1045
Early access
(feddit.org)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
1045 points (99.0% liked)
Programmer Humor
30250 readers
1208 users here now
Welcome to Programmer Humor!
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.
Rules
- Keep content in english
- No advertisements
- Posts must be related to programming or programmer topics
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
A clear indication of bad requirements.
Honestly the question as asked is unambiguous: "write words in alphabetical order" cannot mean anything else than apple, fox, log, pond, pumpkin, river. If what was provided here were the expected answer, the wording should be "write each of the following words with its letters sorted by alphabetical order".
Could be understood as "take these words, and write them out in alphabetical order". It's not specifically stated whether letters inside those words should also be sorted or not.
We take it for granted that we have so much experience communicating, we can infer the meaning without full instruction, but children are still acquiring this knowledge and sometimes take things literally with hilarious results.
Of course, not blaming children for misunderstanding this; but if this were a software requirement, an adult software developer should be able to understand it correctly.