by Prosper Otemuyiwa

Jon Skeet — The Chuck Norris of Programming

Yesterday, I was on a tweeting spree about Jon Skeet Facts and it occurred to me that putting every thing in just one post would make sense for someone to read, digest & knock his head off laughing than scrolling through my monstrous Twitter timeline.

First, Who the hell is Jon Skeet and Why is he so famous?

The answer is simple, Jon Skeet is a senior software engineer currently at Google. He is a C# legend, won the Microsoft MVP award several times and also a Java developer, he actually writes Java at Google.

Jon Skeet became famous on StackOverflow (#1 programmer resource for finding solutions to problems) and he has maintained the position of being the all-time #1 answerer to programming questions asked on StackOverflow. He has helped millions of programmers by providing quality, descriptive answers to their programming challenges.

One thing that actually struck me about Jon Skeet is that he’s actually a full-time developer employed at an organization, yet takes time out of his busy schedule to share his knowledge and help other programmers. So, we have decided to recognize him for his knowledge, passion and willingness to help fellow programmers get better at their craft by labeling him the Chuck Norris of programming.

Now, let’s get to it. I’ll ask a second time.

Who the hell is Jon Skeet? — asked by a Programmer on StackOverflow.

The answers that followed were exhilarating, hilarious, humorous, and chucklesome. Brace up for a long ride of dying, choking & resurrecting several times on this very long list of responses.

Jon Skeet’s code doesn’t follow a coding convention. It is the coding convention. Users don’t mark Jon Skeet’s answers as accepted. The universe accepts them out of a sense of truth and justice. Jon Skeet can divide by Zero. Jon Skeet’s SO reputation is only as modest as it is because of integer overflow (SQL Server does not have a datatype large enough). Jon Skeet is the only top 100 SO user who is human. The others are bots that he coded to pass the time between questions. Jon Skeet coded his last project entirely in Microsoft Paint, just for the challenge. Jon Skeet does not use exceptions when programming. He has not been able to identify any of his code that is not exceptional. When Jon Skeet’s code fails to compile, the compiler apologizes. Jon Skeet does not use revision control software. None of his code has ever needed revision. When you search for “guru” on Google it says “Did you mean Jon Skeet?” There are two types of programmers: good programmers, and those who are not Jon Skeet. When Jon Skeet points to null, null quakes in fear. Jon Skeet is the traveling salesman. Only he knows the shortest route. Jon Skeet took the red pill and the blue pill, and can phase-shift in and out of the Matrix at will. When Jon pushes a value onto a stack, it stays pushed. When invoking one of Jon’s callbacks, the runtime adds “please”. Drivers think twice before they dare interrupt Jon’s code. Jon Skeet does not sleep…. He waits. Jon Skeet does not recognize anonymous types in .NET .. he knows everyone of them and where they live. Jon Skeet doesn’t answer questions on SO.. he stares them down till they answer themselves. Jon Skeet can stop an infinite loop just by thinking about it. Jon Skeet doesn’t need a debugger, he just stares down the bug until the code confesses. There is no ‘CTRL’ button on Jon Skeet’s computer. Jon Skeet is always in control. Jon Skeet won the “Hello World in less than 20 bytes” contest by developing a single byte program. Jon Skeet does not resolve software problems. The problems resolve themselves the moment he walks into the office. Jon Skeet can answer a question well before it is asked and then get several up-votes whilst he has yet to finish typing the solution. The Jon Skeet badge is awarded for posting a better answer than Jon Skeet. Only Jon Skeet can earn this badge. God said: ‘Let there be light,’ only so he could see what Jon Skeet was up to. Jon Skeet’s keyboard doesn’t have F1 key, the computer asks for help from him. When Jon Skeet presses Ctrl+Alt+Delete, a worldwide computer restart is initiated. The same goes for format. Jon Skeet uses Visual Studio to burn CDs. Jon Skeet is not close to perfection, perfection is close to Jon Skeet. God didn’t really create the world in six days, because Jon Skeet optimized it to one. Jon Skeet dreams in ones and zeros. When two shows up, it is a nightmare. But again that’s only in theory. Two doesn’t exist for Jon. Seventh normal form (7NF) for database normalization is Jon Skeet. When Jon Skeet solves an equation, the variables become constants. If anyone writes delete JonSkeet; in C, the Apocalypse will come. Once Jon Skeet went to the library… Since then the library was dynamically linked. Jon Skeet has the key to Open Source. He just doesn’t want to close it. Compatibility doesn’t exist in Jon Skeet’s dictionary. He can easily work in Microsoft Office in Linux on a Mac. When Jon Skeet is programming, the Garbage Collector rests. The objects know when to destroy themselves. If the Internet is the web, then Jon Skeet is the spider. When Jon Skeet is on a diet and doesn’t eat fast food, all hard disks change from FAT to NTFS. Jon Skeet has written the best programming language. Its source has just one command… void JonSkeet(); Jon Skeet doesn’t use #include. He thinks of it as cheating. When a null reference exception goes to sleep, it checks under the bed for Jon Skeet. Jon Skeet doesn’t need delegates, he does all the work himself. Jon Skeet doesn’t call a background worker, background workers call Jon Skeet. Jon Skeet doesn’t write books, the words assemble themselves out of fear. When Jon Skeet throws an exception, nothing can catch it. .NET uses Just-In-Time compilation because every instruction must first be approved by Jon Skeet. Jon Skeet is beyond Turing-complete; he is Turing-invincible. There is simply no Halting Problem within a 10-meter radius of John Skeet, because computers ALWAYS halt in his presence. Jon Skeet doesn’t look for reputation. Reputation looks for Jon Skeet. Jon Skeet can do pair programming with himself. When Jon installed Visual Studio he opted not to install the debugger. When Jon saves a file, the file thanks him. Jon Skeet is immutable. If something’s going to change, it’s going to have to be the rest of the universe. Jon Skeet’s addition operator doesn’t commute; it teleports to where he needs it to be. Anonymous methods and anonymous types are really all called Jon Skeet. They just don’t like to boast. Jon Skeet doesn’t have performance bottlenecks. He just makes the universe wait its turn. Jeff Atwood bought a monster GPU just to calculate John Skeet’s rep on Stack Overflow. CPUs don’t cut it anymore. When John Skeet does a search on Google.. the only result is “I’ll be right back”. John Skeet returned IntelliSense and got his money back! Norman Bates lives a normal life today… John Skeet fixed the unwanted callbacks and rewrote Mother.Dispose(). When John Skeet presses F5, the Garbage collector collects itself.. there is no other garbage. Jon Skeet once wrote an entire operating system in his sleep on a Treo with no battery, powered only by the force of his will. The only time Jon Skeet was wrong was when he thought he had made a mistake. If you have 10000 reputation points and Jon Skeet has 10000 reputation points, Jon Skeet has more reputation than you. Jon Skeet does not run his programs. He just whispers “you better run”. And it runs. Jon Skeet was once second in rank, behind Jon Skeet. Jon Skeet codes only with final sealed methods. No one has ever needed to override any of Jon Skeet’s code. Jon Skeet is IntelliSense. Jon Skeet’s heart rate is 5 GHz. .NET Jon Skeet Special Edition has an improved implementation of JIT compilation, called ‘Just-In-Case’ compilation. Private methods in other libraries become public automatically once required in Jon Skeet’s code. When Yoda needs advice, he calls Jon Skeet. Only Jon Skeet earned the coveted “Jon Skeet” badge. Skeeted: The act of attempting to answer a Stack Overflow question only to find out that Jon Skeet has already answered it definitively and better than you would have ever done. If Jon Skeet posts a duplicate question on StackOverflow, the original question will be closed as a duplicate.

Jon Skeet’s Facts are on StackOverflow. We also have the Jeff Dean Facts on Quora. If you love this post, please click the recommend button so that others can discover & laugh their ass off.

Let me know which of the statements got your brain memory in a Stack Overflow of Laughter and also add your own Jon Skeet Facts in the comments section!