Last Saturday, I hosted a dinner party. But not just any dinner party—a programming languages dinner party. I invited everyone: the elegant ones, the hipster ones, the ones that crash without warning, and even that one guest who insists on bringing their own garbage collector. Here’s how it went down.
C++ showed up first—because of course he did. He rang the doorbell twice, then let himself in without waiting for a response.
“I’m here to manage memory and hurt feelings,” he announced, placing a bottle of whiskey on the table and immediately judging the thread count of my curtains.
He sat down and started assembling a chair from raw wood, muttering something about not needing an IKEA compiler.
Python floated in next, wearing sneakers with no socks and carrying a trendy reusable water bottle. She didn’t bring food but insisted on prepping everything “because it’s just so much easier to read this way.”
She tried explaining list comprehensions to C++ while he rolled his eyes and began monologuing about “pointers” like a boomer explaining the war.
Java arrived in a business suit, despite the casual vibe, carrying a 47-page user manual for his casserole.
“This is enterprise-grade lasagna. Guaranteed compatibility with all major stomachs,” he said, placing it carefully in the oven, which he insisted be restarted before use.
“Also,” he added, handing me a stack of forms, “you’ll need to instantiate this dinner party before it runs.”
JavaScript came in through the bathroom window holding a smoothie and a Rubik’s Cube, yelling, “Everything is an object, even this bread!”
He immediately started rearranging the furniture, replacing all the light switches with gesture controls, and inexplicably added two extra chairs labeled undefined.
Ruby entered wearing a feathered hat and carrying a vintage cheese plate.
“Darlings, code should be beautiful and intuitive,” she said, slicing gouda with poetic elegance.
Python offered her a fork. Ruby refused and instead created a fork of the fork, then rewrote the dinner conversation to be more expressive.
Go arrived precisely on time, in practical shoes and with neatly labeled Tupperware.
He took one look at the kitchen and said, “I’ll be running dinner in separate goroutines.”
He didn’t talk much, but everyone appreciated that he cleaned up after himself and somehow reduced load times between courses.
Rust knocked on the door three times, then waited patiently while double-checking he had ownership of the invitation.
When he finally came in, he refused to sit down until all references in the seating chart had been resolved.
“Safety first,” he said while child-locking the spice rack.
PHP burst in, kicked off his shoes, and dumped a casserole labeled “v1_final_FINAL2.php” on the counter.
He insisted on sitting at the kids’ table, where he taught the salt and pepper shakers how to serve dynamic content.
Swift arrived late but stylish, with AirPods in and a dish so polished you suspected it was actually auto-generated.
He spent most of the evening arguing with Objective-C about legacy issues, then quietly rewrote the menu and pushed it to production without telling anyone.
Objective-C arrived exactly when Swift did—because of course they couldn’t travel separately.
Wearing a turtleneck and vintage Apple badge, he scanned the room with a mixture of pride and existential dread.
“I used to run this dinner party,” he muttered, placing a fondue set on the table with meticulously bracketed instructions.
He tried to reminisce with C++ about the good old days of manual memory management, but Swift interrupted with, “Okay, Boomer. ARC exists now.”
Objective-C sighed, pulled out a flip phone, and mumbled, “At least I still work… in some environments.”
Assembly showed up wearing chainmail and speaking in grunts.
He refused to use a plate, built a table from scratch using bits from the floor, and took 45 minutes to butter a piece of bread—but, damn, the butter was efficiently applied.
As the night wrapped up, Java was asking everyone to sign NDAs for dessert, JavaScript was deep into a conversation with a toaster, and C++ had started a small fire by over-optimizing the candle.
Meanwhile, Python was already cleaning up, Ruby was writing a haiku about flan, and Rust refused to leave until everyone deallocated their chair.
It was chaotic, beautiful, and unnecessarily complex—just like modern development.
I’m never hosting again. Next time, I’m just ordering takeout and letting Bash handle it.
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