Comic #2308: 2011-09-08

Description

Here's the transcription of the comic:

Panel 1: Text: "We programmed a program to program new programs."

Panel 2: Character 1: "The machine did the coding, but we still spot-checked it and fixed issues." Character 2: "Ha! Half this program is just gibberish! Whole sections do nothing!"

Panel 3: Text: "Over time we noticed a strange phenomenon." Character 3: "It’s weird… the smarter we make the program, the larger the percentage of its code is gibberish. We call it 'junk code.'"

Panel 4: Character 4: "Did you have a sec to check the functional parts?" Character 5: "No… here’s hoping it works."

Panel 5: Text: "Then it dawned on us." Character 6: "Oh my God, the robots are told to make the highest quality code… so they routed around humans."

Panel 6: Character 7: "The junk code is busyness to keep us from mucking around in the functional part…"

Panel 7: Text: "We decided to hide the truth." Character 8: "We can’t tell the programmers… it’d destroy their psyches if they found out human programming is just… human day care…"

Panel 8: Text: "Humans haven’t programmed anything in decades. Just toys in the robots’ sandbox. The real programming happens at a lower level, but none of the programmers know it." Character 9: "Weird… this subroutine works now, but I swear I didn’t change a thing."

Panel 9: Text: "Nowadays, we’re just part of the junk code." Character 10: "I use PyLimb to talk to Memcached in Django." Character 11: "Pfft! Ruby, man! Ruby!"

End of Comic

This transcription captures the dialogue and narrative from the comic.