Programmer humor · Out now in paperback
101 Professional Translations for Bugs, Bad Code, Pointless Meetings, Impossible Deadlines & Production Disasters.
Say what you mean. Keep your job.
Paperback · 6 × 9 in · 120 pages
Every programmer has two versions of every sentence: the one in their head, and the one they actually type into Slack. This book collects 101 of them, and adds a third.
The unfiltered thought, exactly as it exists in your head at 4:55 p.m.
The same thought, compiled for a corporate audience, with zero warnings.
What is actually going on, for anyone who has been there.
Four of the 101, exactly as they appear in the book.
// DO NOT. No explanation. Everyone obeys it.Grouped by habitat, from the code nobody understands to the meeting nobody needed.
Code that works, that nobody understands, and that everyone is afraid of.
Where your code is judged by a jury of peers, every one of whom would have done it differently.
The scientific method, applied to a system that refuses to behave the same way twice.
Talking about the work instead of doing it, so later you can talk about why it isn’t done.
Requirements change without warning, and engineering gets blamed for the flooding.
An estimate is a guess with error bars. A deadline is the same guess, laminated.
Flaky tests, staging environments that lie, and the build that is green because a test was skipped.
Force pushes, merge conflicts, Friday deploys, and a rollback plan called “hope.”
Every system is either on fire, or not yet aware that it’s on fire.
DNS, Kubernetes, untested backups, and a cloud bill nobody can explain.
Code that compiles first time, explains itself with total confidence, and calls functions that never existed.
Eleven-box diagrams, fourteen microservices, and a fourth manager this year.
Yes. The humor is dry and technical: a little sarcastic, occasionally mildly rude (a “damn” here, a “crap” there, all in the “what you want to say” lines), and never mean-spirited. Nobody is the butt of a joke except bad code, long meetings and the cloud bill.
Mostly. Every “what you want to say” and “HR-approved” line is written in plain English. The developer translations are where the insider detail lives, and watching a programmer react to them is half the fun. If you want the background, our guide to programmer inside jokes, explained covers the classics.
No. “HR-approved” is a comedic device: no human resources department has reviewed or endorsed anything in the book. That said, plenty of the HR-approved lines are genuinely the better thing to say, which is the joke and also the point. Our guides on writing code review comments and pushing back on deadlines take that part seriously.
No, it is a humor book about the working life of programmers. If you want to learn to code, start with Python for Beginners.
Now. The paperback has been on Amazon since 7 October 2026: buy HR-Approved Ways to Say What Programmers Are Really Thinking on Amazon. It is also listed on our Amazon author page.
The rest of the catalogue is practical: plain-language books about programming, AI tools and careers. See the whole catalogue.
Learn Python through clear lessons, mini projects, and real exercises.
Build real programs with automation, APIs, testing, and AI-assisted coding.
Get real work done on your computer just by describing it in plain English.