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Comment by dataflow | Hacker News Reader

> There are many people who don't seem to know the different between work and life and so they may conflate the two, but to me it's pretty obvious.

Nobody is conflating anything, you're just misinterpreting the same words with different meanings.

A professional criticism can, in fact, be unprofessional, and even a personal attack. These are not mutually exclusive.

> Those are not personal criticisms

You're using "personal" to mean "regarding non-professional matters", whereas others are using "personal" to mean "regarding the individual person themselves".

> those are all professional criticisms

You're using "professional" to mean "regarding the profession" whereas others are using to mean... you know, the opposite of "unprofessional".

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Yes, professional has two meanings in use here. Professional as in relating to one's profession, and professional as in how one may be expected to behave when carrying out one's profession.

In my comment I was using the former.

I'm not really sure what you're on about me "misinterpreting" something. The author of the article claimed to not have personal criticisms, and I was pointing out that there's a standard interpretation of those words that is true.

> others are using "personal" to mean "regarding the individual person themselves"

Following your logic, we cannot critique anyone in particular ever. How absurd!

> You're using "professional" to mean "regarding the profession" whereas others are using to mean... you know, the opposite of "unprofessional".

At the end of the day, it is the same thing. Person does what is their job according to common standards.

Andrew runs a software foundation, and it is his job to make sure that behavior of one of related projects does not disrupt the stream of all donations or bury his project under a pile of slop submissions. Highlighting the technical dysfunctions of the other project is an effective way to show the differences between the two. Do you have a suggestion that would be just as effective, while being more "professional"?

I think there's a world of a difference between "you wrote some code and it sucks" to "you wrote some code and it sucks because you have beginner energy and live in a fever dream". The former can be an objective statement without attribution to personal failings, while the latter... not really. If I put the latter as a PR comment to my intern in the morning I would expect a meeting invite from HR by the afternoon at the latest

Oh, you can actually. But you have to bring receipts, otherwise it very well could be libel.

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