Re:Just Simply – Stop saying how simple things are in our docs
by zabzonk on Sunday April 30, 2023 @08:59AM
(#35762134)
john lennon once said "never use 'just' in a lyric - it's lazy" (i paraphrase) and i think he might have had simmilar opinions on such things as "trivial". sadly, we will never know.
Re:Just Simply – Stop saying how simple things are in our docs
by lowercased on Sunday April 30, 2023 @11:35AM
(#35763537)
* He used 'trivialities' in a song.
* "(Just like) Starting Over" has 'just' in the title and lyrics.
* "Just" gimme some truth.
* "I'm just a jealous guy"
Rules are meant to be broken, perhaps? Or maybe he would just cop to being lazy?
Re:Just Simply – Stop saying how simple things are in our docs
by whstl on Sunday April 30, 2023 @11:37AM
(#35763559)
Yep.
And paraphrasing: Imagine there's no absolutes. It's easy if you try.
Re:Just Simply – Stop saying how simple things are in our docs
by zabzonk on Sunday April 30, 2023 @11:47AM
(#35763675)
> Rules are meant to be broken, perhaps? Or maybe he would just cop to being lazy?
both?
the quote i paraphrased was from hunter davies' authorised biog of the beatles
but i still think it is a good rule
Re:Just Simply – Stop saying how simple things are in our docs
by lowercased on Monday May 01, 2023 @10:16AM
(#35773084)
i don't completely disagree. I wonder how much of that was a flippant remark, how much his own views changed in the intervening years.
I'm not sure that's a fair summary of the article. I just reread it: at no point does it suggest removing superfluous words in general, it's specifically about "words such as easy, painless, straightforward, trivial, simple and just", because those in particular are "jolting", "upsetting and annoying" and "infuriating". What you frame as an "aside" is in fact the first and last paragraph of the article.
> I have no idea why you'd think this implies some personal failing or that it is advice for "babies"
You're missing a level of indirection here, it's advice for people who write for people who act offended when reading "simply" in technical documentation, and I'm questioning the dynamics of that.
It's obviously fair to criticize the word choice on my part, there were obviously less incisive ways to phrase that. But then, it's the article that claims that the usage of the word "just" in the sentence (the article's example) "[then] we will just edit the users_controller.rb" is "condescending", and I think that's simply (sic) insane.