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Comment by Xirdus | Hacker News Reader

I just want to point out this is not a royal "we". It's a regular "we". Royal "we" is when you say "we" but mean a singular person, yourself. Here, the author does actually mean multiple people beyond themselves - like you pointed out, they claim to speak for all software engineers.

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> they claim to speak for all software engineers.

I have reread the post and see no such claim. They are using “we” to refer to the significant subset of humanity which fits the description, not “all software engineers”.

If someone says “we are addicted to fast food” (or social media, or what have you), we can understand they don’t mean literally everyone. Some people never even eat it, so they couldn’t be addicted, but there’s enough people who do to make the claim. It’s a generalisation.

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

the wicked we

No, that is exactly GP's complaint. Their whole point is that OP has written things like "we throw everything at a model and hope it gives us what we imagined, without ever having to understand how any of it actually works" when the honest statement would be "I throw everything at a model and hope it gives me what I imagined, without ever having to understand how any of it actually works".

Yes I understand the complaint. It's just that "royal we" means something else.

Talking about the "royal we" is a correct, established (if somewhat sarcastic) way to complain about this kind of usage. It highlights the presumptiveness of the author in their use of "we".

No it doesn't. It comes from the Queen saying "We are not amused" to mean "I specifically am not amused".

It has other uses. But the point is that saying "we" when one is not, in fact, a sovereign, is extremely pretentious.

I'm pretty sure the author intended it as a regular "we".

There's also the wifely we, meaning "you", as in "we need to take out the trash."

My dad's reply to that was always, "We? What, do you have a mouse in your pocket?"

> "We? What, do you have a mouse in your pocket?"

Suggested response: “I do, but the poor thing is not strong enough. No no, I meant one of us needs to do it. Please do go ahead, if you don’t mind, as I’m a bit busy feeding the mouse.”

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