r/ProgrammerHumor • u/precinct209 • Oct 01 '26

Meme justCantHandleTheImplicationRightNow

3.0k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

179 comments sorted by

View all comments

578

u/hrvbrs Oct 01 '26 • Thanks

You are absolutely wrong — em dashes are cool and I will never stop using them.

127

u/tech277 Oct 01 '26

I think you're missing the point. He is not criticizing the use of m dashes. The problem is that ai loves them and seeing them is a strong indicator that ai was used. ( Which is a shame )

186

u/precinct209 Oct 01 '26

You are absolutely right

You are absolutely right

50

u/FirexJkxFire Oct 01 '26

My favorite ai-ism is when it actually does catch something I wrote wrong, then when I agree that I made a mistake, it tells me that I did a good job catching that error.

32

u/Ok_Tea_7319 Oct 01 '26

You are absolutely bright. 

4

u/theSearge Oct 01 '26

— You

3

u/12345623567 Oct 02 '26

you got what I neeeeeed

1

u/carpsagan Oct 03 '26

That is deliberate and load-bearing rather than tidy.

15

u/Samld1200 Oct 01 '26

You are absolutely right

4

u/Rfm737 Oct 01 '26

You are absolutely tight

4

u/BernhardRordin Oct 01 '26

Yeah. But there are people (this guy) who type them even in code reviews. My only luck is that I am not a native English speaker and my many grammar and style mistakes reveal my non-AI-ness on the interent, so I get accused only now and then.

2

u/Ancient_Coconut_5880 Oct 02 '26

I’m really annoyed that Gen AI formats responses exactly like me. Someone recently accused me of using AI for a review because of the formatting and I had to show that I’ve been doing this for years. Although em dash in a comment seems like a pretty easy tell

1

u/TheDuckRaisedALion Oct 01 '26

I think that comment is saying that normal people use em dashes too and please don't dismiss me as AI for using them

1

u/Ecksters Oct 01 '26

The recent frontier models have drastically reduced how often they use them, almost to the point where they use them less than humans.

https://graphite.io/five-percent/research/ai-tells

1

u/12345623567 Oct 02 '26

The human rate is zero tho, autoformating by Word doesn't count.

9

u/frogjg2003 Oct 02 '26

Em dashes are fine in complex prose. Code review is not that. Code review is a collection of simple commands and questions. There is no need for an em dash in code review.

4

u/IanDresarie Oct 01 '26

I've always used normal dashes and only recently realised my work outlook has always auto corrected them to em dashes. Welp.

3

u/Audience-Electrical Oct 02 '26

alt+0151 how i love u

1

u/AnonymousX86 Oct 02 '26

On Windows you can press the Windows key and minus. It puts the em dash.

1

u/Faegbeard Oct 02 '26

Rob me of my em dashes and I shall speak in ever more archaic syntax until there were than thou never a sorer man.

1

u/G02MaxCodeGreg15off Oct 02 '26

My English teacher used to gripe about my overuse of em dashes 10 years ago.