It's that time of year again. I haven't been to a shopping mall, but I did see chocolate hearts at the local Woolworths shop. So I'm sure heart decorations are out on display for Valentine's Day everywhere.
In the good old days of classroom training, we would give each delegate a Valentine's chocolate. This year I thought it would be nice to write something that combined romance and programming.
Writer's block
Not so easy. I could not think of anything.
Ask the lecturers
So I turned to our lecturers. The Incus Data lecturers have years of programming experience, and are experts at answering questions from delegates.
Ask Lewis any perplexing Java questions. Ask Renier esoteric questions about pointers in C. Ask Charles weird questions about - well, anything. Charles is our source of weird and wonderful - or just weird - facts.
And they cover most relationship demographics: one is married, one is dating and one is single.
I asked a question along these lines: "Think of programmers and romance or Valentine's Day. What comes to mind?"
Hmm. This question stumped them. The answers ranged from unhelpful to outrageous:
- Nothing.
- That's like chalk and cheese.
- If you're a programmer, you're probably alone on Valentine's Day.
- I see an image of a programmer coding frantically and his girlfriend yelling at him to spend time with her. Or maybe two programmers gaming, and their girlfriends commiserating.
(Before you accuse me of gender-bias: statistics show that about 90% of developers identify as male. )
Google to the rescue?
So I did what we all do when we need an answer. I googled it. I tried various phrases and combinations and found ... almost nothing.
Here's what I found:
- How to declare your love like a programmer: A tutorial on using Node.js to send a romantic message every hour to your loved one.
(Charles offered to provide alternatives in other languages.) - 10 Reasons why programmers are more fun to date: Written by a programmer - one who, if nothing else, is very optimistic.
2024-02-15: The above link no longer exists. But I found a similar list - surely also written by a programmer. It lists even more reasons to date a programmer. - Dating a programmer: A response by a "Programmer's Girlfriend" to an article similar to the above one. As the spouse of a programmer, I can identify with her point of view.
Charles suggested I look for a story about a couple who met on a coding boot camp and coded together happily ever after. But I couldn't find a story like that.
For the love of coding
The only recurring search results are about the love of coding. So if you have any romantic stories about programming, please share them below and put me out of my misery.
And if you love coding, then you'll love our courses. Check out the course schedule on the website, or download the PDF.
2 thoughts on “Programmers and Romance?”
Hi Jacqui
This really made me laugh. It reminds me of the joke about the programmer who is walking along and sees a frog. Suddenly the frog starts talking to him. It says “kiss me and I will turn into a beautiful princess”. He just smiles and puts the frog in his pocket and walks on. The frog kicks him till he takes it out again and the frog says “Kiss me and I will do whatever you want. I can be your girlfriend.” Again the programmer puts the frog in his pocket and walks on. Again there is a lot of kicking and on being taken out, the frog says “What is up with you, why don’t you kiss me?!” And the programmer says, “I don’t have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog is really cool!”
Thanks for the fun emails!
I loved that! Thank you so much for making me laugh too.