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dereferencing movies (thejenkinscomic.files.wordpress.com)

submitted 9 months ago by quantenzitrone@feddit.de to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

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source: https://thejenkinscomic.wordpress.com/2024/01/31/movie-references/

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[-] Bronco1676@lemmy.ml 27 points 9 months ago

Can anyone explain the funny for me?

[-] DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works 25 points 9 months ago

Pointers are variables that don't hold data themselves but instead hold a reference to it. It's really common to redirect pointers to reference something other than what they originally referenced, which is the joke in this comic. He is changing the conversation so that Star Wars actually refers to Jaws.

[-] Bronco1676@lemmy.ml 26 points 9 months ago

Mhm yes that's what I understood, but I didn't understans whats funny about this? What does "I'm your father" mean if the movie is jaws?

[-] Mirodir@discuss.tchncs.de 30 points 9 months ago

I think the humor is meant to be in the juxtaposition between "reference" in media contexts (e.g. "I am your father") and "reference" in programming contexts and applying the latter context to the former one.

What does “I’m your father” mean if the movie is jaws?

I think the absurdity of that question is part of said humor. That being said, I didn't find it funny either.

[-] Bronco1676@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago

Okay got it, thank you.

[-] Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee -3 points 9 months ago

I think it’s also the fact that people are sick of the “ummm achsfhrually they never said Luke I am your father, they said No, I am your father”

[-] gianni@lemmy.ca 15 points 9 months ago

I personally don’t find it funny because these types of jokes essentially boil down to “I used a concept outside of its context, and for that reason alone it is funny”. However, with a lot of these jokes the context is so narrow (i.e. programming) that they are almost universally not understood by wider audiences.

[-] Luvon@beehaw.org 1 points 9 months ago

I mean programmers is a pretty big audience. Sure this probably would pan at a comedy open mike night but it’s literally on programmer humor.

And using concept outside its normal concept or conflating two concepts is pretty standard humor.

[-] gianni@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago

Conflating two concepts can be funny (e.g. puns) but this isn’t that. “Dereferencing a movie ” has no meaning outside of manual memory management.

I understand humour is subjective but some jokes aren’t as strong as others (and some jokes aren’t jokes at all).

[-] Luvon@beehaw.org 2 points 9 months ago

Referencing is the term that is being conflated.

Enough people apparently find this funny here. Not everyone needs to find every bit of comedy funny.

[-] outer_spec@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 8 months ago

🤓

[-] survivalmachine@beehaw.org 11 points 9 months ago

To reference a movie in common vocabulary is to bring it up in conversation.

Referencing in programming terms like C refers to assigning a value to a variable. You can re-assign those variables to new values and then de-reference (read) the new value.

They are conflating the common meaning of reference with the much more obscure programming definition (obscure at least among non-programmers).

Star wars = "no, I am your father" (reference) Jaws = movie about hunting killer shark (reference) Star wars = movie about hunting killer shark (OP is pretending we can treat movie references like variable references and re-assigns the star wars variable to mean something else) "Hey, have you seen star wars? The movie about hunting a killer shark?" (De-referencing your newly re-assigned variable)