Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

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pokeyman: Nov 26, 2006; That elephant ate my entire platoon.

shrughes you should be ashamed of that post. You're better than that.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 02:16

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# ? May 14, 2024 09:33

Freakus: Oct 21, 2000

GrumpyDoctor posted:

Objection to gender-exclusive language in documentation not a "pet issue" and it is super weird that you would say that.

It's an interesting scenario because it intersects two issues: sexism and racism. Firing someone over this is potentially pretty racist (Hurr, why don't dem dam Mexicans write English proper).

Freakus fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Dec 2, 2013

# ? Dec 2, 2013 02:18

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Freakus posted:

It's an interesting scenario because it intersects two issues: sexism and racism. Firing someone over this is potentially pretty racist (Hurr, why don't dem dam Mexicans write English proper).

No it's not, quit being so loving willfully dense. Cultural differences are one thing, enforcing a standard that adheres to English linguistic norms are another. Gendered pronouns in documentation are a symptom of male dominance in software development. They're not "right" or "ok" at all.

There's nothing inherently racist in calling an rear end in a top hat out for either intentionally being an rear end in a top hat or being an rear end in a top hat while overstepping his intellectual bounds.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 02:35

shrughes: Oct 11, 2008; (call/cc call/cc)

Blinkz0rz posted:

There's nothing inherently racist in calling an rear end in a top hat out for either intentionally being an rear end in a top hat or being an rear end in a top hat while overstepping his intellectual bounds.

Huh, who was the rear end in a top hat again? And why are they an rear end in a top hat?

It seems like you lack a basic understanding of events because earlier you were claiming that somebody (presumably the same person) had made an apology, when he had not.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 02:39

Freakus: Oct 21, 2000

Edit: nevermind.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 02:44

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

shrughes posted:

Huh, who was the rear end in a top hat again? And why are they an rear end in a top hat?

It seems like you lack a basic understanding of events because earlier you were claiming that somebody (presumably the same person) had made an apology, when he had not.

This:

quote:

Hi all, let me try to clear up a few things.

Why I rejected the pull request. Us maintainers tend to reject tiny doc changes because they're often more trouble than they're worth. You have to collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less effective, etc.

That's why the usual approach to such pull requests is 'no, unless' - in this case the 'unless' should probably have applied. To me as a non-native speaker, the difference between 'him' and 'them' seems academic but hey, if it gets us scores of female contributors, who am I to object?

Why I reverted the commit. In hindsight, I should have given Isaac the benefit of the doubt because I don't doubt that he acted with the best of intentions. On the other hand, if another committer jumped the line like that, I would have done the same thing. We have procedures in place and no one is exempt from them.

To the people that felt it necessary to call me a misogynist: I volunteer in a mentorship program that gets young people - especially young women - involved in technology. How many of you go out and actively try to increase the number of women in the field?

I'm probably going to step back from libuv and node.js core development. I do it more out a sense of duty than anything else. If this is what I have to deal with, then I'd just as rather do something else. Hope that clears things up. Thanks.

isn't an apology or at least a "I'm not racist, my best friends are black" style apology? I must have missed something.

Either way, Ben Noordhuis should have recognized previous comments in the PR thread and/or understood the implications of maintaining gendered documentation. In no way did the PR harm anyone or do anything wrong, but rejecting it is a pretty serious indictment of either Ben's linguistic deficiency (in which case he's not qualified to evaluate PRs for English documentation) or a serious case of misogyny that needs to be corrected.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 02:49

return0: Apr 11, 2007

Blinkz0rz posted:

This:

isn't an apology or at least a "I'm not racist, my best friends are black" style apology? I must have missed something.

Either way, Ben Noordhuis should have recognized previous comments in the PR thread and/or understood the implications of maintaining gendered documentation. In no way did the PR harm anyone or do anything wrong, but rejecting it is a pretty serious indictment of either Ben's linguistic deficiency (in which case he's not qualified to evaluate PRs for English documentation) or a serious case of misogyny that needs to be corrected.

It's not an apology because he doesn't owe an apology. The situation is that he rejected a commit that was, by the communities standards, pushed incorrectly. The commit, however, was good (in that it improved something), but it was reverted because it did not follow process (all commits should improve something but they can't all just be pushed immediately right?); note that the process does not require Ben to validate this rejection with a set of experts. Why does he owe an apology for this, and why are you so unwilling to accept that a non-native english speaker who was unaware of the reason for this (extra-process) commit might have reverted it in good faith?

I guess I just don't understand the logic, when even by his own admission he volunteers in a mentorship program for young engineers to get involved in technology and volunteers as a core-maintainer on a popular project, why it is acceptable for rivals in that community to cynically exploit his actions and use them as a weapon in an ongoing power struggle between organisations in the node ecosystem. It trivialises the actual issue at hand, and taints the name of someone who is ostensibly innocent.

It's such obvious and transparent politicking from Cantrill I'm surprised you're falling for it tbh

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:04

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

Blinkz0rz posted:

but rejecting it is a pretty serious indictment of either Ben's linguistic deficiency (in which case he's not qualified to evaluate PRs for English documentation) or a serious case of misogyny that needs to be corrected.

I agree that gender pronouns are important.

I disagree that this statement reflects the only two available options or even the two most likely.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:06

Bonfire Lit: Jul 9, 2008; If you're one of the sinners who caused this please unfriend me now.

If their rules say "commits must be signed off by X or Y", and a good and valid PR gets rejected for whatever reason, the correct solution to that problem is convincing X or Y to revise the decision and accept the PR. Not pushing it anyway, rules be damned.

If you don't like the rules, get them changed.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:08

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

return0 posted:

It's not an apology because he doesn't owe an apology. The situation is that he rejected a commit that was, by the communities standards, pushed incorrectly. The commit, however, was good (in that it improved something), but it was reverted because it did not follow process (all commits should improve something but they can't all just be pushed immediately right?); note that the process does not require Ben to validate this rejection with a set of experts. Why does he owe an apology for this, and why are you so unwilling to accept that a non-native english speaker who was unaware of the reason for this (extra-process) commit might have reverted it in good faith?

I guess I just don't understand the logic, when even by his own admission he volunteers in a mentorship program for young engineers to get involved in technology and volunteers as a core-maintainer on a popular project, why it is acceptable for rivals in that community to cynically exploit his actions and use them as a weapon in an ongoing power struggle between organisations in the node ecosystem. It trivialises the actual issue at hand, and taints the name of someone who is ostensibly innocent.

It's such obvious and transparent politicking from Cantrill I'm surprised you're falling for it tbh

Who gives a flying gently caress about politicking in an open source project? The fact remains that Noordhuis was flippant about a PR that converted gendered pronouns to non-gendered pronouns and then, when he was called out on it, said "if it gets us scores of female contributors, who am I to object?"

If you're surprised that as a maintainer of a very large and very visible project he's being called out for his part in this then you need to back away from the computer and join the real world.

I'm done arguing about this. If you don't understand A) why gendered pronouns are bad and B) why Noordhuis is wrong --full stop-- then you have bigger issues than trying to spot the next coding horror.

Edit:

Thermopyle posted:

I agree that gender pronouns are important.

I disagree that this statement reflects the only two available options or even the two most likely.

Probably true, but node is a pretty visible project and as a maintainer, he needs to understand that public actions have consequences, regardless of whether he intended them to. He probably didn't mean to offend anyone, but the flippant manner in which he dismissed the original PR and his non-apology apology indict him pretty seriously.

Blinkz0rz fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Dec 2, 2013

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:16

The Insect Court: Nov 22, 2012; by FactsAreUseless

I would say that if you think gendered pronouns are even in the top fifty or so reasons for the relative dearth of women in tech, then you've been reading vastly too much critical theory.

Anyone want to guess about the gender breakdown of Joyent employees? I'm going to go ahead and suggest that if they really want to do something about attracting more female programmers then there's something vastly more concrete than fiddling with pronouns to make their documentation less readable.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:21

return0: Apr 11, 2007

Blinkz0rz posted:

Who gives a flying gently caress about politicking in an open source project? The fact remains that Noordhuis was flippant about a PR that converted gendered pronouns to non-gendered pronouns and then, when he was called out on it, said "if it gets us scores of female contributors, who am I to object?"

If you're surprised that as a maintainer of a very large and very visible project he's being called out for his part in this then you need to back away from the computer and join the real world.

I'm done arguing about this. If you don't understand A) why gendered pronouns are bad and B) why Noordhuis is wrong --full stop-- then you have bigger issues than trying to spot the next coding horror.

Edit:

Probably true, but node is a pretty visible project and as a maintainer, he needs to understand that public actions have consequences, regardless of whether he intended them to. He probably didn't mean to offend anyone, but the flippant manner in which he dismissed the original PR and his non-apology apology indict him pretty seriously.

I don't think gendered pronouns are bad, they convey information that non gendered pronouns do not (specifically gender). I do think they are generally inappropriate for technical documentation and I agree with your broader point here. My problem is not with the commit, it's with people acting like Noordhuis was being a dick by reverting a rejected but pushed commit.

I'm not surprised he's being called out, I just think he doesn't deserve it.

I think you are well-meaning, but sheltered such that you don't understand how difficult it is to understand the subtleties in your non-native language, and lack the empathy to imagine what it would be like. I agree that it's pointless to continue arguing it, you've obviously made up your mind.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:25

Sinestro: Oct 31, 2010; The perfect day needs the perfect set of wheels.

I personally think that it is a lot more insulting to women to think that they'll be scared away by *icky boy words* (that happen to be the correct form for unknown gender as well, at least until dipshits started whining about pronouns being :qq:

patriarchical :qq:

instead of trying to solve real problems that y'know take "work" instead of strongly worded articles).

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:34

Jabor: Jul 16, 2010; #1 Loser at SpaceChem

But seriously, in what world is going behind the project maintainer's back and pushing a commit after the project maintainer has rejected it is an okay thing to do?

You could make an argument that rejecting the initial commit displays some level of ignorance of the issue. Maybe. But would we really be talking about this if the story was "project maintainer rejects a patch that makes the documentation more gender-neutral, then accepts it after some discussion as to why it's important"? The real issue is that someone decided "push it anyway without signoff, since I think it's fine" was better than actually talking things out.

Is anyone really saying that gender-neutrality is such an important issue that open-source projects should accept all patches that purport to improve the issue, even if they haven't gone through the correct process?

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:36

double sulk: Jul 2, 2010

Politics aside, it's a minor commit not affecting code in any way, who gives a gently caress, just push it

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:41

Plorkyeran: Mar 22, 2007; To Escape The Shackles Of The Old Forums, We Must Reject The Tribal Negativity He Endorsed

Blinkz0rz posted:

If you're surprised that as a maintainer of a very large and very visible project he's being called out for his part in this then you need to back away from the computer and join the real world.

This is a highly ironic statement from someone who is under the impression that is is universally agreed that gender-neutral "he" is an abomination that must be stamped out at all costs.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:43

Plorkyeran: Mar 22, 2007; To Escape The Shackles Of The Old Forums, We Must Reject The Tribal Negativity He Endorsed

gucci void main posted:

Politics aside, it's a minor commit not affecting code in any way, who gives a gently caress, just push it

Because they had a pre-existing policy to just reject those to avoid the hassle of dealing with CLAs for trivial things (and to avoid making GBS threads up git blame).

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:44

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Plorkyeran posted:

This is a highly ironic statement from someone who is under the impression that is is universally agreed that gender-neutral "he" is an abomination that must be stamped out at all costs.

Uh, "he" definitely isn't gender neutral, sorry.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:47

pokeyman: Nov 26, 2006; That elephant ate my entire platoon.

Sinestro posted:

I personally think that it is a lot more insulting to women to think that they'll be scared away by *icky boy words* (that happen to be the correct form for unknown gender as well, at least until dipshits started whining about pronouns being patriarchical instead of trying to solve real problems that y'know take "work" instead of strongly worded articles).

While your first argument is as laughably unconvincing as it is unoriginal, I can't speak about it factually. Your second point happens to be wrong: "they" has been a perfectly acceptable pronoun for centuries in place of one whose gender is unknown or unspecified.

Plorkyeran posted:

Because they had a pre-existing policy to just reject those to avoid the hassle of dealing with CLAs for trivial things (and to avoid making GBS threads up git blame).

That would've been a handy policy to reference when rejecting the pull request. As would "I'm too busy to read your signed CLA could someone else take a look at this?"

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:52

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Also the original contributor noted that they (see what I did here?) submitted a CLA before Ben rejected the PR. Just FYI.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 03:58

ZeBourgeoisie: Aug 8, 2013; THUNDERDOME
LOSER

Well, these gender issue talks are very entertaining and all, but could we please get back to bad coding?

Here, I've recently dug up an old HDD and have been looking through code I wrote in high school. It's good for some laughs, I suppose.

From a folder titled "Bruteforce"

code:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include <algorithm> 
#include <ctime>
#include <cstdlib>

using namespace std;

string Gen(int leng);

int main()
{
    srand((unsigned)ctime(0));

    string password = "";
    string guess = "";
    int tries = 0;
    int length = 1;

    cout<<"Hey, type in your password, I'll try to crack it ;)"<<endl;

    cin>>password;

    while(password != guess)
    {
        guess = Gen(length);
        cout<<guess<<endl;

        if(tries % 100 == 0)
        {
            if(tries > 1500)
            {
               length++;
            }
            else
            {
                length = 1;
            }
        }
    }

    cout<<"Whew!"<<endl;
    cout<<"Only took me "<<tries<<" tries!"<<endl;

    cin.get();
    return 0;
}

string Gen(int leng)
{
    string result = "";

    for(int i = 0; i < leng; i++)
    {
        result += rand() % 126 + 33;
    }
}

This one was just called "Hahahaha" and all it is, is a base SFML program.

code:

#include <SFML/Graphics.hpp>

int main()
{
    sf::RenderWindow win(sf::VideoMode(400,400,32), "Hahahahahaha");
    sf::Event evt;

    while(win.isOpen())
    {
        while(win.pollEvent(evt))
        {
            if(evt.type == sf::Event::Closed)
            {
                win.close();
            }
        }
        win.clear();
        win.display();
    }


    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

But the creme de la creme is 'Doom Sneak,' a game I must've gotten bored off 10 minutes after laying down the first line of code because I honestly don't even remember what it was supposed to be. Doom-like, I guess.
http://pastebin.com/tKax9VHr

EDIT: That last one kinda broke poo poo. Most likely gonna dump that into pastebin or some such.

ZeBourgeoisie fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Dec 2, 2013

# ? Dec 2, 2013 04:02

pokeyman: Nov 26, 2006; That elephant ate my entire platoon.

ZeBourgeoisie posted:

Here, I've recently dug up an old HDD and have been looking through code I wrote in high school. It's good for some laughs, I suppose.

I think this is my favourite part:

C++ code:

string Gen(int leng);

Who decides to shorten "length" and ends up with "leng"?

# ? Dec 2, 2013 04:07

Plorkyeran: Mar 22, 2007; To Escape The Shackles Of The Old Forums, We Must Reject The Tribal Negativity He Endorsed

Blinkz0rz posted:

Uh, "he" definitely isn't gender neutral, sorry.

One of the delightful things about English is that there is no standards body which decrees how the language works. People commonly use 'he' to refer to a person of unknown gender with no intent of suggesting that the person is male. I think that the objections to this are reasonable and mostly avoid using it myself, but trying to claim that it is objectively incorrect simply makes you an insane prescriptivist divorced from reality.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 04:11

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

pokeyman posted:

shrughes you should be ashamed of that post. You're better than that.

Uh, have you read any of his other posting?

# ? Dec 2, 2013 04:14

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Plorkyeran posted:

One of the delightful things about English is that there is no standards body which decrees how the language works. People commonly use 'he' to refer to a person of unknown gender with no intent of suggesting that the person is male. I think that the objections to this are reasonable and mostly avoid using it myself, but trying to claim that it is objectively incorrect simply makes you an insane prescriptivist divorced from reality.

You're actually trying to argue that "he" is gender neutral. This is a thing you're doing. God loving drat that's some dumb poo poo. Seriously. gently caress, man. Goddamn.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 04:16

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

shrughes posted:

And you're right. And since you apparently think it is an important thing, you're wrong. While I certainly instinctively shy towards gender neutrality in language, I definitely don't think it's an important issue. It's a first world feminist problem. You know what is really an important issue? AIDS, the use of condoms, actual womens' rights issues around the world, that extend deeper than kowtowing to their intolerance of nerds, et. cet. er. a. How about we make a deal. You can go worrying about pronouns and join the self-promoting white knight brigade, while I call you a human being and worry about the spread of communicable diseases in Africa and freedom of speech on the blogosphere. We'll see who contributes more to the world.

It's almost like we can care about multiple things at once, and win victories whereever we are. I visit big conferences in my industry (GUADEC, FOSDEM, Red Hat Summit), and I've encountered countless women in tech who feel like they don't belong. I've witnessed several times where a male sneer in disgust at women walking into a BoF at FOSDEM and claim that this is a geek-only establishment, at which point I usually stand up and leave the room. Several of these women have told me that it's a combination of the thousands of little things, some of which are gendered pronouns in documentation, that make them feel excluded.

The exclusion of women is a huge problem plaguing our industry, and we can take small steps towards correcting it.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 04:21

HORATIO HORNBLOWER: Sep 21, 2002; no ambition,
no talent,
no chance

Plorkyeran posted:

(and to avoid making GBS threads up git blame).

Ignoring all the other issues here I just want to say this is a loving pathetic reason to reject a good change.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 04:24

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

Blinkz0rz posted:

You're actually trying to argue that "he" is gender neutral. This is a thing you're doing. God loving drat that's some dumb poo poo. Seriously. gently caress, man. Goddamn.

Plorkyeran is saying that lots of people use "he" as a generic gender neutral pronoun, and don't mean any harm by it. In fact, the entire point is that there's no committee that dictates English like there is one that dictates e.g. French.

Whether or not it's a good thing or you agree with it, it's a thing that happens in more rural areas. It's similar to statements like "Every man for himself" that are supposed to be read as gender-neutral, even though it has "man" and "himself" in there.

I've already expressed my thoughts about pronouns above.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 04:25

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Suspicious Dish posted:

Uh, have you read any of his other posting?

Yeah it seemed quite in line with his style?

Blinkz0rz posted:

You're actually trying to argue that "he" is gender neutral. This is a thing you're doing. God loving drat that's some dumb poo poo. Seriously. gently caress, man. Goddamn.

I think you're taking a statement of fact out of context as an endorsement and wasting energy going after the wrong target. In this type of discussion you're going for the peanut gallery and this seems like effort that could be better spent.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 04:27

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

JawnV6 posted:

Yeah it seemed quite in line with his style?

I think you're taking a statement of fact out of context as an endorsement and wasting energy going after the wrong target. In this type of discussion you're going for the peanut galle ry and this seems like effort that could be better spent.

Yeah, you're right. Suspicious Dish basically said what I wanted to say anyway.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 04:29

1337JiveTurkey: Feb 17, 2005

Changing the pronouns in documentation to be more gender inclusive isn't going to suddenly make software development as a whole significantly more gender inclusive. Nobody's treating it like it's the only roadblock yet so many programmers think that loving line in the sand is worth dying over. It's like if a developer says that they have a hard time distinguishing the followed link style from the body style and then suddenly we've got to think long and hard about the implications of changing the placeholder stylesheet that supposedly nobody cared about. Without multiple peer reviewed sources that it affects usability, we can't just assume that if someone with protanopia can't see poo poo then someone with deuteranopia won't be perfectly fine.

Nope, no pointless dickwaving for Alpha Programmer status here, just someone incapable of understanding my perfect bleep bloop logic. :jerkbag:

# ? Dec 2, 2013 05:03

shrughes: Oct 11, 2008; (call/cc call/cc)

HORATIO HORNBLOWER posted:

Ignoring all the other issues here I just want to say this is a loving pathetic reason to reject a good change.

That's actually a good reason. Using git blame is pretty annoying when trivial changes intermingle with the real edit you're looking for. It's also very annoying when some person who hasn't contributed a line of code to your project comes along and decides he's going to fix its writing style to fit his newspeak agenda.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 05:15

the talent deficit: Dec 20, 2003; self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture

Isilkor posted:

If their rules say "commits must be signed off by X or Y", and a good and valid PR gets rejected for whatever reason, the correct solution to that problem is convincing X or Y to revise the decision and accept the PR. Not pushing it anyway, rules be damned.

If you don't like the rules, get them changed.

Literally the very first comment after @bnoordhuis (X) shamed Isaac is Y saying he signed off on it. @bnoordhuis was just pissy he said no and someone else said yes.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 05:15

HORATIO HORNBLOWER: Sep 21, 2002; no ambition,
no talent,
no chance

shrughes posted:

That's actually a good reason. Using git blame is pretty annoying when trivial changes intermingle with the real edit you're looking for.

No it's a bullshit made up reason. The entire commit history is available and easy to peruse and if the most recent commit isn't the one you're interested in its trivial to step back until you find the one that is. It's pure laziness to say you're going to reject all changes that might impinge on your imaginary git blame purity, especially if you're going to climb on a cross straight afterwords about maintaining the project out of a sense if "duty." You're actively abdicating that duty if you're rejecting good changes on the basis that they might involve a little extra work for you. If you want to argue that it isn't a good change, that's an entirely separate argument, and it isn't the one I'm making.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 05:30

shrughes: Oct 11, 2008; (call/cc call/cc)

A bullshit made up reason is the perfect reason to reject a bullshit pull request from a non-contributor with an agenda.

Also personally I've run into git blame problems before, if you've been a developer long enough you know the pain of having trivial commits prolong your search for the underlying reasons for a change. I've sometimes avoided making trivial changes for that reason. (Some projects, I think some BSD is one of them, have a policy of having each sentence in comments be on its own line to make the git blame history be clean. So I'm not the only one that finds having a clean blame history to be an important thing.)

And apparently you agree that king_kilr is basically giving other people more work to help suit his agenda.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 05:41

Suspicious Dish: Sep 24, 2011; 2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro; Fun Shoe

1337JiveTurkey posted:

Changing the pronouns in documentation to be more gender inclusive isn't going to suddenly make software development as a whole significantly more gender inclusive. Nobody's treating it like it's the only roadblock yet so many programmers think that loving line in the sand is worth dying over.

It's one of the many things that make women feel excluded. There's a lot of work to be done, certainly, but every little bit helps. If there's 50 small things that all combine to make them excluded, well, remove one here, remove one there, and suddenly we're down to 20 things, and they'll feel a lot better.

GNOME also runs a Women's Outreach Program, where we contact students in university, etc. 30-40% of our contributors are women. We run surveys at the end of all our mentorship programs that ask women why they haven't contributed to open-source before if they haven't, and it's always the small issues like this: the male-centric jokes in the bug tracker, the pronouns in the documentation, etc. It all contributes to making them feel like they don't belong.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 06:34

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

shrughes posted:

That's actually a good reason. Using git blame is pretty annoying when trivial changes intermingle with the real edit you're looking for. It's also very annoying when some person who hasn't contributed a line of code to your project comes along and decides he's going to fix its writing style to fit his newspeak agenda.

The elimination of gender-exclusive language is now a "newspeak agenda?"

# ? Dec 2, 2013 06:44

Freakus: Oct 21, 2000

Maybe Joynet should spend their time doing something useful like removing gender-exclusive language from their own node.js repository on github rather than masturbating over how so fired Ben would be if he worked for them. (Hint: check their openssl dependency).

# ? Dec 2, 2013 07:25

Maluco Marinero: Jan 18, 2001; Damn that's a
fine elephant.

Y'know, this sort of thing reminds me of the whole SendGrid drama. Completely different contexts but the common thread is a community that in its reasonable quest towards gender equality has completely discarded sensible discussion and conflict. Instead of approaching things like human beings capable of communication, reasoning and conflict resolution, so often it seems escalation to public media releases is the order of the day.

The Joyent post was very much this, clearly trying to play damage control/point scoring before the bad rep stuck to their company. I guess this is the nature of the open and easy nature of broadcasting, Twitter being the easy choice, but damned if it doesn't steer the car into a ditch every now and then.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 07:26

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# ? May 14, 2024 09:33

Opinion Haver: Apr 9, 2007

GrumpyDoctor posted:

The elimination of gender-exclusive language is now a "newspeak agenda?"

Honestly I think the use of 'newspeak' to criticize any attempt at changing how people talk is positively Orwellian.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 08:05

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

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