Sharp: Closing a door [LWN.net]

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 5, 2015 18:52 UTC (Mon) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513)
In reply to: Sharp: Closing a door by scali23
Parent article: Sharp: Closing a door

I'm not a fan of advocating swearing at people (things, concepts, or in cases where it's appropriate humor, sure...) but that thread doesn't seem as bad as I was expecting.

I get Linus's reaction against the notion that everything should have the veneer of professionalism. Maybe not to the extreme that he rails against it, but I am at least somewhat sympathetic. I've worked in places where it's OK to say "<developer>: Dude this code is busted crap and we need to fix it before it fucks us over" and ones where we "may need to reevaluate and see if we can refactor this for our next sprint to address some issues with our latest deliverable". The ones with the bluntness and more casual standards for language built better stuff. The ones with the more professional language seemed nice and friendly to outside observers, but still had personnel issues... they just weren't as obvious at first glance because they were cloaked in a layer of buzzword bingo.

Language doesn't fix organizational issues. If you have a fucked up power dynamic and double standards, you'll still have a fucked up power dynamic and double standards even if you never say "fuck".

What trying to restrict everything to using professional language *does* do is make everything into a presentation. Every commit, every message, every IM becomes a little mini exercise in HR compliance. And as a developer, I can say that there are times when all that mental context-switching gets frustrating and draining.

If there are personnel issues -- and it seems like there are -- the Linux community needs to fix them. I agree with Sarah's point elsewhere in the thread that there's a big difference between swearing about a piece of code and dressing down the person that wrote it. Even in a casual environment like I alluded to, the latter is not acceptable.

to post comments

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 5, 2015 20:19 UTC (Mon) by jhardin (guest, #3297) [Link] (10 responses)

I've worked in places where it's OK to say "<developer>: Dude this code is busted crap and we need to fix it before it fucks us over"

But that is not a (discourteous, bigoted) personal attack against the developer.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 5, 2015 21:40 UTC (Mon) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link]

Agreed. That's why I think there are some deeper personnel issues at root here other than just the use of bad language or ripping apart someone's code (even to their face.)

It's not pleasant to have someone tear apart your code, publicly, in front of you. But there's value in that, even if it includes a lot of swearing and irritation. What's not useful is letting that segue into a personal attack on the developer in question.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 6, 2015 1:04 UTC (Tue) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link] (4 responses)

But it is pretty much useless. How about - this code triggers an oops, under commonly encountered condition X so we need to fix. Saying it's crap is just as useless as the management speak. I'm really tired of people defending lazy and annoying comments by saying they're marginally more useful than other lazy and annoying comments. I disagree that vague, hyperbolic and hostile comments improve things more than just plain vague comments.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 6, 2015 3:20 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (2 responses)

If only the real world were quite so simple. Some code is so sweeping and nebulous that you just can't reason logically about it, short of writing a book anyway. Email-sized arguments therefore get boiled down into emotionally-charged aesthetic observations. devfs, X, capabilities, Mir, HAL, systemd, etc etc etc.

Agreed, vitriol and hype are useless and should just embarrass the author. But sometimes lazy arguments are the best we can do with the time that we have.

This is not to excuse lazy arguments, of course. We can and should do better. I just wouldn't like to see anyone err too far on the other side and demand quantitative proof before removing a difficult subsystem.

(hm, speaking of nebulous arguments boiled down into unsubstantiated emotional response...)

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 6, 2015 3:58 UTC (Tue) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link] (1 responses)

Then you say this code is so large and difficult to follow, it's time to start over. Still a lot clearer than "crap". Crap code could mean anything.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 6, 2015 4:33 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

But lots of merged code is large and difficult to follow. Scheduler, I/O, VM, DRM, ...

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 6, 2015 18:27 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

I agree with this. I quite often review code produced by developers who work for me and I have never and would never say "this code is crap." I'd say something like "this code can fail in situation XYZ" or "this code needs refactoring because there's cut-and-paste" or whatever... but never anything insulting.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 6, 2015 13:34 UTC (Tue) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link] (1 responses)

However, many people take bugreports on their code personally, so calling their code "busted crap" is taken as a personal insult. This is fault of the "coding superhero" cult, where the only reason of bugs is "incompetence". The superhero cult also one of the reasons we have so little diversity in OSS developers...

incompetence

Posted Oct 10, 2015 8:54 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> where the only reason of bugs is "incompetence".

Whereas we all here know well that bugs result only from the incompetence of... some managers breathing down your neck until you "ship it!" as soon as it vaguely compiles :-)

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 15, 2015 8:13 UTC (Thu) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link] (1 responses)

Blunt dismissals like that may work face-to-face when the person making such statements can directly monitor the reactions of his counterpart and when there is limited audience. However, here we are talking about a public thrashing without actually being able to see the reactions it causes and adapt to them.

Not being able to judge your counterpart's emotions and temper your own accordingly particularly in social interactions is a hallmark of several personality disorders like Asperger's syndrome. It tends to cause severe social frictions and makes life rather problematic for those who are afflicted.

In electronic media, everyone is handicapped like that, particularly when not even trying anticipatory empathy since the reactive empathy is far too late in order to keep the damage in check or at least to intended levels.

Smart people will try to lessen rather than increase the impact of being severely handicapped by the circumstances of communication.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 15, 2015 22:02 UTC (Thu) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link]

"Smart people will try to lessen rather than increase the impact of being severely handicapped by the circumstances of communication. "

Smart people 'temper' their reaction to incoming speech taking the same considerations into account..

It is bewildering how people, that claim to master 'empathy' so much, seem incapable of the most basic symmetry consideration of their arguments.

BTW, nice passive aggressive way to call people that disagree with you 'dumb'...

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 18:11 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> I get Linus's reaction against the notion that everything should have the veneer of professionalism. Maybe not to the extreme that he rails against it, but I am at least somewhat sympathetic.

All too often the veneer of professionalism is used to hide the crap underneath. So yes, Linus is spot on the money with that.

But to then use that as an excuse for not being professional? That's just one almighty unprofessional cop-out!

As was said - "Caesar's wife must not only BE above suspicion, she must be SEEN to be above suspicion". The *veneer* of professionalism is worse than useless, you must *be* professional.

Cheers,
Wol