Developer whimsy: Llamas in Pajamas

I love how developers sometimes slip fun, amusing or whimsical easter eggs into software. I was just taken by how the Ruby application server Puma's current version has a codename of "Llamas in Pajamas".

What are your favourite whimsical bonuses you've found in code? Have you slipped something fun into a project that left you giggling while you waited for someone else to find it? What are your favourite llamas in pajamas?

Comments

[Patrick Tingen]

I have a pet project DataDigger check here that has seen several easter eggs. In the previous version I shipped an Arkanoid game, written in the Progress database 4GL. In the current version there is a Sokoban game hidden. And even a real Rickroll.

Each version of the DataDigger has a codename. DataDigger 19 was called 'Haiku' and I could not refrain from adding one to the readme:

serious data
but with a DataDigger
will it remain the same?

Now this is a pet project, but at work we did something similar. On the 'about' page of the project, we added a small easter egg: the window held a company logo. This image could be dragged away, revealing a button. When you pressed that button, the pictures of all eight members of the team appeared on the screen and rotated around the about screen. Absolutely un-useful, but fun to program :)

[Phil Nash]

Hiding games in programs is great (and fun for people that find them). I love the hidden button idea though, there's so much fun you could have with that!

[Kyle Johnson]

One project I worked on would bring up A music video for I like to move it move it if you typed "iliketomoveit" on your keyboard.

[Phil Nash]

And now I just want to type that on every website and program I use, just in case.

[Jess Lee]

😂

[Jeffrey Tao]

Docker's default container names are something along the lines of <adjective>_<scientist or engineer> which is cute and memorable, but also makes typing docker kill ecstatic_feynman a bit disturbing.

[Phil Nash]

Cute, memorable and disturbing are my top 3 requirements for software that I use!

[Ben Halpern]

Code names are fun because they’re also sort of useful. Having the concept of code names helps give things names without as much overhead or pressure.

Puns or other plays on words in code can really suck. Easy way to make something fun much less fun due to confusion.

Explicit code names: good.
Puns: use with great caution.

[Phil Nash]

Oh yeah, in code things should have boring names. If it's boring it just says what it does, makes it easier to see what it does for everyone using the codebase, particularly newcomers.

Pun should be everywhere else though.

[Phil Nash]

I was wondering where you were going with that! Well played 😄

[Artem Baguinski]

Our team worked on an "artistic demo" for an expensive VR-cave environment that the city of Rotterdam sponsored for a bioinformatics dept in local university and while working on the application it kept on locking up and had to often be forcibly closed over ssh. We called the binary life so we could force-close it with a command killall life. The demo itself was about traveling inside living cells and watching their parts fly around, so the name was actually fitting.

[Phil Nash]

For a demo about life, that's quite dark! Admittedly, I guess it really did kill everything in the demo. Sounds like a cool project to work on though!

[Karthikeyan Dhanapal]

2.6.5 also has the same name.

I didn't notice it previously. Today I saw that and I was curious and landed in here 🙃

[Phil Nash]

I wonder if they have a method of choosing these, or if it's up to whoever is in charge of the release at the time. Must be a lot of pressure to come up with something better than the previous one. Muffin mode is my favourite of these!