As a general rule, "Make X Y again" is worth avoiding - it has connotations that are likely to distract from the message you are trying to put across.
This is a great post full of really interesting technical details. Don't be put off by the title!
This is a great post full of really interesting technical details. Don't be put off by the title!
It could have been easily avoided by picking a different title. Pointing this out might save others from making the same mistake.
If you care about threads not becoming distracted, the primary thing to cultivate is restraint. There's also downvoting and flagging. And anyone who notices a major distraction in a thread is very welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. That doesn't have to be a political flamewar—it could be just a generic tangent sitting as the top subthread.
Perhaps it's just that I'm not letting politics take over my life.
Language has context and meaning outside of its immediate definition and will affect the perception of your written word. Don't make people think of authoritarianism and kids huddled in cages if you want to share your cool technical insights with the world.
If someone critical of the US President "ironically" uses the phrase, as in "Foo is slow, so let's make Foo fast again", they inadvertently construct or reinforce a notion of "America was not great, which is why we needed to make America great again" -- something they might not agree with. Also, it's just constantly giving more exposure to someone who already has way too much of it. They would be running a political figure's propaganda for them. Many people will want to do that, but also very many people would not want to do it and should think a bit about a slogan's context before adopting it.
(I'm aware that others across the US political spectrum have used the phrase in the past. It doesn't matter, it is currently very strongly associated with one person.)
>make banking simple, intelligent, and personal again!
They said it doesn't have a controversial connotation since we are not recruiting in the US. IMO it absolutely does.
Trump doesn't seem to be addressing those issues, but there is nothing wrong with the implication that America has lost some of its lustre.
Just like the author of a post called "Make LLVM Fast Again" may have identified a problem without actually fixing it. The first step to improvement is identifying the problem. LLVM has problems, America has problems. Seems fine to me.
If you want a meme: "Faster than before"
Or maybe "Getting LLVM to compile as fast as it used to."
And 10 years ago I would have maybe suggested "Make LLVM fast again" but now it has become so strongly associated with a political party that I avoid it, precisely to avoid turning technical writings into political flamewars.
Or "Reclaiming my compilation time" :-)