“That code is actually not shit at all..”
And
“That actually makes sense”

My CTO gave me the "designer of the year" - award, after I successfully replaced the logo from a provided template html file.

True compliments I have given:
-*actual tears dripping* I'm changing how I code to be setup more like yours
-if I could fuck that code I would

My favorite one was always from our tech lead when I was a junior,

"Huh, didn't know we could do that. Very cool."

It was real ego boost and something that really stayed with me.

Sometimes I think the compliment needs to be told by Mr Ramsay himself.

If we lived in a simulation, I wanted you to be the programmer.

Nope, it's not your fault. It's the compiler :)

not sure if counts as a compliment, but the follwing exchange with my team lead programmer felt pretty good:

"... wait, where did you find this function you're using here?"

"i didn't, it was missing so i wrote it."

"but... oh, i didn't realize you're gonna need it, if i had, i'd have given you a different task... noooo, that's internal framework functionality, i write that stuff for you guys so that you can just use it, cause it's complicated... oh, god, no, where did you put, how did you imple... (right clicks, go to definiton)... oh, it's exactly where it's supposed to be... (skims the code)... and is written exactly as if i had written it.
(looks at me and smiles, then turns to the rest of the team), guys, that component i told you to wait with making because i first need to write that complicated utility function that you'll need to use? you can start working on it now, Midnight wrote that function for me. (turns back to me) Nice, quick learner. But next time, at least let me know first, yeah?"

(that was third day in a new job, corporate-sized system. the rest of the team had been working there on that system for the past 2 years.

(probably not a good form, kinda going over team lead's head, but tbh i didn't realize i'm not supposed to touch that code because "it's complicated", while doing my task i just realized i need a function similar to a family of already implemented ones, so i just followed their convention amd added it.)

tl;dr - best programming compliment is people being surprised/confused that i did something which they thought as a normal thing that they will have to do for me, because it's in their job description to be doing it for people on my position/with my job description)

Creative dev compliments? Wow, that shows what type of person I am. I only know creative dev insults. Okay let me give it a go!

Wow, I'm gonna star that on GitHub!

Good work! I'm gonna put a shortcut to that right here on my desktop (in the same tone as "I'm gonna hang that on the fridge")

You're so meticulous that the unit tests are to make sure the computer works correctly, not your code.

If you were a web server, you'd always return 200/OK.

Your parents must have compiled you with -Ofast

Positive compliments : You really should try other jobs man

Negative compliments : You should also try other jobs man

I love reviewing code. I learned a better way to write something. That feeling of "hum, that's a lot better than what I have been doing" is great.

I don't hate you today.

brainf*ck

"Couldn't have written it better myself"

"You might be Taylor Swift because damn you commit often"

"These commit messages are so helpful i could find my way through the Paris catacombs with them"

"Damn we might need to open-source this... How are people living without it??"

"It would be interesting to see if everyone feels as comfortable with this UI as i do"

"Doesn't matter how long this takes, just do it the way you do it."

(PSA: serious replies to this kind of wk tag might be best suited under Random)

"The way you've done this seems much less complicated that what I would've come up with."

"You've been reading Clean Code?"

"I didn't think that was possible, nice."

And finally, the most extreme one:

"Can you print this code for me so I can hang it on my wall of good code?"

If my code was a selfie, this would be a Rembrandt.

"I have no idea what it is but I love it"

-Isabella [redacted], 2019

I get this compliment when I just started to learn C# and wrote a class to convert DB time zone on azure windows and Linux app services.

“Wow, didn’t know you can convert nullable datetimeoffset this way, I’m going to use this class in rest of our Projects. “

It really boost my mood for weeks.

Code works in my local 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Those are the most significant bits I have ever seen!

Thank you for submitting your pr, I shall waste no time in reviewing it

If you go on like that you could become as good as me one day
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😏

I was celebrating Christmas Eve with my family, I'm now here outside my home without my keys.

"We have a rockstar react dev on our side"

*Me, after deploying my first react based app using CRA to bootstrap*

<_<

>_>

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
'I guess this is my life now'

> You have found an even better place to make the code changes than I had indicated in the FR. Well done!

You are very systematic...
Still to this day I don't know was it a compliment or something else.