3 nuns are standing at the gates of heaven, St Peter says they’ll be allowed in if they can each answer a single question

Joke Poo: The Coding Interview

Three programmers are at the pearly gates, applying for a job at Google Cloud. St. Peter says they’ll get in if they can each pass a coding test.

He turns to the first programmer and says, “Write a function that reverses a string.”

The programmer quickly types out the code. Trumpets blare, the cloud servers light up, and the gates open for him.

St. Peter turns to the second programmer and says, “Write a function that detects if a linked list has a cycle.”

Again, the programmer types out the code efficiently. Trumpets blare, the cloud servers light up, and the gates open for him.

He turns to the third programmer and says, “Write a function that sorts an array of integers in O(n) time.”

The programmer bites his lip and says, “Hmm… That’s going to require a distributed caching mechanism…”

Trumpets blare, the cloud servers light up, and the gates open for him.

Alright, let’s dissect this nun-believably silly joke!

Joke Dissection:

• Premise: Three nuns approach the gates of heaven and must answer a question to gain entry.
• Setup: The first two nuns answer basic, well-known religious facts correctly (Adam and Eve).
• Punchline: The third nun faces a significantly harder, ambiguous question (“What was the first thing Eve said to Adam?”). The ambiguity is that this information is not known.
• Humor: The humor lies in the unexpected twist of the third nun getting in despite not knowing the answer, implying that Heaven values effort and thought over simple rote memorization, or perhaps, that the test is flawed (St. Peter forgot the answer himself!). It also pokes fun at the often-unanswerable questions posed by religious texts.

Key Elements:

1. Nuns: Represents piety, religious knowledge (or assumed knowledge).
2. St. Peter: Gatekeeper of Heaven, judge of worthiness.
3. Adam & Eve: Foundational figures in Judeo-Christian creation myth.
4. Question Difficulty/Ambiguity: The escalating difficulty, ultimately ending in an unanswerable question, is central to the joke’s humor.

Comedic Enrichment:

Let’s leverage those elements for a new joke/observation:

Joke Title: “Heaven’s Tech Support”

The Setup: Three computer programmers arrive at the pearly gates. St. Peter, looking increasingly flustered, greets them.

The Dilemma:

St. Peter: “Alright, to enter Heaven, you must each debug a single line of code. First up, create a function that adds 2 and 2 together.”

First Programmer (smugly):
function addTwoAndTwo() {
return 2 + 2;
}

St. Peter: “Correct! Enter!” Trumpets sound

Second Programmer (confidently):
function add(a,b){
return a+b
}
add(2,2)

St. Peter: “Correct! Enter!” Trumpets sound

Third Programmer (anxiously): “Oh dear…”

St. Peter: “And your task… create an AI that can explain the joke about the three nuns at the pearly gates.”

The Programmer is confused

Trumpets sound, the sky lights up, and the gates open for her to enter.

Why it works:

• Mirrors the original structure: Three figures, escalating difficulty, surprising acceptance.
• Replaces religious figures with programmers: A modern profession known for problem-solving and occasionally grappling with unanswerable questions.
• The humor now targets the absurdity of trying to define and quantify humor itself (something AI is notoriously bad at)
• It subtly suggests that perhaps St. Peter himself couldn’t explain the nun joke either.

Alternatively, a witty observation based on the original:

“Did you know that many theologians argue about whether animals went to Heaven? After hearing that nun joke, I’m pretty sure my dog, who always looks like he’s trying to solve a calculus problem, has a better chance than I do.”

This connects to the original joke’s implication that effort and thought matter more than absolute knowledge, and hilariously puts a dog’s thought process in comparison to a human’s eternal reward.