The kind of company I want to be a part of
dvsj.in
dvsj.in
But the call to action is to.. embed logic in the programs to pluralize properly (in English).
It's possible to write evil software that pluralizes words. It's possible to write beneficial software that does not pluralize words. This blog post is about the color of the bikeshed next to the torment nexus.
> Talk to me like I’m used to. Be familiar, be approachable. I want to feel like you care about helping me. Not “me” as in “all the prospective 99,99,999 users”, but “me” specifically. Users shouldn’t feel like they’ve been dropped into a cookie cutter template - a cold, hard reminder that this is clunky, soulless machinery removed from their world.
In other words, the author wants a personalized experience. A personalized news feed. An experience that is tailored to them. (Isn't that what everyone is complaining ruined Facebook, insta, youtube, etc?)
I don't think that's what the author actually wants. I think it's just poor framing / unclear writing.
If the idea is "I want to work at a company that cares about its craft" -- the example they picked to illustrate that point is just odd. Whether or not a company uses a combined singular/plural form like "Uploading File(s)" is not a very good indicator of whether that company values its craft, IMO.
“Why would you consider good or evil when talking about how you want to spend the overwhelming majority of your productive life”.
Something really changed after the first dotcom bubble. Maybe it was my own youthful naïveté (as someone living in Sacramento desperately wishing I lived in that much cooler city to the west). Maybe it was the last drops of that wave Hunter S Thompson talked about breaking.
The main difference between now and thirty years ago, is that now they're only "anti-statist" when the state tries to control them personally. They're pro-state when it's being inflicted on their perceived enemies or underlings.
We really do have access to all the world's information to a first degree. We also have access to all the world's propaganda, advertising, trolling, and algorithmic optimization of content.
Do you going into this rant when a coworker asks about vacation days too?
Is it that you don't want to consider evil, then? I'm not sure how you can consider good without considering evil.
>Do you going into this rant when a coworker asks about vacation days too?
Are you always this obnoxiously dismissive to your coworkers?
Instead the author posited a point about pluralizing nouns.
This is the Californian ideology - do not engage with fucking anything at all, because we're all getting rich off pluralizing nouns.
So yes, we have a real IDGAF issue in tech, and I can’t imagine this getting better because Gen Z all have a casual drug dealer “this just my side hustle” attitude, and Millennials will not a give a fuck because they are still pissed about the GFC and the cost of housing. The Leetcode people don’t give a fuck because they are burnt out on Leetcode and their entire identity is based on salary and very little to do with quality of their actual work.
There’s literally … and I mean this, there’s literally no one left to care.
Same with all the bad performance. Sometimes this may be a mistake but almost always it's because the site is firing up 50 prerender tracking scripts.
The author is trying to imply that if everyone focused a little more on making the computer feel like your robot friend, the industry would quit producing shit software. But the reality is the industry creates shit software because it is running an ad-supported malware business model.
Have attention to quality. Do whatever it is that you're doing well.
Small world. Nice work, all the best!
What companies seem to want is developers who do everything perfectly despite having someone yelling at them to move fast. Also: the person yelling also doesn’t care about the details until someone else points it out to them.
2) The small, practical thing the post is actually about does address at least part of what you wanted to hear, because declaring "Loading 1 item(s)" IS hostile to users.
As an example, this app[0], is currently only localized in English, but I still use tokens, whenever I do apps, so the base localization[1] has stuff like this:
"SLUG-CLEANTIME-DIVIDER" = "\nThis is ";
"SLUG-PREFIX-CLEANTIME-YEAR-EXACT" = "exactly one year.";
"SLUG-PREFIX-CLEANTIME-YEARS-EXACT" = "exactly %d years.";
"SLUG-PREFIX-CLEANTIME-YEAR" = "one year";
"SLUG-PREFIX-CLEANTIME-YEARS" = "%d years";
"SLUG-PREFIX-CLEANTIME-MONTH" = "one month";
"SLUG-PREFIX-CLEANTIME-MONTHS" = "%d months";
"SLUG-PREFIX-CLEANTIME-DAY" = "one day";
"SLUG-PREFIX-CLEANTIME-DAYS" = "%d days";
It's not perfect, but is pretty flexible.
Silly stuff, I know, and the app is not exactly a viral sensation, but the folks that use it, like it.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nacc/id452299196
[1] https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/NACC/blob/master/Sources...
[2] https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/LGV_UICleantime/blob/mas...
So, the few lines of the localisation you posted don't work for Ukrainian and most other Slavic languages.
And that is the issue! Languages differ a lot in ways that are hard to catch in code. And it is the issue leading to for instance "blob(s)" in localised applications, as a lot of languages don't even have a plural, such as Mandarin.
[0] https://translate.google.com/?sl=en&tl=uk&text=1%20year%20ol...
Note that the only format placeholder is an integer. You can use whatever words you want, around that integer.
If you have a singular, then you use one of the singular tokens (no integer).
I found this to be the most flexible approach.
Looks like, if I wanted to be pedantic, I'd have to add a separate one for 2.
Jesus, we’re fucked aren’t we?
So it's your belief that paying attention to how your tool communicates with it's users (in the language they're speaking) has no implications on user hostility? That's certainly a fascinating point of view that I would guess is in the extreme minority, and probably isn't actually something you believe yourself, if you stop trying to rant about California long enough to consider the words you wrote.
Also, would love if you'd call out where anything about "evil" is actually implied - I would assume that, when you read the actual written words, you'll realize you've added that yourself, and that perhaps you'll be a bit more careful in the future when trying to throw in a slightly wordier Twitter-slap. Or not, I suppose your post is "current social media discourse in an HN post" or whatever.
It's always been the case that "bean counters" will optimize to increase profits. If you want a superior product, you have to pay for it. Particle board furniture sold at Walmart certainly wont last nearly the same way as hand-crafted pieces by Gomer Bolstrood. The contrast is dramatic. Mass produced disposable products vs one-of-a-kind products built with a high attention to detail.
The idea of paying more for quality doesn't seem to apply to software. Maybe I'm romanticizing the past, but I believe it did once. I believe that the software developers of yore cared more about their craft than most of the ones employed today. I think they had to. If a product didn't sell, it was pulled from the shelves. It would be dropped by distributors.
Somewhere along the way it's become more important to prioritize minimal time to market, and minimal viable products. People who care about software quality still exist, but they are slowly being squeezed out by others who don't. Profit, growth, and market share have become more important than providing real value to users.
Version control, documentation, language capabilities are all better than they were 10 or 20 years ago
Fewer people are writing horrible applications in VBx and Access, more people are writing things with good fundementals.
So - in many ways it's easier than ever to write "good" software.
I place value on grammar but appreciate in the web today that surely around half of English words in it are ESL (while ignoring AI). And that's fine, it's a human thing- not everyone was taught English or has known it a long time, or has dyslexia etc etc.
I guess in the end, allow end users to have full confidence in you in all ways possible.
From what I recall, David Cutler was quoted in "Showstoppers" about DEC having an engineering culture when he joined but he got discontented after a few years (when his team shipped VMS) because it was too bloated.
Microsoft could be a bit different though. I remember reading from a book that Bill Gates wanted to have PMs control projects, which caused a lot of conflict. I do not remember the timeline, but it must be before Win NT.
So the best bet is to go in early, stay for 5-10 years until the environment starts to rot and you can exercise all of your options, profit, and then jump to the next. The more senior you are, the more control you have, the happier you are. David Cutler is a great example. He did stay in Microsoft but he managed to be a hand-on.
If you're too tech/engineering oriented you have a higher chance of not becoming/continuing as a viable business (DEC was a perfect example of this).
Swing too far the other way and the tech suffers and in theory you open yourself up to better alternatives or it becomes too burdensome to innovate as tech debt builds and the PMs refuse to deal with it until it becomes so acute that it drives away your better talent. Worse is that by this time the original PMs have moved on under the impression they did amazing and somebody else is cleaning up the mess.
In theory with scrum/agile, it's the engineers who pick up the backlog and work on what they feel is important to move forward (be it features, security, tech debt, etc), but in practice the PMs usually have the control.
Similarly in software. When a software product is well crafted/engineered, it has less defects, it is easier to understand and modify, saving a lot of time and effort. I do not see that anymore. I see a lot of smart young engineers but they are managed in a way in which the craft doesn't matter and what matters is how many story points you do.
You lost me here. Probably because mass produced usually means much more thought went into the product rather than a reduced run product. I personally have a lot of respect for mass produced stuff, especially the one well designed.
A trivial, superficial fact is assumed to be indicative of a much more substantial concern. For Van Halen, the candy dish indicated adherence to contract terms; here, pluralization indicates the integrity and values of an entire company.
It’s a cute idea that suggests an easy way to understand something complex. But there’s no free lunch. If you want a free lunch, you’re asking to be taken for a ride.
I think we're in agreement, just highlighting these are very different approaches to essentially management at different phases of the project lifecycle. Van Halen probably didn't have that rider in their contract at their first show.
I have never bought it.
If you want to make sure the venue is set up right you probably need to send an electrician to check on it before your tour arrives. The M&M thing may show if the venue operator read your contract not if they bothered fulfilling the parts that would be expensive (upgrading a building's electrical is expensive, making an intern pick the brown M&Ms out is not).
It probably didn't even prove that the venue operator read your contract. More likely the first time Eddie stormed out after seeing a brown M&M word would get around to everyone that "Eddie will flip his shit if there's a brown M&M so get rid of them. Yes, Seriously."
This is dumb pop-psych stuff, like the "make interview candidates wait then reject them if they don't know the other candidates' names" type hiring "tricks". It's barely different than judging someone based on their handshake grip strength, imo.
Perhaps these companies prioritized the work properly, and determined that electrical work and scaffolding- both things that could kill people- were more important than M&Ms.
> If you don't release until your pluralization is perfect you've waited too long.
But I put making sure the pluralization was perfect in there to see if you're the kind of people who pay attention to detail! ;P
Wait, what? How are these related? One thing is putting a canary clause in a contract between companies to check if they actually read all the clauses (which had to be followed due to technical requirements that could make a stage collapse, for example), and another is your example.
Why are people in this sub-thread (including the grand-parent that started it) try to read between the lines of what David Lee Roth said? It's pretty clear and a solid way of doing businesses. Could they be just lying to justify their rock-star attitude back in the day? I highly doubt so.
Not following the letter of a canary clause, especially if you don't recognize it as such because it's inane and prima-donna-esque, doesn't mean you didn't read the clause. It's an assumption that Roth is making which he falsely believes has given him special insight into the contractors, when in fact it's entirely possible and even probable that the meaningless canary clause requirement was ignored in favor of actually handling the real, important requirements.
The best stage technician in the world could very well say, "he can get his own damn M&Ms", and that would not detract one iota from their skill or legitimacy.
Ask most professionals to do dumb shit outside their job description, and that's the response you'll get, rightfully so.
As a result of this, over the course of her career, my sister has accumulated the weirdest contact list I could imagine. If I needed a bouncy house, chainsaw juggler, Russian interpreter, and a blimp, she could probably set that up in 30 minutes without ever needing to search online.
The real world is full of tradeoffs and I’ve seen people try to get minutia like this correct in convoluted contexts which actually broke the core application logic.
Given the limited time we can spend on things, supporting proper plurality falls below some of my other UI priorities like proper accessibility settings.
I don’t think plurality is bad, just low in the stack rank of things that matter.
You can make pluralization work but the "(s)" is going to tend to work better.
And localization isn't just an opportunity for development bugs, localizers get things wrong too. Some non-English speakers mentioned to me that some translations are so bad, it's better to use the English version anyways.
And who exactly is talking about "embedding" business logic in the i18n framework? Every serious framework I've used has supported placeholders, so at the application level you just select between singular and plural form and then the translation framework can handle arranging the words.
e.g. `items.length == 1 ? _t("%d item", items.length) : _t("%d items", items.length)` and then within your translation files you can specify translations that rearrange the phrase, like "<noun> %d" for languages where they are reversed.
(though usually of course, you would use much longer phrases, so that the translation is done in-context.)
That doesn't prevent a good translation framework from working properly, but it proves why the sample code in your example & the OP would not work.
https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/43/supplemental/language...
No, wait.
These days many i18n frameworks do need to embed some business logic, even if it is mostly fun things like the CLDR plural categories: https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/48/supplemental/language...
Mozilla's Fluent, for example is designed for maximal i18n support of plural selectors and other such things i18n needs: https://projectfluent.org/
Proverbs become eerie the longer you live. Almost like, woah, that one sentence was actually universally true? Well hot damn!
Keep neglecting these small things and you’ll see the level of unconstrained shit you will have unleashed onto the world. With enough of us doing so, we can take part in the great collective festival of mass garbage accumulation (aggregate all the paper cuts). The few neurotic types that lament over this are actually, believe it or not, the closest thing to a sewage system for the accumulation. As of 2025, shame as a utility, is a weak tool.
The modern website needs to be in MOMA with no explanation, just a small title that reads ‘Despair’ (Perhaps even ‘Futility’, or the more modern ‘There was an attempt’).
This is going on a t-shirt
Instead, think about the stuff you are offering. Treat it as if you are building it for yourself, and not for selling. Build it the way your like most. Sound as if you don't care about selling. Be proud of it. Get off of the sales pitch and pleasing talk.
Stay equal with your customer regarding who should please whom. It's an exchange of value between equals. No need of one pleasing the other too much. Customer need not have the upper hand. They should be just as desperate to buy, as you are for selling.
If selling is seen as a win for the seller, then it should always be a loss for the buyer, which is not true. Once you stop seeing it as win, you will stop this overreaction.
This is exactly what the author is doing. Paying attention to detail. Not upselling you anything. He is not getting any direct ROI for doing that.
I recently hired a contractor to clean ducts in my house. He was really nice guy, while his partner was working, he chatted with me about how their carpet cleaning service could make my carpets look like new, and even pointed out a few spots in the kitchen where grout cleaning might help. He was a great salesperson and very personable but when they finished the duct cleaning, they left a bit of debris behind. It wasn’t a big deal, but was enough to make me forget all the upselling he did before. Just goes to show that a little attention to detail can make a big difference. Next time I might shop around or may hire them again only if they give me a much better price.
As in: I agree with your sentiment and ideas. Out of context, you're bang on correct.
But I don't think paying attention to details (like pluralization) is an indication of obsession with the customer, at least not for me. It's about caring about the craft.
When I'm building something for my own use, I care about every aspect of it. I care about the unseen parts. I care about the process. It brings me satisfaction. And when I'm buying something, I like to know that the person who made it cared as much about their craft as I do.
I don't consider than pandering. It's respect: Respect for the craft, for the craftsperson, and for the end recipient/customer.
But maybe I missed something. What was it about the original post that felt like excessive customer obsession? Genuinely curious and open to being mistaken here.
Btw, passion displayed in your post is great, but sometimes, it could mean excess for you and your team.
But it's possible we're in agreement. So here's my take:
(1) If I'm trying to make something as good as possible, that's craftsmanship.
(2) If I'm adding features because I think it will help the product sell, I could see how that would be salesmanship. I don't think it's inherently wrong if it truly makes the product better, but it's dangerous territory, because the driving force isn't my own taste or expertise, but rather my perception of what people want. We've all seen great products turn to garbage because of this process going wayward.
(3) Even with the best of intentions, however, there is always a trade-off. Take carpentry for example. The more time I put into working on a cabinet, the better the cabinet may be. But the cost goes up too, because time is valuable. So a cabinet that is otherwise better in every way but costs 5X more should be at least 5X better in some way. I think what you're alluding to when you talk about excess, and please correct me if I'm misunderstanding you, is it's easy to spend so much time and money on a project that it becomes 5X more expensive but is only marginally better. For example, I'm a fan of traditionally-built furniture (in my neck of the woods, almost only offered by the Amish or Mennonite communities), but IKEA flat-packed furniture costs a fraction. Is it worth it? Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. Depends on context, how I plan on using the furniture, how long I need it to last, how much money I have, etc.
Did that capture what you're saying? Or am I completely off track?
I don't consider than pandering. It's respect: Respect for the craft, for the craftsperson, and for the end recipient/customer."
This was my intention. Thank you!
So that's just my mother tongue. It think your problem is a bit more complex than (s).
Definetely not "always".
In English, it's easy:
* 1 *file* sent
* 2 *files* sent
* 12 *files* sent
* 21 *files* sent
* 16,777,221 *files* sent.
2 pliki wysłane
12 plików wysłanych
21 plików wysłanych
BUT
22 or 23 or 24 pliki wysłane
BUT again
25 plików wysłanych
16'777'221 plików wysłanych
22 pliki wysłane
12 plków wysłanych
Any chance you know of a good article on this? (I could ask ChatGPT, but I'm trying to let go of that crutch.)
dwa ptaki (two birds)
dwoje ludzi (two persons)
dwie dziewczyny (two girls)
idę z dwiema dziewczynami (I'm walking with two girls)
dałem kwiaty dwom dziewczynom (I gave flowers to two girls)
kanapa dla dwojga (a sofa for two - gender unspecified)
dałem śniadanie dwojgu (I served breakfast for two others)
dwójka to słaba ocena (two is a poor grade)
dwie dwójki to razem czwórka (two twos are four altogether)
dostałem dwójkę z Fizyki (I got a two in physics)
z dwójką przyjaciół poszliśmy do klubu (we went to the club with two friends)
w autobusie dwójce siedział pijany facet (there was a drunk fella on bus number two)
O, dwójko, nie wracaj już do mojego dziennika (Oh, two, don’t come back to my gradebook again)
Of course I don't consciously think about when to use the right conjugation. I just know it by heart and it's second nature but I can only give coherent rules to some of them.
ena ptica (one bird), dve ptici (two birds), tri ptice (three birds)
As well as 6 grammatical cases and 3 genders. And a number of special cases
It's probably because Polish, unlike English and most Western European languages, has a case system (where nouns are modified to indicate their function, i.e subject, object, instrument, etc).
That's a pretty common feature in grammatically conservative Indo-European languages. Other living Indo-European languages, like Lithuanian, are even more conservative and have preserved nearly the entire case system of their ancestor.
https://perldoc.perl.org/Locale::Maketext::TPJ13#A-Localizat...
As a child in the 80s I read a programming book (can't remember the name anymore unfortunately) where the reader was encouraged to write software that is always friendly and human when it comes to communicating with the user. For example, 'Please input a number:' instead of 'Input a number:'. But also exactly the thing the writer talks about in the article; do not be lazy when it comes to pluralization.
I get nostalgic remembering that era in computing.
Peppering input fields and forms and folksy welcoming language scattered thoughout might be useful now and then, but for systems where people are using it repeatedly hourly/daily/weekly... it's (at best) clutter and noise.
One big problem with the fight is that industry is incentivized to cut corners. '(Fast, Cheap, Good)..pick two' often results in managers picking fast and cheap. In some ways,they seem legally obligated to fast and cheap due to fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders. That's only if you look at the potential profit and risks from a very short term. Alas, that is what most of the world's businesses do at the moment. To paraphrase Dom from the Fast and the Furious, "We live our lives one business quarter at a time". Eventually Dom discovers the futility of that during the course of the series. Hopefully we will too, before we crash.
> Hopefully we will too, before we crash.
I think LLMs are helping us to bolt rocket engines to cars.
I think it just highlights that people care about different things. I've seen the "(s)" placeholder for decades in computer UIs and it's never bothered me. On the other hand, blog article characteristics that bug me are titles consisting of a non-descriptive teaser with ellipsis (...) that doesn't describe the main point and not having a publication date at the top.
But I'm not going to complain about blog articles that "disrespect" readers that way because apparently, it's ok with some writers and some readers.
Likewise, someone using the Comic Sans font enrages some folks but it never bothers me. On the other hand, displaying big numbers without any thousands separators is very annoying.
I code a lot of utilities for myself and I always avoid the "(s)" problem by re-ordering the text. Instead of:
Uploading 3 image(s)
Number of images uploaded: 3
Number of images uploaded: 0
Number of images uploaded: 1
Number of images uploaded: 2The plural version does not and as you pointed out, there's a solution in English that works. But, I'm curious if there are any languages were that type of solution doesn't work.
https://perldoc.perl.org/Locale::Maketext::TPJ13#A-Localizat...
I still remember seeing it when I first started using Windows 95. As a kid, I was amused that it didn’t know which one to use. Really, I didn’t even know that I was making that choice (and couldn’t say what the rule was).
If anyone is interested about it, this page explains https://www.90daykorean.com/i-ga-grammar/
If this is your biggest concern at a company (regarding the UI at least), you are miles ahead of us. Congrats
Deleting load balancer '[object Object]'
We avoid pluralization where we can. The localization team taught us a trick, if you flip it around, in many cases its acceptable to simply have single term.
Items Loading: 5
Uploading: 3
User Added: 1
Minutes Remaining: 1
Unfortunately, details take time and time takes money.
For a business's survival, the company's relative positioning in the market, access to sales and marketing channels, financing are much stronger concerns.
This is a designer longing for endless tinkering.
I love projects where I can "sweat the details" and refine not just wording but typography, padding, visual alignment, layout, edge cases, colors, workflow, etc. And where the back-end, QA, doc teams are similarly able to hone their work to perfection.
But I know that this isn't always Pareto optimal. Sometimes your user, customer, and business are better off if you swallow your pride and deliver an imperfect solution now instead of a better solution in the future, and knowing when and where to strike that balance is a sign of maturity, not disrespect.
Though if you support languages other than English even the decision to simplify pluralization logic to n==1 seems like a form of "...meh, whatever" given various pluralization rules: https://cldr.unicode.org/index/cldr-spec/plural-rules
Files deleted: {0 or 1 or 1,000,000}
function fn(val) {
return typeof val === "number" &&
isFinite(val) &&
Math.floor(val) === val;
};String(0, "=0:no birds|=1:1 bird|# birds") // "no birds"
String(1, "=0:no birds|=1:1 bird|# birds") // "1 bird"
String(2, "=0:no birds|=1:1 bird|# birds") // "2 birds"
[For translation you can imagine that we replace the literal string with a string code.]
This is still more work, of course, but having it built-in to the language is super-useful.
It just takes longer and is at the expense of another feature. In truth, it mostly takes more skill - once you have that skill, it's another 5 minutes. There are a few edge cases, but you largely have the necessary context to translate a string. You have to translate the string in its entirety instead of relying on composition of translated chunks. (This is already best practice.)
Is OP happy to work for Satan as long as he appears grammatically accurate, polite and concise?
Alternatively, OP is a nightmare to work with because every single other role in the company has to do things in exactly the way the engineers want, otherwise they're careless morons.
”Nontheistic Satanism, as exemplified by LaVeyan Satanism (practiced by the Church of Satan and First Satanic Church) and The Satanic Temple, holds that Satan does not exist as a literal anthropomorphic entity, but rather as a symbol of a cosmos which Satanists perceive to be permeated and motivated by a force that has been given many names by humans over the course of time. In this religion, "Satan" is not viewed or depicted as a hubristic, irrational, and fraudulent creature, but rather is revered with Prometheus-like attributes, symbolizing liberty and individual empowerment. To adherents, he also serves as a conceptual framework and an external metaphorical projection of the Satanist's highest personal potential.”
You see, Satan is not just a biblical figure, but also the average IT company.
Keep in mind English is a super weird language, it's three languages in a trenchcoat with stuff like 'beef' coming from French and 'meat' from Germanic.
And working at uptight places that focus more on the garnish than the actual meal, suck.
For blob uploads, I’d significantly prefer a fixed format! If I want to automate anything off the back of it it just becomes that few % easier
Last week, my wife and I toured a school for our daughter. The school gave us these pretty notebooks with a blackwing pencil, saying that they “take writing seriously here.” I noticed that the students, however, did not use blackwings but cheap low quality yellow pencils. This signal prompted me to pay closer attention, and I found half a dozen things that affirmed the bad feeling I had about the place.
It’s a simple rule, but in the era where everyone is trying to sell me, I use Bill Hamilton’s Say Mean Do rule from his “Saints and Psychopaths” about finding real spiritual mentors. Broadly: saints say what they mean and do what they say. Unfortunately it’s probably just as hard to find tech companies who are honest as it is to find a true spiritual mentor. B2B SaaS sales cycle is usually just checkbox hunting and CYA.
Sure it’s doable, but trivial things are now non-trivial.
Ignoring i8n is also a significant issue.
Seriously though, "Files deleted: {0 or 1 or 1000}" would also work :)
This is where my view differs fundamentally. If I get another "let's set up your account!" text in a soulless, cold software, I am throwing my laptop out the next window.
It's a machine. It needs to communicate information to me. A large part of the AI boom is that we can now pretend that it's not a machine by using enough compute power to probably solve every problem ever, just to say "Of course -- you're so right!".
We made sure to write software so inefficiently and badly that you can barely tell how powerful modern computers are.
Just another little layer, one more branch, one more step between the user and the hardware -- just buy more ram. Buy a better CPU. They now have double the cores, you hear?
I'll probably always be hired by someone else to build a shared vision and aspire to do it as well as I possibly can :)
I actually agree with the sentiment in your first comment. These aren't what defines if a company is successful. A good experience, care and craftsmanship are important, but not company defining.
I have decided for myself that most company defining areas are not where I want to gain expertise in (focused user research, finding PMF, funding, GTM, sales, marketing, etc) - I'm passionate about tech and am intentional about excellence in this area.
Which is why I will probably never establish a company. But of course I can lead a team to do good technical work and would like coworkers who do the same. One can dream ;)
> Multilingual support also explains why you see things like “1 folder(s)” instead of “1 folder” and “2 folders”. Why not have two format strings, one for when the number of items is exactly one, and one for when the number of items is two or more?
> Well, for one, that would significantly increase the number of strings we would have to carry around. (If you say “just add s to make the plural” then you really need to get out more!)
> For two, some languages (such as Slovene) have a “dual” number in addition to singular and plural. The Lahir language has singular (one), dual (two), trial (three), paucal (a few), and plural (many). So now you have to have perhaps five versions of every string that contains a replaceable number.
A couple of other related ones:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20241007-00/?p=11...
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20241101-00/?p=11...
(minutes == 1) ? "minute" : "minutes"
1 minute(s) works