this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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xkcd #3127: Where Babies Come From

Title text:

Historians: Contemporaneous documentation of the initial events is often sparse, and in fact people often get testy and uncooperative when we urge better documentation for the historical record.

Transcript:

Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com

Source: https://xkcd.com/3127/

explainxkcd for #3127

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[–] ImWaitingForRetcons@lemmy.world 23 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Wouldn’t “inheritance” be a better answer for the software engineer?

[–] megane_kun@lemmy.zip 14 points 2 weeks ago

“Instantiation” would be my guess.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This is why recursion is bad, folks. It leads to weird results and often fails to properly terminate.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

But on the other hand, tail recursion is its own reward!

[–] folekaule@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

I like Dependent Injection, myself

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 16 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

The hospital, they come from the hospital. Along with a bill for $120k.

[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 26 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's where Americans come from. Thanks all gods, most babies are not American.

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Most babies are Indian or Chinese

[–] sga@lemmings.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

Indian babies are mostly free (or a much more reasonable charge)(assuming no pregnancy complications requiring a very fancy operation in a private hospital)

[–] devilish666@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

The only correct answer so far

[–] MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago

Only for Americans who have been conned that healthcare really costs that much.

[–] AlexisFR@jlai.lu 0 points 2 weeks ago

Why would you pay that much to give birth in a hostipital?

[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I am not enough of an expert in the other fields to compare how stupid those answers are, but the software engineer seems like it is quite different to the others.

For the other professions, it seems to me, as a layman in those fields, that they are applying their own fields' jargon to come up with a silly answer. But in the case of an an off-by-one error, some software engineer had to make an error. They had to be bad at their normal job. The other professions seem like they are simply too good at their normal jobs to have common sense elsewhere. That's why software engineer seems quite different.

It really feels like the parallel answer for software engineers would be something to do with "multiple inheritance" or "mixins".

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago

They [software engineers] had to be bad at their normal job.

So ...

...

You didn't notice it by now?

...

[–] PoastRotato@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Software engineers are bad at their jobs.

It's just that everyone else is worse.

[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

everyone else is worse

The point is that they weren't portrayed that way in the comic.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I think the parent comment meant "everyone else is worse at software engineering"

[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

You know, that makes a lot more sense than what they actually wrote. You've convinced me that they meant to say what you said instead of what they said.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago

I think this might be a joke similar to https://xkcd.com/2030/

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 4 points 2 weeks ago

ASDF-Movie 13: Baby Gun.