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Comment by csdvrx | Hacker News Reader

> You have trouble understanding how someone could hate an optional feature and -because of that hate- turn that optional feature off and keep it off forever?

No, I have trouble understanding why someone might hate an optional feature that's either turned off by default, or that they can turn off with little effort then keep it off forever.

The lack of the feature in the first place is more of a problem. With empathy towards people who might like the feature, you see the presence of the feature as a good thing, even if it's no use (or even an inconvenience) to you. If it's an inconvenience, what you hate is the default setting.

Example: screen readers. I've been sometimes surprised by having Windows start reading text aloud after pressing a shortcut, but I then thought "actually, that's nice because people who can't use a screen have this great feature working out of the box"

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OP didn't say "I hate this feature and this feature must be killed."

OP even acknowledged that other people may like this feature: "Personal taste, to each their own, but I hated it."

Seemed like a perfectly reasonable expression of opinion to me.

I understood that as hating the presence of the feature, so I got it wrong

Yep.

One can hate something while simultaneously acknowledging the reasonableness of its continued existence.

It's distressing that (G?)PP either doesn't understand this, or is unwilling to spend enough time on reading what OP wrote to notice that this is the sentiment that OP is expressing about smooth scrolling on the VT-100.

> It's distressing that (G?)PP either doesn't understand this, or is unwilling to spend enough time on reading

I already know there are many things that I don't understand, but I'm willing to spend large amounts of time to improve my understanding

Well, here's one:

> I have trouble understanding how someone

is generally felt (if not understood) as aggressive, as in passive-aggressive. You literally say you "have trouble understanding *foo*" as if the problem was on your side but what is understood (and more often than not meant) is "how could anyone/you be so stupid to do/think/try this is beyond me".

"I have trouble understanding why you would use lib *foo* instead of lib *bar*" is very common on stackoverflow and other comp. sci. forums. Maybe people think it's a polite way to say things but it's worse because it's poison under veneer. If you want to point out you think it's stupid just say "I think it's stupid". 1/ it's stupid is better than you is stupid 2/ it's closer to what you want to express (or are people really so self-centred that someone else doing something they think is stupid breaks their brain ("trouble understanding")).

my 2ç.

Very interesting, thank you!

I didn't think it was stupid, I had genuine trouble understanding how could an extra feature be hated - it didn't make sense: I thought it was maybe not the feature itself, but either the default setting, or the fact that it was a setting that could be tweaked.

But when something doesn't make sense to me, I've found it often means I've overlooked or missed something that may be evident to others (sometimes I even write: "what have I overlooked?")

Here, I missed that it would be interpreted to mean "poison under veneer".

I'd like to improve, as in "not being perceived as aggressive", so I appreciate your feedback!

> poison under veneer

Is this your own coinage? It's very good and I'm totally stealing it either way.

> > poison under veneer

> Is this your own coinage? It's very good and I'm totally stealing it either way.

Yes, English is not my first language and I was trying to remember a colloquialism to translate. I was thinking of the words "veneer" (often used to indicate something is hidden with malice in my mother tongue) and "poison" as in "a viper's tongue" which is "a sharp tongue" in English and other words but I couldn't remember any aphorisms in either of languages. I thought both words would be evocative enough to convey the meaning so I went with it.

Honestly it's brilliant.

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