Programmers make the internet and computers work. They're a little bit like a monastic class, maintaining the backend with quiet, diligent labor. Learned scholars and masters of invisible forces, programmers wow the rest of the world with their competency and ability to harness and steer the strange magic of the screen. But behind-the-scenes, programmer culture is filled with ironic humor and jokes, much of it about how computer code is very hard to maintain, often doesn't work, and half the time it's a jury-rigged kind of Rube Goldberg Machine operating on elements copy-and-pasted from elsewhere.

Peel back the curtain and take a peek at what the programmers are really talking about with these 26 memes from /r/ProgrammerHumor, a subreddit devoted to one of the modern day's most valuable professions. Here, practitioners of the craft gripe, gossip and gab about what's happening in the industry and at their own companies. But most of all, they share what their everyday existence in the server's saddle is like, giddyuping the internet into existence.