r/programminghorror

21K archived posts · Mar 2012 – Sep 2026

Programming Horror: Sharing the WTFs

r/programminghorror

Share strange or straight-up awful code.

Created Mar 14, 2012

363KMembers (last snapshot)

21KArchived posts

RULES:

All posts MUST show terrible code. There are no exceptions.
No Editor Themes - If it's just your editor that looks bad, it doesn't belong here.
No Advertisement Code. This is generally written by people in marketing who only know what "code" looks like from other ads. It's not real code, so it doesn't belong.
No Student Code. Yes, they're learning, but bad code is part of the process.
No Generated Code. If it's minified JS, generated XML, or what have you, we don't want it here. Yes, the YouTube homepage has an extra right-angle bracket. We know.
No Asking for Help. Go to r/learnprogramming. What are you doing here?
No Spamming/Advertising. We don't care about your shitty Youtube video or new crypto that will "change the world".
Be Nice. No hate speech of any kind is allowed, as well as generally being a jerk. Talk about the code, not eachother.
No Direct Contact of the Mods. Please use the modmail, we don't want to be contacted directly.
Please direct stories without code to r/talesfromtechsupport, and programming questions to r/learnprogramming

Programming Horror is where developers come together to revel in the idiocy of our peers.

This subreddit is meant for sharing funny programming related stories and strange or straight-up awful code.

For the sake of not being mauled by rabid lawyer bears, please make sure to anonymize your stories - changing the names of people and companies.

For code examples, indent all your lines with 4 spaces to make it more readable:

foo = 'bar'

Sister subreddits

talesfromtechsupport - Not everything that involves a computer is a programming horror story. For IT support related submissions, head on over here.
talesfromdesigners - For our more artistically inclined brothers and sisters.
badcode - When you don't have a story to go along with the horrible, horrible code.
shittyprogramming - ninjas that only write in the <b>BEST</b> code
usemysoftware - A subreddit for software developers to come post their software and for users to test it.

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