Also we should look to add more keywords to programming languages that trigger naïve filters. I'm all in for another era of broken censorship to poke fun at the people who know nothing, but always have an opinion.
1. Reputational harm in the event that code needs to be shared. Say, the code gets read in court, or an outside consultant is brought in who is given access to the code. The company likely wants to maintain the same standard of professionalism that they expect when their employees write or utter spoken language in the workplace for the same reasons.
2. Similar to #1 but nuanced enough to deserve its own mention: code is a business asset. It can be sold or licensed out. The company may fear that language that it deems unprofessional could depreciate the value of that code in the context of selling or licensing it to 3rd parties.
Personally I think that the fuss over "bad words" is deeply irrational to a religious degree. The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd. But you can't choose what planet you do business on and, on Earth, there are a lot of silly people.
No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning or elicit any other response.
I would argue that the person is at fault. Unless you are suggesting one does not have a choice whether to laugh or not.
If that were true, then all comedians would either be funny, or not funny, for all people. That is simply not the case.
I choose not to be offended by anything what soever. Humor on the other hand is a lot harder to deal with.
Almost everything that gets a laugh in a comedy show isn’t funny because it’s clever. What happens is the comedian says something “obvious”. They say something that you were kinda already thinking - even if you weren’t consciously aware of it. We laugh because we’re acknowledged and feel seen for what we were already thinking, and when lots of people laugh it feels good because we feel connected to the group. Our laughter is a release of tension connected to feeling part of the group.
If you don’t believe me, do the experiment for yourself. Watch a comedy show. When people laugh, ask yourself why they laughed then.
My favorite example is this clip of Billy Connolly from back when he would play the banjo on stage. Just as he goes to play the first note, the string on his banjo snaps. There’s this awkward pause, and tension in the audience. Then he looks up at the crowd and says “Well that’s just gone and F-ed it, hasn’t it?” And everyone laughs. My take is this: We were all holding tension. He said the obvious thing. We laugh because suddenly everyone realises we aren’t alone in our tension - suddenly we’re all (including the comedian) in this experience together.
“Offensive” humour is even more subversive than people think because it makes it common knowledge that we were all thinking some thought. It’s an opportunity to collectively acknowledge of our humanity. And that’s something some people (perversely) want us to deny.
It's not that everyone in the audience knew exactly what the comedian was going to say, it's that the comedian made them think something and then surprised them with something funny or offensive that's completely different.
I completely disagree. It is a lot more absurd. Language is not a priori. It must be learned. It requires both a speaker and a listener. Both must understand the meaning of the spoken word as well as other factors of communication, including tone and body language, in order to interpret and understand the communicated meaning.
The idea behind a "bad word" is that the word is offensive no matter what. It doesn't matter what the dictionary definition of the word is, or the intended meaning of the word or the subject of the sentence that employed the word. The word is intrinsically "just bad" according to this religious belief.
Objectively, sometimes there are polite ways to use a "four letter" word such as "fuck." The preceding sentence is one such example. But ... if you hold the irrational view that I am describing, there is no such thing. It is ALWAYS "bad." This is a faith based belief system. There is no grounding for such a position. Under such a position, even an academic discussion of the word would require it be censored for fear of offending someone.
Yes. What's your point? It doesn't make those beliefs rational. Faith is belief in something despite the absence of evidence. I am using the term "religious belief" interchangeably with "faith based belief system."
> belief that there are people with religious beliefs is anything but irrational.
I have no idea what you are trying to say in this sentence.
- I don't "believe" that there are people with religious beliefs. I observe that to be the case.
- I never described "belief that there are people with religious beliefs" as irrational.
I think your point might be that, because there are people with irrational beliefs out there we must appease them? Or something?
I really don't know what you're trying to say here. There are people out there who believe in crazy things. We agree on that. How we should treat those people, or react to their existence, is entirely outside of the scope of conversation. It is perfectly acceptable to call an irrational belief irrational.
We were talking about language and communication and the absurdity that there is a such thing as an arbitrary sequence of phones or characters that would cause anyone exposed to that to be offended. All I was saying is that such a belief is unfounded. I honestly don't know what you are trying to say.
But in this context, the purportedly irrational belief is that some phrases are offensive. If you accept that there are people who would, rationally or not, be offended by some phrases, then I don't understand why you would even make the claim that it's absurd to believe that some people would be offended by some phrases.
Now I understand why we are talking passed each other. Thank you for the clarification.
You are reframing my premise and, in doing so, changing it to something I never said.
Although before I explain the source of our misunderstanding, I want to point out the irony that you are coming from a philosophically "subjectivist" position and are defending a philosophical "intrinsicist" position. Usually they are two opposite extremes and tend to be at odds with each other.
Subjectivism is the idea that perception creates reality. We often will hear people use language like "my truth" vs "your truth." Your position is subjectivist in the sense that you are clinging to a premise (that I never refuted or discussed) which states that "SOME people are offended by certain words, therefore 'bad words' exist."
Again, that's not the premise I stated or was discussing. But after your clarification, this is the premise that you thought we were discussing.
The intrinscist position states: "Certain words are bad by their nature. They will automatically cause ANYONE who hears them to be offended."
it is the "intrinsicist" position that I was calling absurd. I never said that there aren't people who hold this belief. And I never said that there was no such thing as PEOPLE who get offended by words.
I was saying that the idea that a word unto itself can be "bad by nature" is absurd. And I stand by that.
>The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd
is completely ridiculous. There plainly do exist words that offend people. Maybe you meant 'everyone' rather than 'anyone'? But that's pretty much a straw man anyways.
Maybe. IMO the sentence works to convey the meaning I had intended either way.
It is not a strawman to suggest that there are people, a lot of them, who believe that certain words are bad by nature. That any given person (the fully qualified way of expressing "that anyone") who hears them will be offended, or have their soul diminished, or other bad things will happen as a result of hearing them. It's not a strawman, because I grew up around such people. They exist. And that's what I was talking about.
And while I was not talking prescription - what we should do as a result of such people existing - I would ask a rhetorical question. WHY do people get offended by certain words? Is their offence rational? And how should rational people regard such offence?
Humans are irrational. This shouldn't be news to anyone who is a human. I think it is reasonable to say that literally every single non-infant human in existence has done at least one irrational thing in their lifetimes, including you and me. Certainly there are humans who do more or fewer irrational things than others, but that doesn't matter all that much.
> I think your point might be that, because there are people with irrational beliefs out there we must appease them?
Sometimes, yes. Often, I'd say. People's feelings actually do matter. Sometimes the level of irrationality can be high enough that one might not care too much about hurting someone else's feelings in calling our or ignoring that irrationality. But very very often, we humans take into account others' irrationality when dealing with them, in order to make interactions more pleasant for both parties.
(Anyway, I don't disagree with the sidetracked point: that it's not absurd for a sequence of phones or characters might cause offense. It seems disingenuous to deny the reality of "bad words". I do think that this side discussion on irrationality and how to deal with it is potentially interesting, though.)
Disagree. The fact that voluntary communication works is somewhat miraculous, sure. But the idea that a reader could be made to experience something unpleasant against their will by mere words is far stranger. Obviously unpleasant meanings can be conveyed through words, but the idea that the words themselves can be inherently unpleasant feels like some kind of moral panic/social contagion (like if there was a satanic panic centered on the "brown note") rather than a real thing.
I’m not sure why you think it’s the sound itself rather than the word/meaning.
“Fag” the British slang vs “fag” the American one.
—
I should also note — I fear the pedantry is warranted — that words have not only literal meanings but equally important connotation.
For example, racial slurs refer literally to the race, but also connotate a certain emotion/perspective.
If you're objecting to the very presence of the word then you're objecting to the word itself rather than the meaning being conveyed. There's a huge difference between e.g. describing a slur versus directing it at an individual, and just counting the number of times the slur is written obliterates that distinction.
If I were to point to some misbehaving members of some group today and say they were "naughty", this would not induce the same experience as it would have in Shakespeare's time, where that word meant "worthless". One can object to the latter and not the former, precisely because which word pulls the metaphorical lever on which mental experience, changes between those situations.
The question "is moderating such language is a good idea or not?" is a separate one to this.
One can - but not by just grepping for the character string and plotting a graph of the counts.
Citing that as a counterexample is weak.
Needless to say the customer was not amused. So the simple solution is just ban the bad words from the source code.
Depends a lot on the culture. In the countries I've worked in, anyone trying to forbid profanity in the workplace would be laughed out of the room. The laughter would likely turn to anger if it turned out to be Americans trying to impose puritanism on another country's project
The contextless swearing seems so unnecessary and adds nothing to the code, whereas a comment with a curse word in it reads way more human.
That said, I don't take issue with cursing in code that remains private to the development staff. As others have said more eloquently than I can, the issue is when it is exposed to customers who might take issue and churn. Not a good look, so for better or worse, there are professions where professionalism cozies up to sterile language.
Agreed.
Context matters a lot. People say "shitty code" all the time. I don't see that as unprofessional. But "dicks01" I would probably change if I came across it in code. Not because I would find it offensive, but because it serves no purpose other than to be juvenile... and that can easily be counter-productive if the goal is easy to read and maintain code.
With respects to "shitty code", I'm not even sure that I would personally even consider the word "shit" to be a swear word in 2025. I'm reminded of the TV show on Showtime called Bullshit (by Penn & Teller). They wanted to name the show "Humbug", which was considered profane in the early 20th century when Houdini was alive and famous. But Showtime didn't like it because they figured it wouldn't land with a modern audience. "Bullshit" it was.
That said, the article even includes the word "crap" (though perhaps they are making the point that it is replacing other, "more profane" words). That one strikes me as odd. If that is considered rude and offensive, then surely "humbug" ought to be as well. Probably very culture-specific.
As a kid I worked in a restaurant that sold Cincinnati-style chili - noodles with sweet chili and cheese on top. We were encouraged to offer customers who ordered a plain bowl of chili this noodle concoction instead.
Late one night, I had a customer order a bowl of plain chili. I gave her the spiel I was supposed to, suggesting that she try the noodle dish. She said, “so you won’t sell me a bowl of chili?”. I replied, “sorry for the confusion ma’am, I am happy to sell you chili. We are asked to say this crap because management is worried customers don’t know what they want”. She replied, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to use the word ‘crap’ with me”. I apologized again, gave her her order, then was removed from my position 3 days later when she emailed management to complain. I had “refused to sell her chili”, and “used vulgar language”.
It's funny to think of that today; I can't imagine any of my peers who are parents forbidding their child from saying "crap" (though I wouldn't be surprised if that was still a thing in some places).
But yes, time and culture matter. "Crap" has fallen off the list just has "humbug" has (and "humbug" has fallen out of use nearly entirely; I imagine the only reason people are familiar with it at all today is because of the fictional Ebenezer Scrooge), and new words have been added as "bad" that weren't a problem in my childhood, or back when "humbug" was a big deal.
I can swear a lot while talking. I have, once or twice, written curses in my code, sometimes including curse words, especially professionally. "Within this function lie buried the bones of those intrepid explorers who came before you. It is hallowed ground, and cursed be thy soul if you re-order anything without a +2 from a priest. You have been warned."
You have to fear that everyone will react like the most sensitive that exist (as incredible rare as they are). And, you have to fear those who are offended for others even more so, since those are the only ones you’ll have a nonzero chance of interacting with.
I avoid offending people not because I'm afraid of being yelled at or cancelled; I do it because I know what it feels like to be offended, and I don't enjoy it, so I don't want to make someone else feel that way.
Certainly I don't always succeed; sometimes I accidentally say something offensive, but we're all human and don't do what we intend all the time. And sometimes I do find it to be a chore, as the set of offensive things changes frequently enough, and it's hard to keep up, or even always agree why something is offensive.
People who get offended on behalf of others are incredibly annoying. I can understand and respect someone calmly saying to me, "hey, you really shouldn't say $WORD because that's really rude and offensive toward people who are a part of $SOME_GROUP", but far too many people get actively angry and try to shame you, often publicly, if you say something bad. And then those same people claim that they would prefer to live in a world where people don't offend each other... while reacting to offensive words in ways that aren't likely to improve things.
You can see it on full display in the comments here. It’s not, “we shouldn’t have to live in fear of saying the wrong thing.” It’s, “how DARE they try to dictate what I can say.”
It’s obvious when people get so upset over an idea as simple as “don’t curse in your work.” Not even “don’t curse out loud, just “don’t put it in your code.” It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. It’s not like misgendering someone who presents ambiguously. If you’re about to type “fuck” into your editor, don’t. If that’s where you make your stand, it’s not fear.
I find your assertion to be absurd. Do you really believe that no one should ever be upset by something someone else has said? If so, you have a huge misunderstanding of nearly-universal human behavior.
Just plain not true.
In a previous workplace, the people in charge prohibited swearing in our code after they had the pleasure of reading those swearwords in a stack trace within a log generated by our software, which we received attached to a complaint email from a major customer.
There's just no good reason for swear words to be committed. You want to swear about the code, do it in a chat room or something.
How common is this? I work in a big corporation and we have no such policy.
When we contribute to open source, there's a good chance they'll make us remove any. Internal code, though? Up to each team to decide.
You're contributing to something that runs on billions of devices across the world and is maintained by people around the world of all types. If you can't describe your code, your reasons, and your notes politely, do better.
Or as they say in the army: do, lead, or get out of the way.
If we have to boil it down to two types, however, I'd split it as "people who think they can do everything themselves and only the code matters" and "people who build effective teams capable of far more than themselves solo", and it's the second group that does the most impressive things. Being professional and respectful is quite beneficial for that group.
Otherwise we wouldn't have the Linux kernel; and I bet the swearing guy behind it got more stuff done and made a bigger difference than the combination of the most effective programmers you have ever met.
Linus made an enormous impact, certainly. He'd have had an even bigger impact if he was less of a caustic dick.
And before you say that there's a tradeoff involved and that genius technical people are just that way, look up Berkson's paradox.
I learned long ago that no matter how good they are, it's not worth it.
If you totally ban profanity or vulgarity, all you do is force other words to take up the slack of what people use those words for, and therefore increase ambiguity.
Don't lazily add profanity to the code base because you are a child (ie no, don't use "fuck1" as a variable name FFS) but if there is something truly insane going on, I'm going to write "This is fucking magic" in the code, and my coworkers will know to give that code the respect it deserves.
Consider the fast inverse square root code. Most people only know it because "what the fuck" in a comment. Intensifiers are useful in communication.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PrecisionFStrike
Your code SHOULD have few swears because few situations deserve an intensifier like that, but some situations absolutely call for it.
This is so weird to me. You won't find blueprints (at least not the copies that will be handed around across teams and companies) marked up with "this is fucking magic" when an architect or structural engineer design something amazing. In a DM/email/SMS? Sure, that's the correct place to put that message.
The idea that removing vulgarity will increase ambiguity in this context is very strange. In terms of communication, the only use for vulgarity is to convey emotion. That's not relevant here. If we ban it, maybe people will explain why something is shit, instead of just saying it's shit. Forcing other words to take up the slack is a feature, not a bug.
I know about the fast inverse square root code. I could probably give a decent if somewhat vague overview of how it works from memory. I don't recall the WTF comment, and that certainly isn't why I heard about it.
This is a great example of what I'm saying. Commenting 0x5f3759df "what the fuck?" isn't useful. It tells me the author was confused or amazed or something. Imagine if instead they had commented, "Compute an initial guess by negating and halving the exponent. 0x5f3759df was found by experimenting and seems to give a good guess in the mantissa bits."
Think of it akin to us studying cave paintings, wondering what whoever left their handprint on the cave wall was thinking when they did it. So these ancient lines of code might be studied in some future by our descendants, or whatever form we'll take. Interesting to perceive the author's frustration with said bit of code.
By comparison LLM generated code is neat and tidy with clean and clear comments. Plenty of that to go around for the future. No need to suck the soul out of every bit of code we currently have.
lead, follow, or get out of the way
> and is maintained by people around the world of all types.
You seem to think that the whole world shares your definition of "polite". After living in a few quite different countries, I have to disagree. The diversity out there is huge. There's no point trying to solve this "problem", it's an impossible task.
While hordes of people peddle that everyone should be using it like gospel.
> After living in a few quite different countries, I have to disagree.
Yeah dude, tell us about all the countries where cursing isn't impolite and unprofessional.
There’s even a comic about how common swearing is in a professional coding environment: https://www.osnews.com/story/19266/wtfsm/
You don't get that kind of widespread usage by mere faddism and preaching. A lot of people had to find it to be genuinely better than the alternatives.
Maybe the unprofessional hackers knew what they were doing after all.
Saying that you think Linux is awful without saying why is just... vacuous. It's pointless complaining.
> awful without saying why
Why would I need to elaborate? You expressed that a lot of people hold it in high regard, I expressed I don't. That was exactly the extent I wanted to address it and I think it's a perfectly reasonable stopping point. I don't need to explain myself about my own impressions. To the extent it was relevant, I played along and that's it.
> you cultural colonialist
Well at least you got that part of your insult quota completed for the day. People throw around terms like "colonialist" way too easy these days. One would think if colonialism of any kind, geopolitical or cultural, was so important to you, you wouldn't so casually dispense it. Or is this part of your professionalism too and I'm just being given a taste?
Gotta say, pretty weird though, the Spaniards I work with are normal people who can distinguish just fine when it is appropriate to use foul language (like in informal discussions between colleagues or even to clients) and when it is not appropriate (like in codebases or in formal business communications). Maybe you just work somewhere where the standards are low? I know that a lot of our own small / medium sized companies usually have such poor standards too, frequently accompanied by e.g. using native language identifiers instead of English ones. Product quality usually correlates, though not always and not consistently. Doesn't make me want to call the practice any more professional here, everyone understands that this is subpar lowbrow behavior.
Nice, now with extra patronizing, just the flavor we inferior cultures apparently crave.
> Gotta say, pretty weird though, the Spaniards I work with are normal people who can distinguish just fine...
Ah yes, the Spaniards you work with. Let me guess, you can count them on one hand, right?
> Maybe you just work somewhere where the standards are low?
And there's the second scoop of condescension. Maybe I just work in real places with real Spaniards, not in whatever sanitized fantasy you’ve constructed.
Let’s be clear: I've been working in Spain for nearly 25 years. Cursing is common here. It’s a cultural norm, not some "unprofessional lapse" waiting to be corrected by the wisdom of outside standards. If you'd ever had an honest, open conversation with one of your Spanish coworkers (the kind where people don't filter themselves for fear of offending delicate American sensibilities) you might have figured that out.
Oh no! Sounds like somebody just figured out that insults work both ways!
> Let me guess, you can count them on one hand, right?
If I needed two, would that help? Three? Four? [0] Would it? Really?
> Let’s be clear: I've been working in Spain for nearly 25 years. Cursing is common here.
Let's be extra clear then! That's not what's being discussed!!!
Are you deliberately missing the point somehow? Do you see parentheses and skip right on?
> waiting to be corrected by the wisdom of outside standards
And this is especially not what's being discussed. What's being discussed is if it's waiting to be corrected by the wisdom of inside standards. If people there think they're being unprofessional when using foul language in codebases or formal corporate communications, and if that even happens. An event of mere (albeit severe) disbelief. Although if I were to believe you, an event of "cultural colonialism". Because apparently having a negative impression is somehow inherently oppressive (???), and like how do I even dare to think that way? Sensitivities, huh?
Except you keep not talking about that for whatever reason. You keep going off about how people curse all the time. Of course they do. That was never the question! Do you include foul language when sending out advisories or quotes or other formal documents, to clients or internally? Do you include foul language and rants in the work you deliver, be it in commit messages, release notes, checklists, or code comments? That's what I want you to tell me, with every single one of those amazing, one of a kind, definitely maximally representative of everyone and everywhere else in the country 25 years of experience.
Because supposedly, according to you, all of these will be chock full of cursing!
> the kind where people don't filter themselves for fear of offending delicate American sensibilities
The delicate American sensibilities of a Central-Eastern European. Of not including foul language in code comments and such. Are you actually taking a piss? This is a fever dream, it has to be. You're acting as if I could drive for a few days and enter a foreign planet. You guys are not nearly that special and different, I'm sorry. Maybe except for turrón, no idea how to enjoy that without having my dentist on speed dial, I'll admit to that much.
[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/oh-you-love-x-name-every-y
Perhaps the difference you see is that the Spaniards you work with censor themselves because they believe you or others will be offended. But perhaps when it's just those Spaniards together, or when, say, they are working for a Spanish company where everyone else is Spanish, they let loose and are quite vulgar, because that's socially and professional acceptable in those contexts.
I'm not Spanish either. I'm American and am very aware of the polite sensibilities you're talking about in professional settings. But even that can differ. I joined a previous company when it was around 50 people in total, and stayed with that company as it grew to around 10,000. When we were 50 people there was lots of in-person swearing and poor-taste jokes, because we were small enough to know what most/all people would be comfortable with. But as the company grew, that happened less and less, because people could never be sure of the audience for what they were saying. (I had a similar, if less drastic, experience at another company that grew even just from 15 people to 200.)
This phenomenon seems entirely normal, in pretty much any place, though the details of what is and isn't offensive can be different depending on region or culture.
This is not about informal conduct. If they cuss among themselves or towards other colleagues who they are close to, that's completely of no interest to me, and as you say, is just plain normal. I do it with my closer peers as well all the time. This is about the work delivered and the formal communications. And I can understand if this informal speech seeps into work stuff at smaller scales, but that doesn't mean it's right. As you say, it's about everyone being on the same page and cutting themselves slack - but that does mean they are cutting slack, and so that there's a shared understanding of it not being proper, just being okay. According to the GP above though, this is not how it goes in Spain specifically, and it's an alternate reality there where commit histories and code comments will be full of cheap innuendo and cursing, and that that is somehow still completely professional there supposedly.
Well I'll be damned and be the ""cultural colonialist"" then, but I just do not buy that for one second. These standards were not invented yesterday, are not even specific to our industry, and are not nearly geo-localized enough for that to happen.
For some reason, "tabs are banned" and "curly braces must be on their own line" are acceptable rules, but "no curse words" is Oppressive Corporate Soullessness.
Doesn't the opposite hold true? That is, assuming the whole word feels the same way about swear words?
I think so-called "professional" speech - which I'd call bland and often ineffective speech - is professional in the same way that a suit and tie is professional. It's a uniform to ensure nobody stands out, and the corporation can absorb everybody's personality, like flour incorporated into bread dough. White bread, no seeds.
Something that's a mere "hack" might be something I don't mind, but worth being aware of and revisiting if and when the code becomes more complicated and has to do more things.
A "stupid fucking hack" indicates something that could have only come about by a whole chain of stupidity and mistakes, inflicting brain damage that we're now stuck with, to great anguish and misery.
Those things are important to highlight, if only as lessons in what not to do.
In fact, if I was reviewing a code change with "stupid fucking hack" or "stupid hack" in it, I'd ask the author to remove it and actually explain what was going on. Comments should detail the "why", not the "what". "Stupid hack" is the "what", but I want to know why the hack is necessary.
At least I can have a laugh while looking at the hack someone came up with...
When I was in my 20s I would write comments like that, but now what I'm in my 40s I see them as entirely useless, aside from a way for the author to blow off steam. Code that others have to read is not the place for that.
//stupid hack = somewhat ugly thing I am doing to somewhat solve problem because I am perhaps not clever enough to think my way to solution at this time. Example - when I set the center of the map to be a couple decimal points of latitude off from where the address actually was because the designer wanted the address to be not in the center of the map, because then it would be covered by the search box, but slightly above the search box. Stupid because I bet there was another way to do it, also stupid because it was not exact and so we did not know exactly where the address was going to be drawn in relation to the search box, but we knew pretty closely where and that was good enough.
//stupid fucking hack = ugly thing I am doing that must be done to get around problems even though as well as being ugly it is also less than optimal in multiple ways, requirement for this hack caused by third party who have screwed us over by their very existence which makes me incredibly angry Example: put span around any text node inside of an element rendered by React using a Ref to get around the Google translate bug and similar problems.
I'd much rather a comment that succinctly but thoroughly describes what is going on and why a hack is necessary.
do you know many people who interpret the emotional weight of "that's fucking stupid" versus "that's stupid" as the same?
anecdotally everyone in my worldview would react differently to both, and further reactions will depend largely on how it is said -- not because of some ambiguous meaning collectively (mis)understood.
i have always found people who want to wipe clean the slate of language and all its slang and "offensive" words in favor of established definitions and order -- contextually or otherwise -- often lack a lot of emotional expression in their correspondence.
people emote. physically and verbally. and we have all kinds of mechanics to capture the nuances in contextual languages -- slang is one of the best features, and the nuances can run super deep, nuances a lot of formal writing or correspondence can lose in its rigor and strictness. especially not withstanding cadence and emotion.
youre going to have vastly different experience reading stevenson and then say twain, for example. even speaking it aloud -- but i encourage you to spot a common denominator.
their dialogue often reflects the character, the context, and the emotional state, and largely not formal. and there's a heft amount of literature that utilizes formal writing in its dialogue, and one of the first things lost in the narrative is cohesion, and therefore immersion, bc that's not how most people speak -- only a distinct subset talks like that culturally and even then it is still not totally real life.
humans are very rarely strictly formal in correspondence in practice -- we only established professional dialogue as a norm to separate the haves from the have-nots, and then made it a moral high-ground to keep the "peasants" in line.
express yourselves. say what you mean. stop letting people convince you that you should be scared of saying something like "that's fucking stupid" bc it means more for you to say "that's stupid" for the sake of arbitrary professional standards.
I take you also strongly believe then that when I waltz up to work in some random hoodie, sweatpants and running shoes, that's actually some bespoke eloquent expression of self, full of meaning?
Reminds me to all those "he/she is wearing this/that kind of glasses/shoes, that means <extremely specific personality trait>" scenes from older movies and shows. Holy hyperbole.
Because you believe the quoted part according to your own admission.
> jumping to that conclusion is a reflection of your own biases, not mine.
Could you kindly clarify what that bias is? I'm too biased to see it apparently, so I'll not know until you put it into words.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-swearing-a-sig...
"Overall the findings suggest that, with the exception of female-sex-related slurs, taboo expressives and general pejoratives comprise the core of the category of taboo words while slurs tend to occupy the periphery, *and the ability to generate taboo language is not an index of overall language poverty.*" [* Emphasis mine]
Edit: realized the article does make the distinction between the ability to generate profanity and the willingness to do so, which while interesting is mere conjecture propped up by an anecdote within the article. I contend there are times for profanity and times for avoiding it, but suggesting that because someone chooses profanity they must be less intelligent is perhaps a comfortable idea, but it may also be an elitist one.
And then there's the academics, surgeons, and nuclear physicists who use quite a bit of profanity (especially the surgeons!) and teach their kids that profanity is a linguistic tool that is often super effective.
Accordingly, even IF the willingness and ability to use profanity indicated a lesser linguistic intelligence, one would be mistaken to then assume that a person with that willingness is any less of a capable professional in non-linguistic fields
[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/swearing-is-a-sign-of-more-inte...
Clearly, we do not have the same goals.
Politeness is not the end goal. It is a means to that goal, if and when it enables people to communicate more effectively and with less friction.
I find that expression far more offensive than ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’. Similarly (and non-exhaustively): ‘bad take’; ‘not a good look’; ‘this ain't it’; ‘… not the … you think it is’; ‘…, actually’. They're all personal insults. “This code is crap” is fine; “You're crap” is not.
On the other hand, there's Kratos's “Don't be sorry, be better”, which did hit me hard when I reached that part in God of War 2018. That one hit me on a very personal level.
It's not absolute-zero fun, but everyone understands it's a sign the vibes will be up-right, right?
edit: that's not to say you don't want that property, just that it's there
No.
This condescending tone is what really needs to go away. It reminds me of the 90s right-wing, religious puritanism about swears in music and movies just repurposed for a secular audience.
More likely, in a few decades what you consider today to be "respectful discourse" will be seen as extremely offensive and the latest generation of fearful moralistic pearl-clutchers will be hoping that in the near future it's people like you who will be soon be gone. As long as people keep looking for new ways to be offended and continue wanting to police the language of others these kinds of topics will continue.
To their point, I would consider "crap" a lesser swear. More "fuck" or "shit" would counter-intuitively imply... certain qualities [by not being so conformist]
Even more informative would be to plot the occurance rate within new code.
Key result: Boost occurrence of swearwords by 20%
Key result: Create a new metric that tracks relative swearword use per line YoY
Key result: Attract at least 100 comments on HN or Reddit about the new code
Their comment is typical of a Russian troll starting a new account. ('Poor Russian victims' etc.).
You can waste time ridiculing them, though I just ignore.
These things don't just have teeth, they have fangs - existentially threatening fangs, to add. If you are not a nation-state entity or backed by one with a sufficiently powerful military or economy (such as India and Turkey, who openly deal in Russian oil), it is not a good idea to cross any line.
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=whNGNVnYHHSXUAsWds_MoZ-iEg...
I'll never understand this mentality. It's code, not some """self-expressionist""" art project.
There's a kind of "nesting" thing 10x/100x programmers do with code and it tends to manifest this way. The opposite extreme is the 0.1x programmer dequeing agile tickets they don't really understand and issuing broken PRs overworked senior dev "maintainers" LGTM merge. I think everyone exposed to corporate software (on both sides) is really tired of that.
I don't personally care if a swear word appears in code, but I do care if I offend others with my use of swear words. So, I try to limit their use to circumstances where offense is unlikely. Work is rarely such a place, particularly with shared resources like code. I might swear in a 1-on-1 conversation at work, but I definitely don't drop swear words into documents that unknown people might see. That's just basic professionalism.
So, total being between around 60%!
Kind of amazing timeline in hindsight by the way; Linux was "only" 8 years old at that point.
I see three reasons to use swearwords sparingly, even though they don’t particularly offend me.
1 Managing my own emotions. Most swearing is negative and that drags you down which is not very productive or fun.
2 Managing others‘ emotions as they burst out, which stresses the people around the swearer.
3 Some people just can’t say a fucking sentence without gratuitous swearing which makes them sound fucking stupid.
I think this is subjective.
Swearing in the workplace is much more normal here in Australia. In my first job at an American company, I was shocked how prissy people were about swearing. In my head I thought “these are adults, right? Why is everyone acting like a blushing teenager?”. I’m sure I sounded rough as guts to them. It took ages to learn to scale it back depending on who I was talking to.
Swearing with someone about / at work is kinda an Australian way to say “I trust you and feel relaxed around you”. Forcing myself to not swear felt at first like I was pretending I didn’t like my coworkers. It was weird.
> where we practice swearing Oh well hang on a second…that could be fun
I should also mention that this attitude is not just a liberal vs conservative thing. I've lived in Austin and Houston and Dallas (all three are about as liberal as any other major city in the country) and swearing in a formal setting is frowned upon in all three.
A few years ago, they went to a fan event here in Japan hoping to buy multiple copies of a zine for their friends overseas, and when told they could only buy one copy, they stood in front of the stall and cursed profusely in English out of frustration. After the event, they found that the Japanese side of the fanbase had unfriended them and removed them from online communities because of their outburst. They were completely blindsided by this. (In fact, their version of the story was just, "I went to an event in person and after that everyone unfriended me, I don't know why they're like this." I only heard about the swearing incident from a mutual friend.)
Anyway, there's obviously degrees and nuance here but I think people who swear profusely-but-not-at-anyone-specifically don't realize it still sometimes comes across as hostile.
I don't think swearing is necessarily negative though; it can often be fairly neutral, or funny/positive. But again: in text it can be tricky.
Not that this not-Yankee has much of a need to swear in public to feel Free.
> , but I definitely don't drop swear words into documents that unknown people might see. That's just basic professionalism.
68 instances of "fuck" at the peak in 2005, in how many million lines of code? And turns out 24 of those were in repeated instances of "IOC3 is fucking fucked" in the MIPS driver, so at least some of it is fairly "clustered" too.