Hacker News Reader

Comment by combatentropy | Hacker News Reader

Seems all well and good, except:

  > threaten the cowardly, encourage the lazy

You would reap more fruit if you encouraged the cowardly and threatened the lazy.

View on HN

is this a joke I'm not understanding - I ask just because fruit is not normally something one reaps.

At any rate the construction of the phrase attempts to pair the sin with a motivator suited to that sin - threaten is suited to cowardice because one should be afraid of threats.

That said - I would have gone with prod the lazy.

I think it's just someone, possibly a non native speaker, mixing "reaping the benefits of" and "plucking the fruits of"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com