https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/14644
https://github.com/golang/go/issues/21326
And someone even ended up making a website http://save418.com/
My main argument was that if you put things like that in your applications then people start having opinions about it and they want to discuss it and add more to certain places or remove from other places and bring it up when you are trying to discuss unrelated things.
The increase in communication is a big detriment in my opinion, especially if there is no user behavior tracking to see if those emojis actually improve any user-related metrics (this was a b2b application so we didn't do a lot of user tracking).
It wasn't even about professionalism or anything like that, just the fact that those kind of things are subjective (some people like, some don't, some don't notice, some like a lot and want more) created small-scale friction often enough that I was getting annoyed by it.
All those small discussions were essentially pointless and they happened often enough that I was getting annoyed by them.
Like, sometimes we would be showing "in development" stuff to clients and then they would interrupt and mention something like "nice rocketship emoji" and I am like "can you just focus on what I am showing you"
Been on many a demo in the past where all sorts of "magical" and complicated stuff is happening that ends up with "ooh I've never seen a date picker like that" or "wouldn't it be a lot better if it was blue and not red".
Often it's because they accept the other stuff is working or don't even fully remember what the demo is about.
Were they pointless, or were they positive feedback about a thing you personally disliked?
Maybe not everybody likes goofy emojis, or Harry Potter references, or whatever easy nothing passes as wit for some people, and they think it makes everything less professional and introduces unnecessary maintenance. Those people have to make the choice to shut up about it, or mention it and have somebody tell them they're joyless.
edit: irt 418, it's historical and it has already imposed most of its maintenance burden. But using it when you're not a teapot is forcing the meme.
If you are genuinely at the point in your life where "people saying they like things" is the same as ... what you're describing ... please be aware of the emotional impact you're having on the people around you.
Now, it’s up to you whether or not you just want to do the minimum.
But look at Brian over there! He has 4, sometimes 5 emojis in his commit messages! And a terrific smile…
You can say this about literally any discussion outside the realm of bugfixes. And yes I do want to discuss the psychology behind this, because this is, IMO, a perfect example of the tendency for a certain kind of dude (usually dude, anyway) to ascribe "objective," "rational," or other such power-words to their own personal opinions and state them as though they are fact.
Emoji's are characters, my guy. That's it. And if the saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" holds any water... well, I think a thousand is pushing it, but I think an emoji can save you a bunch of words in certain contexts, and doesn't need nearly as much attention for localization.
The only pushback I see consistently on this is from old farts like myself who remember fondly the days pre-emoji and have feels about it. And having feels is completely fair, but trying to pass off your feels as facts doesn't fly.
This was during a meeting and that derailed the meeting by a few minutes or so, but we had to make new last-minute pre-release for testing to remove the emoji. This was right before a release so pressure was high, you only have to run into something like this a few times before you start to think that this kind of thing is not worth any "good feelings" it might bring.
This job was a high stress environment where we were always behind schedule. This kind of thing, happened often enough that it was really getting to my nerves.
Personally I don't really mind emojis in the software I use as long as it works as intended. What I mind is wasting my time with this kind of stuff. This HTTP 418 is in the same kind of situation, I have had 3rd-party APIs throw 418 back at me (presumably some fun a dev had at that company) and I couldn't even tell if my request was wrong or if that was supposed to be a 500. Software for controlling high voltage is not supposed to be fun, network protocols are not supposed to be fun.
Sometimes I feel like the opposite of your position happens: just add the damn emojis already to put an end to the endless discussions about whether to add emojis