secret messages

December 2, 2006 1:18 PM

ever see personal comments in page source code?

i've recently begun reading a lot of source code for websites, and have found this to be very educational to a codeneanderthal such as i.

anyways, i was wondering if people ever leave non-instructional comments on their pages, something like <!-- dustin is an asshat --> or anything else that might not pertain to the construction of the page but rather to the personal circumstances of a bored programmer. if so, could you point me to some examples?

posted by localhuman to Computers & Internet (27 answers total)

Google's Code Search would be a good place to start. Why, just look at all those naughty programmers.
posted by xmutex at 1:26 PM on December 2, 2006

These are not HTML comments, but you may find the Google Code Search enlightening. It specifically searches source code files that the crawler finds around the web, so it's pretty heavy on open source projects.

For a good selection of frustrated programmers, I'd start with this search.
posted by Partial Law at 1:28 PM on December 2, 2006

Beaten on my very first comment.
posted by Partial Law at 1:28 PM on December 2, 2006

// This shouldn't work
We've all been there before.
posted by Hildago at 1:35 PM on December 2, 2006

Just to build on Partial Law's idea, this comes up with some bizarre ones... like:

SVector3 asshole = mVehicle->getMatrix().getOrigin ();
SVector3 asshole = mShikna->getMatrix().getOrigin ();
SVector3 kicker = getCamera().getMatrix().getOrigin();
SVector3 mighty_boot = asshole - kicker;

Man, I feel like I'm going into uncharted geek territory.
posted by rolypolyman at 1:45 PM on December 2, 2006

AP2 has loads of little asides hidden in the source code. Excitingly, some of them appear to be clues to a riddle leading to a secret page.

There goes my evening.

(The site uses frames, so you'll have to select 'view frame code' rather than page code.)
posted by Robot Rowboat at 1:47 PM on December 2, 2006

A story about the somewhat infamous comments in Windows' source code. Microsoft programmers know how to swear.
posted by ardgedee at 2:00 PM on December 2, 2006

when I need a random name for a variable or piece of text, I tend to use "poop." I just feel too stereotypical-geeky writing "foo."
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:32 PM on December 2, 2006

As a personal anecdote, I almost always call my variables something obscene.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 3:00 PM on December 2, 2006

This stuff tends not to make it into "world-facing" stuff like HTML, but it's in program code. The more it's undergone maintenance, the more likely it is to have snarky comments about the guy who came before you. Or the customer who wants such a brain-dead change.

Test data is another area where personal comments sometimes turn up.
posted by Leon at 3:29 PM on December 2, 2006

Al Gore's campaign site in 2000 had a message in his HTML comments: archive.org
posted by ALongDecember at 3:31 PM on December 2, 2006

Right before I left my old job, I built some simple HTML pages (for internal use only) and left some mildly obscene jokes in the comments. I never found out if anyone stumbled upon them, but the thought makes me giggle to this day.
posted by chrisamiller at 3:53 PM on December 2, 2006

I swear there was a page I read recently that had loads of examples of just this kind of thing.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:26 PM on December 2, 2006

not in source code but my DB error messages are something along the line of "Something's gone terribly wrong, sell your stocks, invest in gold, head for the hills to this blows over."
posted by Mick at 4:33 PM on December 2, 2006

This used to be common in the early days of blogging, in fact if I remember correctly, there were even flame wars about things posted in the commented source of HTML pages.

I can't find it right now, but there is at least one thread on MetaFilter (probably from early ~2000 or so) where significant parts of the content of the thread were rendered as HTML comments in people's replies.

Not really about programming, of course, but rather just an assumption of technical skill on the part of readers. These days, one could create a Greasemonkey script to show this kind of content, but at the time, we contented ourselves with little bookmarklet scripts to reveal such comments.

The practice pretty much died out by 2002, I'd say.
posted by anildash at 4:38 PM on December 2, 2006

As I recall, Christine Castro has a cute one on hers.
posted by mewithoutyou at 5:40 PM on December 2, 2006

I'm gonna post the AP2 thing to thepurification.org's forum. They've been looking for something else to do, lately.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 6:04 PM on December 2, 2006

Not code, as such, but I learned my lesson when a client asked for my photoshop source file and I handed it over to them without thinking.

The layers hand names like "motherfucking gross client shit" and "shitting shit," etc. Very juvenile to be sure but I was having a bad week on a uninspiring project. PLUS it went to a "born again" person at the client's office. Win win all the way around.

When I write code these days I generally don't comment public facing code and am fairly careful with PHP...though I have a tendency to name the table I use to tie my database together "ass"--as in "associations". It says something about my mental age that I'm amused by writing queries such as "INSERT INTO ass ..."
posted by maxwelton at 7:28 PM on December 2, 2006

dreamless.org
posted by unmake at 7:32 PM on December 2, 2006

Back in ancient times, when I spent most of my waking hours in front of a screen, writing code, I tended to use comments for personal notes, simply because it was handier than a pen and paper. This was before pop-up notepads came along (a la Sidekick).
posted by Goofyy at 9:34 PM on December 2, 2006

Our RPG guy has more fucks littered around his code than I do, and I use fuck, shit, and ass as variables instead of foo, bar, and baz. I rarely see such things in HTML. In fact, HTML comments of any type seem exceedingly rare.

Of course, he's in his 60s, so he's been doing it long enough to get to the point of really not caring what anybody thinks. :p
posted by wierdo at 10:00 PM on December 2, 2006

I forgot to mention that I was once looking for some new tires and looking at the various local dealers' web pages. I didn't stumble upon funny comments, but there was a little tiny link at the bottom of the page that led to an illustrated story about intergalactic mice invading Earth.

I wrote a note to the webmaster to let him know I enjoyed his little side project.

Looking at it again see he's put in a bit more funny stuff since.
posted by wierdo at 10:06 PM on December 2, 2006

I remember trying to reverse-engineer the login script for Windows Live ID and getting to a point in the Javascript source where I was warned "IF YOU ARE READING THIS, GIVE UP."


Amusingly enough I did give up about a week later. :-p
posted by PuGZ at 1:50 AM on December 3, 2006

ahem.
posted by krautland at 2:48 AM on December 3, 2006

Trademe, the online auctioneer of New Zealand, has a comment telling people who bother to read HTML comments to send Trademe their resume.
posted by toxic at 3:31 AM on December 3, 2006

Programmer bewilderment, disappointment on Google Code Search: "not clear why", "why oh why?", "the documentation says"....
posted by cps at 12:52 PM on December 3, 2006

I used to do this kind of stuff all the time when I actually had a website.
posted by drstein at 11:27 PM on December 4, 2006