And maybe I'm shallow, but it was a thrill to see his initials show up on my code reviews. Thanks for all your work on golang.
Politeness is absolutely necessary, and I hate seeing callous impoliteness in wider society (e.g. towards service workers).
I suspect I would severely struggle in a deeply polite society (stereo-typically Asian?). I can relax the most around very direct people (Dutch?).
I am continually stressed when dealing with anyone that absolutely needs politeness. Example 1: a very close friend who can be triggered by anything reminding them of their abusive ex. Example 2: a self-centred acquaintance that needs pandering (however isn't polite in return).
There's a balance - but it's hard to find. Perhaps I'm confusing two different dimensions, politeness and honesty?
Edit: This is a wishy-washy comment. Difficult topic, straight-jacketed conflict, interpersonal stuff that is hard to understand and talk about.
It is possible to be direct, honest, and polite.
You should consider the possibility that you're mistaken in linking "rude" with "direct"
They are certainly correlated so not orthogonal, its much harder to not be rude when you communicate a complaint than with praise.
You need to put much more effort in when you complain about something to not be seen as rude, that means they are not orthogonal. It also means many will just not do it since its too much work.
I could grant there is also an objective friction surface, a fourth scalar describing how difficult it is to be direct, honest, and polite at once.
For me, it stems from seeing when someone changes their behavior or words in a way that's no longer authentic to themselves. I like when people are real with me.
But being real or authentic also isn't an excuse to be a jerk.
‘Traditional’ etiquette books are actually pretty good at this stuff: one definition of etiquette is to never out another ill at ease or uncomfortable. Discomfort is contagious especially through body language, so the first thing you must do is be comfortable yourself with the feedback you’re giving.
Had a great experience contributing to the project, and Ian was a big part of that. Which for a big project like Go says a lot.
I did Python readability at Google and "take this one massive CL and if they make it good by the end of the process they're done" never felt quite as useful as Go's process. I'm glad they made their own rules; it benefited me. (Even if during the process I was thinking "I JUST NEED TO CHECK IN THIS CODE SO I CAN GO BACK TO BED" when getting paged in the middle of the night ;)
I have never been quite sure that that's exactly where you want to draw the line. I've been in the position of having a team that's relatively new to Go, and despite being a straightforward language, there's a lot of things you can do, if you know to do them, that makes the code significantly more reliable. I couldn't review every PR on my team, so sometimes stuff slipped through that caused An Incident and it bugged me because a simple "do this instead of that" would have prevented The Incident.
I asked some other senior folks that had worked at Google "should we do something like Readability" and the answer was a unanimous "absolutely not, no, never" so clearly other people fell more towards your views than mine. People do just want to get their stuff checked in and go home, which I respect. Someone else is then going to have to go to a bunch of calls with customers when it breaks, though. Guess who that was and where her views are on the matter ;)
I tried to push back on one of his comments as well.
Imo it just feels kinda cool that someone who really really knows what they are doing gave you a stamp of approval on something.