The worldwide collaborative effort for the creation of software is technically and socially demanding. The more engaged developers are, the more value they impart to the software they create. Engaged developers, such as Margaret Hamilton programming Apollo 11, can succeed in tackling the most difficult engineering tasks. In this paper, we dive deep into an original vector of engagement - humor - and study how it fuels developer engagement. First, we collect qualitative and quantitative data about the humorous elements present within three significant, real-world software projects: faker, which helps developers introduce humor within their tests; lolcommits, which captures a photograph after each contribution made by a developer; and volkswagen, an exercise in satire, which accidentally led to the invention of an impactful software tool. Second, through a developer survey, we receive unique insights from 125 developers, who share their real-life experiences with humor in software. Our analysis of the three case studies highlights the prevalence of humor in software, and unveils the worldwide community of developers who are enthusiastic about both software and humor. We also learn about the caveats of humor in software through the valuable insights shared by our survey respondents. We report clear evidence that, when practiced responsibly, humor increases developer engagement and supports them in addressing hard engineering and cognitive tasks. The most actionable highlight of our work is that software tests and documentation are the best locations in code to practice humor.

翻译：软件创建的全球协作在技术和社会层面均具有挑战性。开发者参与度越高，其赋予所开发软件的价值就越大。例如，为阿波罗11号编程的玛格丽特·汉密尔顿等高参与度开发者，能够成功应对最艰巨的工程任务。本文深入探究了开发者参与的一个原创驱动因素——幽默，并研究了它如何激发开发者参与。首先，我们收集了三个真实世界重要软件项目中幽默元素相关的定性与定量数据：faker（帮助开发者在测试中引入幽默）、lolcommits（在开发者每次贡献后拍摄照片）以及volkswagen（一项讽刺性练习，却意外催生了一个有影响力的软件工具）。其次，通过开发者问卷调查，我们获得了125名开发者分享的关于软件中幽默真实经历的独特见解。对这三个案例研究的分析突显了幽默在软件中的普遍性，并揭示了一个对软件和幽默都充满热情的全球开发者社区。同时，我们通过受访者分享的宝贵见解，了解到软件中幽默的潜在注意事项。我们提供了明确证据表明，若负责任地运用，幽默能提升开发者参与度，并支持他们应对艰巨的工程和认知任务。本工作最具可操作性的发现是：软件测试和文档是代码中践行幽默的最佳位置。