A women sent her kid that was into programming to the grocery store and told it:
“Please buy 1 bottle of milk if they have eggs buy 2”
The kid returned with just 2 bottles of milk. When it’s mom ask why it bought 2 bottles of milk, the kid said:
“Because they had eggs”
… Was the kid right?
I always think this joke is more of a linguistics/grammar joke than programming. The kid resolves the ambiguity in the ellipsis incorrectly, but why is this a programmer joke?
I heard this joke in Spanish, but the meaning is a bit different. Eggs is a colloquial/slang term for testicles (like balls in English), so “if you have eggs” means “if you dare”.
I love having a joke that works in two languages but for different reasons.
Yes the joke is definitely on human language and not on programming but I think programmer can be relate here. At least I feel this joke is made in every computer science ground class ever.
I suppose it demonstrates the ambiguity of human language and need to formalize things for computers