First-Hand Account of "The Undefined Behavior Question" Incident [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

First-Hand Account of "The Undefined Behavior Question" Incident [pdf]

tomazos.com

68 pointsweaksauce21 comments

Previously on HN:

[flagged] C++ Standards Contributor Expelled for 'The Undefined Behavior Question' (slashdot.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42226250 (84 points, 88 comments)

Edit:

Also, this PDF discussed on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/1h0ximn/firsthand_acco...

Wow, digging through the various threads, people are making a lot of claims (and counterclaims) made without any citation whatsoever, even when one should be easy to provide. At least Andrew Tomazos has the excuse of referring primarily to in-person incidents.

There should be theoretically-verifiable proof of the email chain Andrew cited, but actually verifying it would be difficult for most people. I do think Andrew should post it in full (including Message-ID headers) nonetheless, since making the claim "this message-id is fake" is a much riskier counterclaim.

> I do think Andrew should post it in full (including Message-ID headers)

I find that whole thread quite disturbing. The hostility by the apparently well-connected towards someone defending himself is disgraceful.

If he posts the whole messages, they'd accuse him of leaking private emails.

The Reddit moderators rushing to the defense of their organizations is telling as well.

Previously I thought that C++ was immune to this group think, but apparently it has been subverted, too. I wonder how many programmers are driven away from C++ by this episode.

A very unfortunate outcome. Something technical people appear to be commonly prone to is not "reading the room" well, and it may be the honest entry point here is that they didn't understand how seriously something was being put, and their laughter was read as more than embarrassment, or casual (mis)understanding of humour.

But there comes a point where being asked to make changes on frankly poor grounds IS an attack on individual integrity. This feels like one of those instances.

I know nothing about the principals. There may be more complex issues around this, other competing aspects.

So taking this as an honest, if not dispassionate take on things, I think the committee made a mistake.

Maybe I misunderstood. How do you get from undefined behaviour to "the final programme" or something? whats the strong anti-semitic quality in "undefined behaviour" as a modern trigger term?

> whats the strong anti-semitic quality in "undefined behaviour" as a modern trigger term?

The issue is not "undefined behavior", but the other words in the title.

A title of the form "The _____ Question" will for some bring to mind the antisemitic polemics written around "The Jewish Question". That the article is concerned with ways to minimize or eliminate _____ only compounds the matter.

Those people are being ridiculous and should be jeered or ignored.

> for some

And for others will bring to mind "The West Lothian Question", or "The Karelian Question" or even "the $64,000 question" and won't bring to mind any antisemitic polemics whatsoever, and they'll scratch their heads as to how you can turn something as benign as "the X question" into antisemitism.

But it's a source of power to spot a means to punish a person for infractions, and to come up with a plausible infraction and get them pushed through that process. I think ultimately it stems from fear of a mob of riled people who could completely sully an organisation's reputation, and some organisations will accept the worst-possible intepretation of any statement and require mea-culpas, reparations, whatever, just in case standing their ground ires a mob.

The "west lothian" question[0] is going to drive all true scotsmen[1] crazy. It comes up on reddit scottish forums more and more. Ultimately I think it, and the Barnett Formula[2] are going to wind up this issues version of Godwin's law[3] (which isn't a law) -All conversations about Scottish Nationalism and Legitimacy of votes in Westminster become stupidly fractious.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Lothian_question

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_formula

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Something of a side note, but the West Lothian question is mostly academic. By convention, Scottish MPs voluntarily abstain from votes on English-only laws and more importantly they're usually too small a bloc to affect the outcome of a vote.

The only times Scottish MPs have gone against their own convention, and their votes changed the outcome, was a 2003 vote on foundation hospitals and a 2004 vote on tuition fees.

In 2015, the government introduced English Votes for English Laws (EVEL), offically banning Scottish MP from voting on English-only matters, and repealed it 6 years later. The reason was, effectively, the 2015 government was teetering on the edge (only a coalition stopped it being a hung parliament) and needed every vote it can get, but by 2019 had a "thumping majority" (as is normal in FPTP elections) and could easily outvote Opposition + Scottish MPs on anything.

Much more common is that the UK Government does something in Scotland first -- such as introduce the Poll Tax a year before England -- or does something which negatively affects a UK region like Scotland, and MPs from that region _can_ vote on it, but they don't have the numbers to stop it being enacted, so effectively Westminster pushes its will on the region. Devolution has shifted the bulk of lawmaking to Holyrood, but there are still a number of reserved matters that Westminster retains authority over

I'd have thought first of the Schleswig-Holstein question.

As I understand the issue is not with "undefined behavior", but with the phrase "the ______ question", due to its surface-level similarity to (one possible translation of) that Nazi-era buzzword.

Which is still kind of a dumb reason to get upset. Intellectually mature adults recognize that language is complex, nuanced, and multi-layered, and that a term can be offensive in some contexts, while being innocuous in others. Your logical mind should be able to identify, given the context, when no offense is meant, and thereby ignore false triggers.

The only way a demand to change the title on offensiveness grounds would be justified, is if a reasonable member of the target audience (and especially, in this case, one who is also Jewish) would take offense to it.

Did the committee actually consult a representative sample of Jewish people in the industry before taking offense on their behalf? Or is this just yet more speculative corporate ass-covering? I strongly suspect it's the latter.

You can disagree with the process, but the process does not care. He was given the opportunity to change the title. He felt like he should not have to. Which is fair enough, but the committee felt like he has to, otherwise they would not have brought it up in the first place. That leaves the committee with no option. He gave them nothing.

The committee had nothing to do with this. It was his sponsoring organization.

Thank you one and all. "The xxx question" is now understood to be verboten, as is use of German referring to any ____ question.

Apologies for misunderstanding this as being about "undefined behaviour"

Again, imagine donating your time just for this nonsense. Who wants to donate their time just to be thanked in ways like this. Also please note that I’m Jewish and I don’t understand at all why we should be offended by calling some programming thing a question.

The committee are cowards. This is how they treat hard working volunteers? With insane disrespect, kicking them to the curb, and vaguely insinuating some asinine anti semitic dog whistle for phrasing of undefined behavior question?

These people are losers! Both the cry-bullies, but even more their enablers.

Bjarne with the pathetic statement "we have better things do with our time". No, defending against language tribunals from groups who dissolve and destroy organizations and society is not a waste of time. Clearly, volunteering ones time for leaders who throw you under the bus is though.

As stated in this essay, we should all be a little angry. We shouldn't have to live like this.

The terms "Jewish Question" etc. were used far before the Nazis by Balfour and even by the (most famous) Zionist Theodor Herzl himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Judenstaat

The Nazis of course picked it up for different purposes. As always, the question is whether to outlaw entire phrases because they have also been used by the Nazis at one point.

This "$X question" case, where $X is not an ethnic group, is so generic that the accusations are ridiculous and probably just a pretext to expel someone whom the persons in power did not like. A defamation lawsuit would be appropriate.

And one could argue that it's counterproductive to ban symbols that have been co-opted by hate groups regardless of context, because doing so legitimizes their use as hate symbols, and by proxy legitimizes the hate groups that use them.

FYI, the term was first used in Britain in 1750, according to the term's Wikipedia page[0], which discusses how the term was used in different countries in a neutral way until about 1860 in Germany, at which point it was used in a more antisemitic context.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_question

The racialize huckstering is long-term going to have a very serious backlash. People don't like being browbeaten over non-issues and they will rebel over it while totally disregarding whatever the pet issue is. Basic psychology.

I commend them for standing against this bullshit. I don't think I would have the moral fiber to do that. I would have changed the title and went on with my day.

Not on his level of expertise. But I would have just stand, kicked out and then published the case like he did. Just much more emotional, unlike he seemed to be.

Of course no idea that “the xx question” is a question. It is too common structure hard to avoid I think. The question of xx? Or … just would not alert some group would object to grammatical correct construct like this. No native speaker …

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