Just | Hacker News Reader

Just

todepond.com

13 pointsbpierre8 comments

It’s actually just obviously simply really very trivial.

I find the Recurse Center’s social rules inspiring:

https://www.recurse.com/social-rules

"Simply" and "it's easy" also fall into this trap too. I now try to avoid them when writing technical descriptions. You think something is easy and simple doesn't mean someone else will. When they read that, then struggle, it can put people off continuing to try. That could be a lost sale for you, or it could mean someone deciding that a career choice isn't for them.

Often "Just" is... justified. At least, as a question to understand why someone is doing something the hard way.

As the post ends with:

> We should try to understand what makes it hard. And make it easier.

Yes, and I often do that by asking a question like "Why don't you just use [X]" i.e. Someone is saying something like

"Transferring files between these two servers is too hard. It keeps timing out and then I have to look to see which files have already been transferred and manually skip those. Sometimes a file is present but incomplete and finding those is even more work"

Why don't you just use rsync?

"Just" in that context is redundant, you can say "Why don't you use rsync" and the sentence is immediately more positive. The "just" in that sentence adds a level of uncertainty to how people can interpreted it, with one way being a level of condescension.

The “just” there sounds polite to me. It apologetically implies that you realise the person probably knows about rsync already but maybe didn’t use it for some requirement not yet discussed, which you’re now asking about so you can give a better answer.

I think on its own the sentence is fine. However, in the cultural context of tech discussions on the Internet, "why don't you just [X]" is usually passive-aggressive or an indication the person asking this hasn't taken the time to consider the use-case or constraints, and might even insultingly belittle the person for not having considered such a "straightforward" "easy" solution.

I myself balk at the sentence all the time, and I have nearly stopped using it in any communication because it doesn't communicate the right thing.

Yep, there are multiple ways to interpret it, but that's the problem, particularly with written text. When spoken the word "just" and the tone of the rest of the sentence convey significant meaning that is lost when reading it.

At first I thought it had to do with the Just monad. I need to get some fresh air!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com