Comment by grayhatter
1 day ago
it is.
If I call your code slop, I'm being professional and courteous.
The truth doesn't have a ethical value. Me calling your code slop might feel disrespectful, but it's less disrespectful than trying to pass slop off for your coworkers (or users) to use and deal with.
Lying to someone, and allowing someone who's supposedly your friend to ship slop is more disrespectful. If I wrote shitty code, and my friend didn't stop me, and I find out later he knew it was shitty code... that would be very hard on our friendship.
Unless you meant it's a lie to call it slop code. A lie would be disrespectful, but then again, we both know you didn't say that because it's not a lie.
Calling something "slop" is dismissive, vague and not constructive. That's why it's not professional.
If you want to tell someone their code quality is poor, then you better do so with specific things that is poor so that the person you are telling it to can learn and do better.
> If you want to tell someone their code quality is poor, then you better do so with specific things that is poor so that the person you are telling it to can learn and do better.
You and I must have had very different interactions with the types of people who happily emit slop. For the people I've met who've suggested slop; they don't care about quality, and it has exclusively been a waste of time trying to explain why quality is important.
Calling someone's work slop, if they're willing to engage, might be disrespectful, I agree! But calling someone code/commit slop when they don't give a shit about the quality of their code (as evidenced by the commits they're willing to put their name on) is simply a description of reality. Willingness to engage is shockingly important. I can't think of a more vague response than answering "I don't know why the code is like that, the LLM did it".
I'd also like to assert: giving out slop to other people is more disrespectful, and less professional (professionals don't suggest low quality options). I'm much rather you try to insult my code, than waste my time trying to trick me into accepting low quality work.
And then, speaking personally. I would feel the most disrespected, if you were willing to call my code slop when speaking privately. But wouldn't call it slop to me, or publicly. It's not disrespectful to have a candid conversation; even if it's uncomfortable because someone has different and strong opinions than I do. I'm a big boy, I'm able to handle the honest evaluation of my work from another person without it being instantly being disrespectful to me, just because they used a word I didn't like.
If they were lying, that would be disrespectful.