XKCD Isn't Funny - #1513 - Code Quality

What a fucking bitch.

I'm aware that the humor is supposed to come from the quote unquote "wit" of the insults that Ponytail spews from her facehole, but all I can focus on is how completely unwarranted her rant is. He's self taught and he warned her his code could be messy because of that. This wasn't code that was messy out of apathy or malice, he just hasn't been taught the proper coding ways yet. He even looks like he's turning his head to see if anyone's watching in the third panel, as if to reassure himself that he's not imagining it (although that could just be the art).

This could have been funny if the joke was how horrible Ponytail's being, a la the first few scenes of Scrooged. However, that doesn't appear to be the case. "Okay, I'll read a style guide." he says, as beta as beta can be. I like how she talks so much that his words had to be shrunk down, making it look like he's mumbling it out of shame.

It's not even like a friendly teasing, he's not laughing or enjoying himself or rebutting with "At least my hair doesn't look like it was drawn by someone who doesn't know what a joke is."

This comic makes a lot more sense if you read Ponytail as being a dominatrix and Beta as having a really specific kink for being humiliated for bad code. Not that I'd know anything about those sorts of things, of course.