ASCII Boobs in Your Codebase Won't Fix Themselves | Hacker News Reader

ASCII Boobs in Your Codebase Won't Fix Themselves

shermanonsoftware.com

In my opinion this is no more taboo than changing master / slave to primary / secondary, a known pattern in tech. Times change, documents and code get revised to reflect the changes. Having been in a highly audited environment one might have a quick meeting with the heads of compliance, legal and maybe HR if people are having challenges. Let them sign off the changes and add a comment in the change control system if there is a concern. This should especially be a non issue if the ASCII contributor has already left the company.

[Edit:] Even better, give everyone a one-time-immunity-pass for all past "Not Appropriate Here" transgressions, add a tag word in the code system "NAH" or Not Appropriate Here and each org allocate {n} hours per week to find all the things that may not be appropriate for current times, then have people resolve all the "NAH" tags. Ask for developer volunteers that self identify as having thick skin and can not be offended by text. That was one of my many roles in a former company that knew I used to work at a managed hosting company that hosted a great deal of porn.

Yes, you should go talk to compliance. But for a lot less effort, you could ignore it and talk to no one.

Yes, you should go talk to compliance. But for a lot less effort, you could ignore it and talk to no one.

Pulling together that meeting would only be if someone is complaining. That's what I meant by people having challenges. The goal being to head it off before it turns into a internal chat system flame-war or an HR issue that tries to single people out for blame. Hopefully people at the top will not be concerned for petty issues and are professional enough to put it to rest. It is a normal part of a companies maturing process.

I wish that I worked on a codebase that was so close to perfect that spending time worrying about things like ASCII boobs in comments was justifiable.

I'm not sure the company had matured that much if they couldn't simply delete what I imagine was nothing but a comment. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like it's such huge problem.

NO FUN ALLOWED

(.)(.)

8===D (not to scale)

Ok but... Did anyone actually delete it?

Why should anyone do that?

Because it isn't necessary to function, doesn't add anything, and shouldn't be under source control?

The fact that it's "boobs" is irrelevant. It's dead code.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com