He will get away with small talk.

Ok normally I don’t approve of these types of comments on HN, but this was witty.

For those who do not get the reference, Alan Kay is the inventor of SmallTalk: http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/

I love how you revealed that you dislike joke comments on HN and unintentionally killed it at the same time.

I don't think the explanation killed the joke. As someone who wouldn't have gotten it otherwise, it made me able to appreciate the pun.

Disagree. It killed it.

Agreed, it definitely did.

Dead as a doornail.

Didn’t intent on killing the joke, I was hoping it would allow more people to appreciate it. But apparently I failed at that. :)

No worries. :)

"Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process." -- Elwyn Brooks White

Isn't a joke "alive" until the explanation? So those that 'got' the joke would've enjoyed the joke, before moving onto read the next line. So reading the explanation of the joke wouldn't interfere with their enjoyment of the joke since they already enjoyed it prior to reading the explanation.

If you're telling a joke, you don't want emotional context switching. A quick explanation, laughter might be preserved (so the above pun may or may not inhibit the execution of the original joke).

But every joke has an emotional gravity and the longer you compliment it with other emotions (e.g. intellectual explanations), eventually escape velocity is reached and you're in an entirely different emotional state.

Airplane! has three laughs per minute on average (https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2012/09/21/top-10-...). That's not much time pull in other emotional states. And that's on purpose.

This thread is so HN.

Post -> Comment on Post -> Analysis of Comment -> Analysis of Analysis -> Analysis of the act of Analysis -> Question truth itself.

It's like that Wikipedia phenomenon where all articles lead to philosophy.

I am not a programmer, but read enough HN to have gotten the reference.

To the people saying the explanation ruined the joke, I’d ask you to take a minute to consider whether you viewed it as a joke or a shibboleth.

If only those who know ‘got it’ and explaining it ‘killed it’, then isn’t it by definition a shibboleth?

In-group language is exclusionary by definition. Is this a good thing?

I would not have gotten it otherwise

Gotta provide some context for the project management professionals who are reading this thread, I guess.