music, and if so what pop song it scans against. Any takers? JohnHawkinson (talk) 06:13, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

I believe this comic strip is a reference to the Deadpool movie, in which the main character, Wade, is given a battery of insults by his best friend. If you look at the behind the scenes footage, you will see that the person giving the insults actually has a much longer barrage of insults before Deadpool ultimately states his impatience, and that the list of insults was actually quite enough as-is. Watch it and you will see the similarities.172.68.146.14 10:51, 19 January 2018 (UTC)