Ask HN: Preferred word to describe “Unnecessarily complainsome grumpy person”?
I think that besides the obvious age distribution factor, the spectrum of social scenarios more frequently encountered by the HN demographic probably also contributes to certain common situations or stereotypes promoting/stimulating the use of more apt descriptions for them, whereas for those who less frequently encounter them there would be no occasion to dig out a dictionary word from memory to describe it.
For example, there seems to be a particular adjective that sees pretty frequent usage, used to label “grumpy jaded programmer being unnecessarily complain-some or dismissive of new ideas”, which I only learned because of repeated occurrence on HN, but the actual word seems to escape me. I remember that it seems to be not too dictionary-obscure of a word, just that there seems to fewer occasions that calls for it in other online conversations.
What is the first word that comes to your mind when describing such a person?
Torvalds sarcastically quipped about the name git (which means "unpleasant person" in British English slang): "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', now 'git'."
That's it. Thanks.
How sexist! Curmudgeon / termagant.
slightly related: I like the definition of "programmer" at urban dictionary:
A person who is paid to professionally scream at a computer.
Programmer: "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-oh, it works."
Sounds like that was probably written by somebody who used to work either with me, or with one or two of my former colleagues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblin_mode
> 1960s: from Yiddish kvetsh (noun), kvetshn (verb), from Middle High German quetschen, literally ‘crush’.
There are a few words that might fit what you are looking for, of which I think the best is “curmudgeon”, and for lexical flexibility you can act curmudgeonly or be curmudgeonous. I'm not sure that curmudgeonous is a “real” word, spellcheckers refuse it and I rarely if ever see it elsewhere, but I like it as it essentially means the same as cantankerous but with less of a sharp edge - the difference between just naturally being difficult (curmudgeonous) and actively trying to be difficult (cantankerous).
Both are often associated with older people more than younger, though in the fast moving world of tech you don't have to be very old to appear to have ancient views!
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ornery