What Makes Programmers Laugh? r/ProgrammerHumor Dataset (ESEM 2024)
A Reddit dataset of 139,718 posts from r/ProgrammerHumor, 2014–2022, collected by Noei, Gauthier-Ouellet, Adams (Queen's University) via Reddit API. Each record contains post text (OCR for images), title, score, scoreratio, ncomments, post type (image/text/link), timestamp, LDA topic ID, virality label. 139k r/ProgrammerHumor submissions (2014–2022) with LDA topic labels, engagement metrics, and binary virality labels; replication package for ESEM 2024 paper on humor in software communities.. Suitable for Humor detection, community engagement analysis, software discourse, LDA topic modeling validation..
Cite this dataset at
programmer-humor-reddit.echo.directory
Analytics
Topic 0
Topic 1
Topic 2
Topic 3
Topic 4
Topic 5
Topic 6
Topic 7
Topic 8
Topic 9
Topic 10
Topic 11
Show all 22 topics
Topic 12
Topic 13
Topic 14
Topic 15
Topic 16
Topic 17
Topic 18
Topic 19
Topic 20
Topic 21
Sampled: text metrics from 50K of 139.7K records; topic model from 20K.
Record
- Catalog key
programmer-humor-reddit- Authors
- Kuutila, Miikka; Rantala, Leevi; Li, Junhao; Hosio, Simo; Mäntylä, Mika
- Year
- 2024
- Source paper
- What Makes Programmers Laugh? Exploring the Submissions of the Subreddit r/ProgrammerHumor.
- DOI / arXiv
- 10.1145/3674805.3686696
- License
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) (CC-BY-4.0)
- Records
- 139,709
- Languages
- en
- Collected
- 2014/2022 (2010s, 2020s)
- Region
- Global (inferred: the platform is used worldwide)
Provenance
- Originally published at
- https://zenodo.org/records/11124117 link checked
- Hosted copy
- Mirrored on echo.directory on 2026-10-02, 48.5 MB across 11 files. Checksums in MANIFEST.json.
Citations
What Makes Programmers Laugh? Exploring the Submissions of the Subreddit r/ProgrammerHumor.
M. Kuutila, Leevi Rantala, Jun-Hao Li, S. Hosio, Mika V. Mäntylä
Book · International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement · 2024
Cited by
- Novice Developers’ Perspectives on Adopting LLMs for Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review
Samuel Ferino, Rashina Hoda et al. · ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology · 2025 · cited 17× - Let’s Take Esoteric Programming Languages Seriously
Jeremy Singer, Steve Draper · Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software · 2025 · cited 3× - SENTIMENT ANALYSIS ON SOCIAL MEDIA USING DATA MINING FOR MAPPING COMMUNITY SATISFACTION
Usup Usup, Rohmat Sahirin et al. · Journal of Computer Science Advancements · 2025 · cited 3× - Software Bills of Materials in Maven Central
Yogya Gamage, Nadia Gonzalez Fernandez et al. · IEEE Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories · 2025 · cited 3× - The role of humour in software engineering - A literature review and preliminary taxonomy
Dulaji Hidellaarachchi, John C. Grundy et al. · Journal of Systems and Software · 2025 · cited 2×
Show all 7
- Unveiling influencer-driven PII disclosures in social media discourse
Eidan J. Rosado, Ling Wang et al. · Digital Transformation and Society · 2026 · cited 0× - What Makes Programmers Laugh? Exploring the Subreddit r/ProgrammerHumor
M. Kuutila, Leevi Rantala et al. · arXiv.org · 2024 · cited 0×
Citation data from Semantic Scholar, retrieved 2026-10-20.
How to cite
BibTeX
@misc{echo2026,
title = {ECHO: Exploratory Compendium of Humanity Online},
author = {Switzer, Braden and Zafarani, Reza},
year = {2026},
url = {https://echo.directory},
note = {Syracuse University}
}
@inproceedings{Kuutila_2024,
series = {ESEM ’24},
title = {What Makes Programmers Laugh? Exploring the Submissions of the Subreddit r/ProgrammerHumor.},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3674805.3686696},
doi = {10.1145/3674805.3686696},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 18th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement},
publisher = {ACM},
author = {Kuutila, Miikka and Rantala, Leevi and Li, Junhao and Hosio, Simo and Mäntylä, Mika},
year = {2024},
month = Oct,
pages = {371–381},
collection = {ESEM ’24}
} APA
Switzer, B., & Zafarani, R. (2026). ECHO: Exploratory Compendium of Humanity Online [Data repository]. Syracuse University. https://echo.directory
Kuutila, M., Rantala, L., Li, J., Hosio, S., & Mäntylä, M. (2024). What Makes Programmers Laugh? r/ProgrammerHumor Dataset (ESEM 2024) [Data set]. https://doi.org/10.1145/3674805.3686696
MLA
Switzer, Braden, and Reza Zafarani. ECHO: Exploratory Compendium of Humanity Online. Syracuse University, 2026, echo.directory.
Kuutila, Miikka, et al. What Makes Programmers Laugh? r/ProgrammerHumor Dataset (ESEM 2024). 2024, doi.org/10.1145/3674805.3686696.