waterlion

It's a shame you think that I'm trolling. You're welcome to go back over my comment history and look at the conversations I've engaged in. Sure my comments provoke a range of responses. It would be a boring world if everyone always agreed with everything. Maybe the writing style isn't to everyone's taste. But they're never intended to provoke anger.

My original point was that the absolute application of principles designed to bring about equality could be harmful and that we need to apply contextual understanding to language. If the expression of that idea makes you angry, that's fine, but it's not trolling.

Anyway, I'm bowing out of this thread as it doesn't look like pursuing this idea is constructive.

I was not trolling by the definition I know. I just thought that it might lead to an interesting conversation.

It's just too hard to communicate on the internet, especially with people who don't share your conversational goals. I think I just found a new year's resolution.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that I would want others to extend to me and not accuse you of pedantry. But I don't think there's much steam left in this conversation.

Specifically the casual use of the word 'insane'. I don't think it's unreasonable to discuss the contents of the page and make references to things not contained on the page.

I'm looking for interesting discussion with intelligent people on a range of subjects guided by user-submitted stories. I'm looking for explorations of ideas, learning new things, synthesis as well as derivative ideas. Open-mindedness and acceptance. Otherwise there's no point.

I'm not looking for pedantry and closed-mindedness (I'm not accusing you of those things).

I'm probably in the wrong place for that on HN, but the articles are interesting and often so is the discussion.

It wasn't primarily a joke/10.

I think it adds to the broader discussion that goes on on HN, specifically over the last month or so.

Could you remove that joke about the dog from your profile page please? I went there looking for serious information.

Don't be a joke pedant? The author (me) uses the quotation in an ironic manner.

I was going to say "the equivalent of heteronormative but for mental illness" but I thought that anyone that understood what I was saying might have just let me have that one slip and interpreted the meaning rather than focus on its strict representation.

It wasn't a joke as such, at least its intention wasn't primarily humour. Just highlighting the fact that nearly everything everyone says is offensive or exclusionary to someone and that if we adopt the universal application of the principles of extreme gender-neutral language that we've seen advocated on HN and elsewhere, equally for every issue, we end up with lobotomised language†.

I think the use of 'insane' is fine. And I think the use of gendered pronouns is fine. But I am neither insane nor of a gender that is under-represented in the pronoun

† oh never mind

How do you square that with the article? It specifically says that that Django REST is "insane".

"Django REST framework is an insane framework"

I'm fed up with this kind of oppressive language. This is heteronormative and is discriminatory to the mentally ill. It's stuff like this that leads to the imbalance and under-representation in the industry. Let's boycott this author.

(I would love not to have to write "</satire>" but having seen some of the comments here, I think I need to. I wonder how many white-knights-for-women use language like this without thinking. We need some flexibility in the way people are allowed to express themselves.)

That typeface. Looks a bit like Bank Gothic. Can an American explain the cultural connotations? As a European it has very particular associations. A cross between Real American Hero Military Men With Guns and a certain child-like toy-soldier naïvité (case in point, a computerised machine for killing animals). Not trying to be incendiary, it's quite difficult to define. But people seem unashamed to use it. Is it a cliché?

For a very narrow range of software, I suppose. Not for software that has side-effects and actually does stuff in the real world.

What about software that sends emails to people, or places orders, performs billable work, or gives people directions, or supplies them with data that they then carry forward and use in decisions or in other systems?

And are you proposing that instead of writing tests you write a play-back-able-log system that can roll back state and re-apply transformations if a given component did incorrect things?

I think sensible testing is the way forward, where sensible is appropriate to the type of application, language and requirements. 100% coverage is suitable for industrial code and 1% coverage is appropriate for toy projects. But no tests at all seems foolhardy.

What happens when your customers' data is lost or corrupted because of a bug you could have caught?

I read the headline and skimmed the article. I only realised at the end, when he's trying to sell you something, that the 'we' is inclusive-marketing-speak.

Before that I thought that it was 'we (my organisation) don't write tests, and here's a defence of why', followed by a list of excuses (in which I thought 'I wouldn't touch this guy with a bargepole'). I only realised he wasn't making excuses for himself after reading the homepage.

tl;dr misleading title and confessional writing style YMMV

Can you define the criteria by which you judge it to be a 'code smell'?

Can you contextualise the criteria? Can you match those criteria to this context?

(Not rhetorical, I'd like to know the answer.)

Accidental deliberate misunderstanding is still deliberate misunderstanding.

Sorry, I should have put a <rhetoricalIllustration> tag around that to clarify that I don't actually believe any of the above. (Do I really need to say that?). I won't spell it out again, I've made other comments in this thread.

Here's the thing. So am I. I would say I am very egalitarian and very empathetic. I would say I am a feminist, which is perhaps why I find certain behaviour on the Internet under the banner of feminism troubling.

I recognise that mob-precursor-feeling rising in me occasionally (often when I see footage of policemen attacking civilians unprovoked) but, I think, it's up to us all to behave as civilised human beings, and that includes not joining the mob, seeking to empathise with both parties and actually looking for the evidence.

For this reason I find mob mentality and zero tolerance behaviour deeply troubling and try to engage in conversation whenever I see it.

This is a corporate blog so you could say it comes under the 'professional' umbrella. If you're going to criticise it, you could say that the general tone of the article isn't particularly professional, but, as I said in another comment, there was plenty more to find problems with than just the mention of a padded bra. I happen to think the blog post was fine, probably because the Internet has brought personal and professional universes incredibly close.

I understand if others disagree, for disagreement to be respected it has to come intellectual honesty (i.e. evidence of critical thought) rather than as a reflex.

I've seen this happen, also in Uganda. Absolutely terrifying.

Yeah sorry it's not that important. I suppose I was more sensitive to it because the discussion was derailed into misogyny (which derailing I participate in).

Sorry, there's no handbook. You just have to go through life doing your best, occasionally there's a little misunderstanding and there's a witch-hunt and you're subjected to mass-Internet-bullying until you apologise for your little mistake, whether or not it was your fault. Together society moves forward to non-exclusionary monoculture where there is no risky language, however borderline or insignificant, and offenders are switftly dealt with.

For every joke there is a minority that it excludes.

Alternatively, people are thoughtful about what they write and equally thoughtful about their standards of evidence and credibility when they call people out on things. People stop and think before bullying each other in the name of equality and try to exercise empathy for everyone.

But sadly I don't think the human brain is wired for that.

(Yes I'm still annoyed about Noordhuis and incredulous about how vindictive and hateful some people can be.)

Why do you assume the author is a man?

Hear hear. But you're not doing it properly. Please be consistent.

"what about being human when it matters most? In person" - doesn't this exclude people with social anxiety disorders?

"mix of knock-off stilettos" - doesn't this exclude people who wear flats?

"people bumbling about who looks a hair too much like Dwight Schrute" - doesn't this exclude people who do look like him and may have body image issues?

"You have just entered the land of networking hell" - this imagery is deeply offensive to some religions

"Screw the schmoozing" - using sexual imagery? No thanks.

"The people who hand out business cards like they are condoms in a high school sex ed. class" - alienates those with a conservative upbringing

"Disclaimer – keep those condoms, kids" - again, pretty offensive to Catholics

"They want meaningful relationships" - again social anxiety

"And people respond to kindness." - not everyone. Exclusionary to those on certain parts of the autistic spectrum.

"The same philosophy goes for networking" - I can imagine quite a few real philosophers getting offended about the belittling of their profession

"One good conversation is better than five quick ones every day of the week" - not the Shabbat!

"It’s for people who will never be more than middlemen" - think of all the middlemen out there, feeling excluded at this hate speech and switching off

"when you remember to be human" - deeply insulting to robots

No. Neither was the obfuscated swear word in the title. Nor the word 'screw'. Nor was the picture at the top of the article or the pink headings. Or the call to action below. Nor the chatty writing style. Very little of the article was necessary, but it is what it is.

You can draw the line anywhere, really, and the author chose to draw it there. If the author of every article self-censors and goes out of its way not to offend anyone at all then we're going to end up with a very boring world.

It's a good thing to have your sensibilities challenged.

This was discussed and censored before. I was stupid enough to believe it. Previous conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6907401

Well, we'll see. It very well might be.

EDIT: Oh. I just actually scrolled down.

"fight against the man"

Are there no male feminists? What?

There was widespread uncertainty about whether or not the 'feminist programming' article / research proposal was a joke. I'm fairly sure now that it wasn't. Is this site a satirical take on that?

"Now hosted on BitBucket, as GitHub proves to be too misogynistic to support a feminist programming language."

https://bitbucket.org/FeministSoftwareFoundation/c-plus-equa...

This can't be serious. If it is, then with logic and immaturity like that it might not get far.

EDIT:

I just scrolled down. This is very clearly satire, I didn't see the bullet points. But the whole point of satire is to get these kinds of conversations going. I'm the fall guy this time.

That's the thing though (I agree, it's not a nice list, but it's not nice to remove features either). Who says they have a mandate to do the balancing this way? It's their software to do with as they want. That's less mandate and more unilateral.

I wouldn't mind swapping a bit of a delay for a checkbox in the settings. I wouldn't even mind the checkbox being unticked by default.

Yes. Read the example SOLR schema, it's very easy to understand.