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Comment by ot | Hacker News Reader

If you read carefully you'll see that "clowntown" referred to GCC's implementation of std::hash, not the post. I think it's natural to have high standards for GCC.

I don't think my tone was too aggressive, maybe made exception for the word "amateurish"? I explained above what I meant, if you replace that word with a better one does it change the tone of the post?

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"if you replace that word with a better one does it change the tone of the post?"

Yes, it does.

'Amateurish' is often used as an insult to imply that someone needn't have tried at all. If you replaced it with 'novice,' I think people would have understood your meaning without taking offense.

I see. I didn't know "amateurish" had such negative connotations. Unfortunately HN doesn't let me edit the post anymore.

Since we're on the subject, reading the "clowntown" thing makes Facebook's tech culture sound kinda toxic. It's one thing to criticize a bad implementation, and a different thing to call the implementer a clown.

I might have given the wrong impression, see my other comment below. "Clowntown" is almost always directed at ourselves, in a self-mocking, playful way.

Also see answers to this Quora question: https://www.quora.com/When-people-who-work-at-Facebook-say-c...

> It's a way to bring much-needed levity to the process of solving hard problems.

> It's a playful, tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating term to describe a situation in a company whose motto was "move fast and break things."

Ahh, that does sound better.

Your tone was fine. Don't pander to these people, please.

For a post on HN the tone was ok but not great, if one of my team spoke like that in a meeting I would commend them on their technical knowledge but remind them that their effectiveness and influence depends more on tone than technical skill, because people.

ot was being a gentleman, not pandering. It's unfortunate that the subthread went off topic but the reasons are understandable and the disagreement resolved nicely. Please don't be rude in comments here.

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