Comment by petersellers

2 days ago

> I agree that the writing in the blog post is more colorful than precise, but sanitizing every bit of expression dulls the internet. Humans invented language for a reason.

Where do you draw the line, then? Is a racist screed acceptable to you as long as the following paragraph references technical issues correctly?

The language in the blog post is insulting. Imagine how you would feel if you were the person who wrote this code, and now you are being called a monkey in front of thousands of people on the internet. Certainly you've made mistakes in your code before...or are you saying you've always written flawless code without errors?

These codes of conduct always seemed a bit superfluous to me, but after reading comments like these I can totally see why they are necessary.

Would you perhaps have preferred if they referred to it as "unprofessional" or "sloppy" instead alluding of monkeys?

To me all those mean the same thing, except the latter is more flavorful and makes my eyes less likely to glaze over.

> Imagine how you would feel if you were the person who wrote this code, and now you are being called a monkey in front of thousands of people on the internet.

Er.. so? Why should anyone be allowed into a position of responsibility where their code impacts millions of people if they can't handle the tiniest bit of strong feedback? It was, after all, a pretty egregious bug.

> Certainly you've made mistakes in your code before...or are you saying you've always written flawless code without errors?

I've definitely made mistakes, and also accept that my output might have on occasion been "monkey-esque". I don't see what's insulting about that; we are all human/animal.

  • > To me all those mean the same thing, except the latter is more flavorful and makes my eyes less likely to glaze over.

    And to many others, the difference is that one is informative, the other is likely to turn them off of the author and project forever.

    I noticed that you never answered my question. If this is acceptable to you, where do you draw the line? If you can answer that question, maybe you'll be able to see the flaw in your argument.

    • > the other is likely to turn them off of the author and project forever

      Which is absolutely fine. It's their project, their website. If they can't be colorful on their own website, where else can they be! If it turns off some people, I'm sure the author is aware of the risk and happy with that risk.

      I, for one, find this kind of colorful language refreshing. Everyone trying to be politically correct makes the internet a dull place.

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  • Not everyone is build robust enough for being called a monkey or loser straight into the person's face.

    • My first thought when reading the article is that the author would never attempt to call the person a monkey or loser to their face "in real life".

      One of the unfortunate side effects of the internet is that it really brings out the asshole in a lot of people.

> Is a racist screed acceptable to you as long as the following paragraph references technical issues correctly?

I'm not the morality police. Nobody should be. I'd still take the article on its technical merits. As a random example, if Satoshi's paper called people using the banking system cattle, I'd still continue reading it.

> Imagine how you would feel if you were the person who wrote this code, and now you are being called a monkey in front of thousands of people on the internet

It would be absolutely fine, nobody is named specifically. He wasn't like Josh Examplemann working on Actions is a piece of shit that botches any feature he touches. Nobody is going to remember a blog post and forever hold anyone that worked on Actions to an unhirable status. And personally, I think it would be good for people to feel some shame for having implemented a feature in such a terrible way. It's not like they were told by their managers to commit these the way that they did. Calling into the sleep binary wouldn't even be more work.

Whoever is behind the new React Start Menu in Windows

along with whoever is responsible for the Chrome Web Environment Integrity

along with whoever is behind the design of OSX Tahoe

along with anyone who is working on Windows Copilot that screenshots your screen

should be ashamed of themselves. The more articles that do that, the better. They are not doing good.