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Code Monkey

spiffworld
Music
YouTube
1 HN user recommended this music video1 month2020–2021 score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Mostly brought up as a joke or nostalgic reference when the term 'code monkey' comes up.

A fan-made music video for Jonathan Coulton's song 'Code Monkey', about the life of a programmer, using World of Warcraft footage. It was made by Mike Spiff Booth.

1 recommendations · 2 jokes · Music

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@DonHopkins Apr 2020 Recommends
on HN thread Jarrett Heather presents: Word Crimes (2014)
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I'm delighted your stopped by! Thanks to you and Weird Al for all of your dastardly animated criminal words. Your Shop Vac cartoon led me to discover Jonathan Coulton's other geeky music, like Code Monkey! He makes his songs available via the Creative Commons license, so people have made some really cool videos to them, including yours. [link] [link] Shop Vac: [link] Code Monkey videos: [this video] >Jonathan Coulton is a singer/songwriter who releases his songs via the Creative Commons license, which enables projects such as this video. Through his "Thing A Week" podcast, Jonathan has put out a clever, creative song like this one every week for a year. >Mike Spiff Booth is a Program Manager at Adobe who though this great song really deserved a video. >Before you ask, since apes, goblins, and night elf receptionists don't tend to interact much in the wild, I couldn't only use captured game footage to make this video. Every frame of this video was composited together by hand using images captured from the WoW Model Viewer, WoW Map Viewer, and the World of Warcraft game itself. >No monkeys were harmed in the making of this film. >Please visit www.spiffworld.com for more information about my videos, including info about how I make them. >The song at the end of the video is "Big Bad World One", another great Jonathan Coulton song. [link] >This was an animation that was done in about 2 1/2 weeks. My friend Tom Weiser and I wanted to put together a short for a free ASIFA event. We are b
Fan-made Code Monkey video using Warcraft footage, set to Jonathan Coulton.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@noir_lord Aug 2021 Makes a joke
on HN thread Google: 'Reverse Warrants' Becoming Law Enforcement's Go-To Investigative Tool
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Pretty much. I was a lead (or the equivalent since titles change) after 5 years way back in the day and I really shouldn't have been. The thing is the job titles are pretty much meaningless as I've never worked two places that had similar criteria for what they considered junior, regular, senior, lead and in some places seniors are leads (if you only have 1 senior on a team of 8 they are a lead, if you have 6 seniors on a team of 8 and no lead then are they really senior and to who). Other places promote on time served, so you are junior 2 years, regular dev for 2-3 years, senior after that. It's one of the reasons when hiring I completely ignore their previous titles and look at what they actually did . I've seen juniors who where at least equivalent to seniors in other places and "Seniors" who I wouldn't have hired as a junior. My favourite title in my entire career (and it was my actual title) was "Code Monkey"[1], it got entered as a joke in the HR system and everything after that sort of followed on even my business cards (remember those?) said it (since company ordered them and did a mail merge from the HR system). [1] [this video]

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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