Hacker News Reader

I really don't want my software to be polite, I think that many Linux CLI tools do a good job with this:

    cat: /etc/whatever: No such file or directory

No nonesense, no politeness, just the pure, searchable error. I've noticed that some MS CLI tools do the exact opposite, and print out an entire paragraph to say something very simple, gpupdate comes to mind, spitting this out if the domain is unreachable:

    The processing of Group Policy failed because of lack of network connectivity to a domain controller. This may be a transient condition. A success message would be generated once the machine gets connected to the domain controller and Group Policy has successfully processed. If you do not see a success Message for several hours, then contact your administrator.

A much more sensible error in my opinion would be:

    Group Policy update failed: domain.tld: Destination host unreachable / Destination network unreachable / timeout / ...

Which would be both more consice and more informative about the actual issue

For something as simple as cat that may work fine. But that message actually fails to say why it failed. It just gives you a fact that is presumably related to the exit code. In fact it doesn't even say it failed at all!, if your shell doesn't show the exit code you may read this as a warning or other non-critical information..

While it is hard to argue with succinctness of an error from such a simple program it may be better to say something like:

    Fatal error: Couldn't open /etc/whatever. No such file or directory.

This says:

1. What failed. (Couldn't open /etc/whatever)

2. Why it failed. (No such file or directory)

3. How this was handled (Fatal)

There's also, "[Sorry,] we're out of the beef burger. The chicken is very good though." This maximizes useful information.

While I understand it "just works" in those cultures, simply redirecting while avoiding a negative response is one of those things that only works in a cultural context where it's expected... to me, it would be pretty confusing. I don't think that's because my culture promotes directness, but more that I lack the cultural background of expecting avoidance.

Autistic people in those cultures must have a pretty tough time.

> simply redirecting while avoiding a negative response is one of those things that only works in a cultural context where it's expected... to me, it would be pretty confusing

It was confusing to me as well. But I am left wondering, is the directness of software frustrating people who culturally prefer indirect communication. I haven't seen anyone weigh in on that yet.

If such evasive speech is the cultural norm, then it should be handled in localization. After all it is about adapting a software to local language and preferences. It is not merely running strings through Google Translate.

Taking that evasive speech approach, which is considered polite in one culture, to another culture may very well be rude. I usually consider it rude if some direct question is evaded instead of answered.

People who speak English and frequent this website will inevitably follow US culture or news coverage and have been tainted by it in some way. At the same time cultures are growing closer together, in part this is visible in poor internationalization of programs. It's becoming hard to draw the line.

Out of interest what places are those?

I haven't been there myself, but I've heard that this style of communication is very common in Japan.

Yeah, Japan was the first thing that came to mind.

Where, "That is very difficult," really means in English, "Yeah, no."

"Sore wa muskashi...."

Often proceeded by a short sharp inhale.

Exactly like Switzerland, lol

One time in Japan I met with the local bike repairman. He was an ojiisan and I had a friend to translate.

Instead of him saying something like "fixing your bent spokes on a $120 bike isn't worth my time or your money" he just said "there is no problem" over and over again

In addition to the other couple of replies that mention Japan, I would suggest, just start paying attention to this in the sense of deliberative practice, and you may find that your brain has been doing more editing on your social interactions than you may have realized. Sometimes the hardest things to see are the things we deal with all the time because our brains just read them as baseline. There's only a handful of cultures that are so blunt as to just say "no", bare and unadorned. Almost all cultures wrap a "no" in something to soften it. And I take a broad definition of "culture" here, including not just national, but company, family, other organizations, all sorts of cultures. You'll find it's quite a spectrum, and there's all sorts of inputs too, like positions in various hierarchies (perceived, formal, cultural, etc.).

You may also start doing this and realize that you personally have a mismatch with one of the cultures you participate in, which may even help resolve some small social problems you didn't even realize you were causing by bucking the particular culture's practices.

A similar effect: the imperative (giving orders). It is nearly as taboo in English, to just use the imperative, as it is in Japan. For example, if you have a dinner guest, you will ask "Would you like some more? Could you pass the salt?" It's always very indirect, put as a request that may be refused, or a suggestion. In other cultures, it may just be the bare imperative - "Eat more! Give me the salt." - and this is perfectly polite, contextually.

Is "Would you like some more?" really a good example here? It's not really implying that the person asked ought to eat more, is it?

It certainly can. For instance, when the speaker is my mother.

Maternal imperative mood: Any order or command phrased as a question, despite being non-optional.

Example:

"Do you want to turn on the fan?"

(Standard imperative equivalent: "Turn on the fan.")

If this is a fun question for you, the book The Culture Map covers a lot of differences in how different cultures communicate, set expectations, express disagreement and displeasure, etc.

> We're in a thought bubble otherwise

"HN commenter" is already a much tighter bubble than "the West".

And don't forget we're mostly getting men's views here too.

smaller, but definitely not a subset‚ and especially not a subset of the usa