Comment by ralfn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ralfn | Hacker News Reader

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Swearing doesn't damage morale. Many soccer coaches and inspiring pep talks contain swear words. It's a style figure.

Tact can be very usefull in small teams where trust and coordination is important.

For large projects, with thousands of stake holders the bar to participate in a conversation should be high.

As we both say in Holland: we are not made of sugar. But go read Linus rant now and ask yourself: would this really classify as an inappropriate rant in Holland? Or are you just, parroting the default (mostly from the US) critique on Linus?

Because this whole 'Linus isn't tactfull' is a false comparision. He is more approachable than any other person in that sort of position. Since there isn't a big filter at the door based on who somebody is but there is a verbal filter at the table. Very egalitarian if you ask me. Very Dutch like.

And our directness is often referred to as rude. It would look better on you to not blindly follow in that judgement when it concerns others.

For example: >Maybe you can chalk your reaction to your apparent false sense of superiority over friendliness and, it seems, Americans

If out of the mouth of Linus would be one of those 'look at how insensitive Linus is' posts. Something with the pot and the kettle.

Swearing in general doesn't damage morale, but swearing at and verbally abusing someone does very much so. That's exactly the kind of treatment that would lead me, if I were a developer, to walk away from the project.

In fact, here's an edit which gets his point over in less words, and more clearly:

"Honestly, this looks questionable to me. [U]sing a union to do type punning is the traditional AND STANDARD way to do type punning in gcc. In fact, it is the documented way to do it for gcc. The fact is that gcc documents type punning through unions as the "right way". You may disagree with that, but using the [C] standard to push it - the same standard that came up with the completely mis-guided aliasing rules - is not a valid argument. his is why we use -fwrapv, -fno-strict-aliasing etc. The standard simply is not important, when it is in direct conflict with reality and reliable code generation.

So what's the _real_ reason for avoiding union aliasing?"

No swearing, no abuse, all points covered, less typing required. No talk of splinters.

And that's the reason PR exists. To translate text written by "knowledgeable person, who writes in not acceptable to everyone language" into "language acceptable to everyone". This also leads to no more direct contact between public and those people and the eternal cries of "we only get PR speak!!"

The chances that you get to hear things from the source and never hear things in a way you don't like is almost zero. You have to make a decision.

PR gives things a nicer wording, but they also push unjustified implications and flat-out lies. When people object to PR-speak, it's usually the latter. Or that an apology doesn't seem to actually be sorry or trying to fix anything. They're rarely objecting that the language is a bit less harsh.

Which part of my abridged version missed vital technical details or changed the fundamental meaning of what Linus said? It's not PR speak, it's treating others with dignity. Linus seems to think that isn't important. He'll be programming the Linux kernel with only AI for companions at this rate.

I didn't say people can't confront each other or even swear at each other. My point is that Linus is swearing at someone who made a contribution to a project. What sense is there in saying the following to people other than signifying that you don't respect them:

"...when you are a f*cking moron" "Andy, what is the background for trying to push this idiocy?"

Note that I only called the other swearing in his text childish and not damaging to morale. Also note that in verbal discussions I wouldn't myself shy away from swearing or graphic metaphors. I just think that when replying to pull-requests there should be some emotional self-control... something which children have less of.

> Something with the pot and the kettle.

As I said, confronting people isn't on some list of don'ts that I keep and replying to comments filled with false assumptions and accusations is not the same as replying to a pull-request.

>would this really classify as an inappropriate rant in Holland?

If I were to call my colleagues fucking morons and call their contributions idiocies I would probably at least receive some negative feedback from my boss. So yes. I find it hard to believe that calling people 'fucking morons' is an accepted practice at your job.

> And our directness is often referred to as rude. It would look better on you to not blindly follow in that judgement when it concerns others.

But blindly following some judgement of Americans being two-faced liars does look good on you? Something with pots and kettles?

I don't believe that you've had to argue this far to defend your point. Treating others as you would like to be treated is the golden rule of society.

When I play games like Rocket League, a game where you depend on your teammates, I rarely say anything if people play badly. Others will say things to me if I play badly and that sometimes makes me play even worse depending on my mood. Sometimes I play worse because they actually made me care less and sometimes I play worse on purpose because they were a real asshole and they deserve a loss.

It's pretty obvious that antagonizing and disparaging your teammates is generally a bad plan anywhere.

I probably didn't, but sometimes doing so helps you come to deeper conclusions and a better understanding of your own points.

My feeling is that people who need to be abusive of others are compensating some of their feelings about themselves. I think everybody does this though, I am no angel myself either. I just thought that people who are highly visible and in some way represent our industry, like Linus, should not be praised for being 'bad ass' when they are needlessly rude to people who are contributing. On a whole though, anyone can do what they want, and I can form an opinion based on what people do of course ;)

Yes, haha, Rocket League teammates sometimes don't excel at being good sports.

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