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Comment by ackfoobar | Hacker News Reader

This point of view is valid. But it is more complicated in software engineering because

1. autistic-autistic communication works just as well as (if not better than) neurotypical-neurotypical.

2. Being more thing-oriented on the people-things spectrum, our industry attracts more autists.

A culture of NT communication style will probably be more inclusive. NT won't have their ego hurt; autists have to wear the mask elsewhere anyway. But as someone with Asperger's (undiagnosed), I resent this. Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35365508

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As someone considered neurotypical I don't see that comment as being too blunt at all. If anything, I would be grateful that the person went out of their way to find the offending commit.

Thank you for affirming. The thought that I don't have a good enough grasp of what is acceptable (quite literally) shook me.

I wouldn't consider the original wording unacceptable but I would suggest leaning more towards the phrasing foobazgt used a few replies back. Specifically, claiming that X broke Y is likely not fact-based. The facts in such a situation are often: a certain test started breaking in a certain build and the build reports that only one commit is different than the previous build. I would suggest stating that fact instead of inferring that the commit was the reason the build broke. I've seen plenty of instances where it turned out that wasn't the problem. The build infrastructure itself was changed. The reported set of commits versus the previous build was inaccurate. The test was flaky. A third party dependency that the build system didn't insulate itself from was updated. The list goes on.

Allowing for the possibility that we are wrong isn't professional only because it is nice. It is also professional because it is honest and it helps focus the whole team on the facts so that we don't spend our time investigating the wrong thing.

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