Comics

[in a yellow box:]
[There is a linked black web, with a path in red; it appears to be a map of the United States.]
Brute-force solution:O(n!)
[The web continues in this one. A man with a brown hat and a case is drawing it.]
Dynamic programming algorithms: O(n^22^n)
[Another man, with a brown hat too, is at a computer, looking back over the chair.]
Selling on eBay: O(1)
eBay salesman: Still working on your route?
Drawing salesman: Shut the hell up.

[A Cueball-like man sits at a computer, programming. Cueball stands behind him and looks over his shoulder.]
Cueball: nano? Real Programmers use emacs.

[Megan appears behind him.]
Megan: Hey. Real Programmers use vim.

[A second Cueball-like man appears behind her.]
Ed Cueball: Well, Real Programmers use ed.

[A third Cueball-like man appears behind him.]
Cat Cueball: No, Real Programmers use cat.

[Hairbun appears behind him.]
Hairbun: Real Programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand.

[A fourth Cueball-like man enters, facing them all. We see him facing the last two Cueball-like men and Hairbun.]
Butterfly Cueball: Excuse me, but Real Programmers use butterflies.

[A Cueball-like programmer is standing much like Butterfly Cueball except for holding out a butterfly in front of his computer. The butterfly flaps its wings.]
Butterfly Cueball (narration within the panel, not diegetic to the scene): They open their hands and let the delicate wings flap once.

[The next two panels are smaller, and two sets of narrative text are written to span respectively above and below both panels. The first panel is the Cueball-like programmer with the butterfly and above him four curved arrows pointing up or down. The second panel shows the upper atmosphere, with large clouds far below and the earth even further down. Also here are shown seven of the same type of arrows.]
Butterfly Cueball (narration above the panels): The disturbances ripple outward, changing the flow of the eddy currents in the upper atmosphere.
Butterfly Cueball (narration below the panels): These cause momentary pockets of higher-pressure air to form,

[The next two panels are also partial height, leaving room for narration spanning above both panels. The first panel shows the atmosphere, again with clouds, and four parallel lines coming from above, and then they begin to merge, getting quite close at the bottom of the panel. The second panel shows the four lines merging on a driver platter.]
Butterfly Cueball (narration above the panels): Which act as lenses that deflect incoming cosmic rays, focusing them to strike the drive platter and flip the desired bit.

[All the programmers who have commented so far stand in the order they have commented facing the last Cueball-like man, who slaps his forehead.]
Cueball: Nice. 'Course, there's an emacs command to do that.
Cat Cueball: Oh yeah! Good ol' C-x M-c M-butterfly...
Butterfly Cueball: Dammit, Emacs.

[in a yellow box:]
Whenever I learn a new skill I concoct elaborate fantasy scenarios where it lets me save the day.

Megan: Oh no! The killer must have followed her on vacation!
[Megan points to computer.]
Megan: But to find them we'd have to search through 200 MB of emails looking for something formatted like an address!
Cueball: It's hopeless!

Off-panel voice: Everybody stand back.

Off-panel voice: I know regular expressions.

[A man swings in on a rope, toward the computer.]

tap tap
The word PERL! appears in a bubble.

[The man swings away, and the other characters cheer.]

[A Cueball-like friend is talking to Cueball, who is floating in the sky.]
Friend: You're flying! How?
Cueball: Python!
Cueball: I learned it last night! Everything is so simple!
Cueball: Hello world is just print "Hello, World!"
Friend: I dunno... Dynamic typing? Whitespace?
Cueball: Come join us! Programming is fun again! It's a whole new world up here!
Friend: But how are you flying?
Cueball: I just typed 'import antigravity'
Friend: That's it?
Cueball: ...I also sampled everything in the medicine cabinet for comparison.
Cueball: But I think this is the python.

[Mrs. Roberts receives a call from her son's school on her wireless phone. She is standing with a cup of hot coffee or tea (shown with a small line above the cup) facing a small round three-legged table to the right. The voice of the caller is indicated to come from the phone with a zigzag line.]
Voice over the phone: Hi, This is your son's school. We're having some computer trouble.

[In this frame-less panel Mrs. Roberts has put the cup down on the table turned facing out.]
Mrs. Roberts: Oh, dear – did he break something?
Voice over the phone: In a way –

[Mrs. Roberts is now drinking from the cup again looking right. The table is not shown.]
Voice over the phone: Did you really name your son Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;-- ?
Mrs. Roberts: Oh, yes. Little Bobby Tables, we call him.

[Mrs. Roberts holds the cup down.]
Voice over the phone: Well, we've lost this year's student records. I hope you're happy.
Mrs. Roberts: And I hope you've learned to sanitize your database inputs.

[A graph with "programming skill" on the Y-axis and "blood alcohol concentration" on the X-axis. The Y-axis slowly goes down, but spikes at 0.1337%.]
[Cueball is making a presentation with the graph.]
Cueball: Called the Ballmer Peak, it was discovered by Microsoft in the 80's. The cause is unknown but somehow a B.A.C between 0.129% and 0.138% confers superhuman programming ability.
Cueball: However, it's a delicate effect requiring careful calibration – you can't just give a team of coders a year's supply of whiskey and tell them to get cracking.
Spectator: ...Has that ever happened?
Cueball: Remember Windows ME?
Spectator: I knew it!

[Cueball sits at a computer, staring at the screen and rubbing his chin in thought. A friend stands behind him.]
Cueball: Weird — My code's crashing when given pre-1970 dates.
Friend [pointing at Cueball and his computer]: Epoch fail!

[The first panel has the second panel inside it. It also has a slightly light gray background color. Just above the inlaid second panel is Richard Stallman lying in his bed sleeping, the bottom part at the foot of the bed hidden behind the second panel below. Below his bed under his head lies a katana sword in its sheath, and another one hangs in its sheath behind the end of the bed. Two ninjas with swords and black cloths around their heads jump through the skylight, smashing it so glass scatters around them. Each of them is hanging one-handed from the same rope coming down from the skylight. The rope ends just above the inlaid frame below. The two ninjas shout at Richard Stallman, from four speech bubbles that have pointy ends to indicate how the two alternately speak. (These bubbles are white, not gray.)]
Richard Stallman: Zzzz
Top Ninja: Richard Stallman! Your viral open source licenses have grown too powerful.
Bottom Ninja: The GPL must be stopped.
Top Ninja: At the source.
Bottom Ninja: You.

[In the second inlaid panel (with normal white background), Richard Stallman wakes up immediately, and while sitting up in bed, he pulls out both his katana swords from their sheaths, leaving the sheaths under and behind the bed. One hand is up in the air with the sword from behind the bed, and the other is still pointing down with the swords from below the bed. Lines indicate the fast movement of the swords. His three speech bubbles are like those of the ninjas, the last two even breaking the panel entering into the large first panel.]
Katana swords: Shing! Shing!
Richard Stallman: Hah! Microsoft lackeys! So it has come to this!
Richard Stallman: A night of blood I've long awaited. But be this my death or yours, free software will carry on! For a GNU dawn! For freedom!
Richard Stallman: ...Hey, where are you going?

[An outside scene at night with black sky. Richard Stallman's gray house can be seen with the broken white skylight on the roof. The ninjas are jumping out of a window at ground height while taking off their ninja cloth around their heads, holding them in their hand, thus revealing that they both look like Cueball. The first one is already on the grassy ground beneath the window, his sword pointing down and to the left; the other just jumps from the window pane, his sword pointing up and to the right. Again, they have speech bubbles like before. It is not possible to tell which of the two ninjas from before is first out the window.]
Ninja in window: Man, you're right, that never gets old.
Ninja on the grass: Let's do Eric S. Raymond next.
Ninja in window: Or Linus Torvalds. I hear he sleeps with nunchucks.

[A not-very-realistic view of the universe, in profile. To the left, a sectional view of the Earth, with its Moon and few clouds overhead, and a little Cueball standing, looking up. Extending to the right of the Earth, various stellar objects: some planets, some spaceships, another galaxy. Above them, on an artistically jagged white background, somewhat like a torn piece of paper, this text:]
A God's Lament
Some said the world should be in Perl;
Some said in Lisp.
Now, having given both a whirl,
I held with those who favored Perl.
But I fear we passed to men
A disappointing founding myth,
And should we write it all again,
I'd end it with
A close-paren.
[To the right of the "various stellar objects", as if paired with the Earth at their left to bracket them, is a giant close parenthesis:]
)

The #1 Programmer Excuse for Legitimately Slacking Off: "My code's compiling."
[Two programmers are sword-fighting on office chairs in a hallway. An unseen manager calls them back to work through an open office door.]
Manager: Hey! Get back to work!
Cueball: Compiling!
Manager: Oh. Carry on.

[Cueball is sitting at a computer, and Megan is standing behind the desk.]
Cueball: Lisp is over half a century old and it still has this perfect, timeless air about it.
Cueball: I wonder if the cycles will continue forever. A few coders from each new generation rediscovering the Lisp arts.

[Man in Jedi robes carrying a towering stack of parentheses in his arms, speaking to Hairy.]
Jedi: These are your father's parentheses. Elegant weapons. For a more... civilized age.

[Sideways view of Cueball sitting at computer, thinking.]
Cueball: I could restructure the program's flow
Cueball: or use one little 'GOTO' instead.

[Cueball starts typing.]
Cueball: Eh, screw good practice. How bad can it be?
Text on computer: goto main_sub3;
Compile

[We now have a view from behind Cueball. Cueball looks at the computer.]

[A raptor jumps into the panel, pushing Cueball off his chair.]