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Comment by greghinch | Hacker News Reader

Wow I would put this down as something more like "how mature are your developers?" I would never curse in a git commit message, any more than I would curse in an email to all my colleagues. No decent programmer I've worked with would, either. Completely unprofessional.

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What about one example I encounted?

   boolean alanIsABastard = true;

I was the Alan in question - I guess I should have been pleased it was a variable! :-)

at least you can submit a patch to that :)

That's a prejudice I would be careful with. English is the working language for most developers all over the world, but not every culture is overly sensitive to swearing. Context is everything.

> English is the working language for most developers all over the world, but not every culture is overly sensitive to swearing.

I'm not an American, but it's interesting to see how strongly people from the States react to swearing. I know that for every 10 guys thinking that the usage of the word "fuck" is unprofessional there is at least one George Carlin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsZwRirDOYQ), Lenny Bruce or Bill Gates (http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/), it just seems that this "puritanical" point of view has gotten stronger and stronger lately. I'd be curious about the underlying reasons.

In my opinion this view is getting weaker. I'm encountering more and more otherwise excellent technical posts or blogs that I'm unwilling to share with others because the author drops an f-bomb just for emphasis.

Just the fact that you used the term "f-bomb" instead of "fuck" shows that the "puritanical point of view" alive and well.

Does it really even matter what word you use if we already know what you're talking about?

On the contrary, the theme of my post shows that. Can you explain why you think the 'puritanical' attitude is a bad thing (which you are clearly assuming). Aside from any religious points anyone would like to make, I view this behavior as highly unprofessional.

It's humourless, homogenous, prissy, inhuman (in the sense that it removes emotional context) and fucking boring. Correlating professionalism with the above is very USAian. You should focus on breadth of successful interaction on the human side and ongoing effective fulfilment of job description. Not sure where religion comes into it outside of the Puritans who buggered off to America.

I am quite sure that the concept of "polite conversation" is not american or puritan-centric.

In my experience, the people using the f-word in business interactions are the same people trying to con me. Maybe this is because several of my early experiences correlated this behavior with people trying to get me to join Ponzi schemes (these 'businesses' often target college-age people in the US).

The phrase "polite conversation" is meaningless in its ambiguity. I assume from the context that for you it refers to words one may or may not use to maintain propriety. To me it refers to the meaningless pleasantries one uses when temporarily sharing an environment with strangers.

From outside the US:

The fuss caused by the wardrobe malfunction during a sports event was baffling.

Some TV programs (not aimed at children, an example is "The Good Wife") have to avoid all swears. That's okay, but sometimes characters need to swear. In one episode they jokingly used traffic noise from a window to mask the swears.

I don't understand the torture porn of shows like 24 and the refusal to allow swearing.

Facebook made a decision to not allow any nipples. That's okay, their servers their rules. But they extended that to disallow any images of women breast-feeding children. That is baffling. Especially when FB also has some hate pages.

> I'd be curious about the underlying reasons.

I'd guess diverse population, with a vocal group who cares about it and a clear issue to campaign against. It's harder to say "More swearing on TV!".

If mine is an American company, I expect the context would be American, and would expect others to be sensitive to my culture. I make every effort to be sensitive to others when I visit theirs.

Tone also matters a lot. And generally, profanity is used in a negative tone. Developers who are constantly negative are like poison and should be removed from a team as quickly as possible.

> And generally, profanity is used in a negative tone.

I'm English.

Profanity is used joyfully. Swearing is fun. Glorious, playful, creative.

See Roger's Profanisaurus for an example.

> tandoori whisper n. Silent, yet exquisitely rancid, burst of wind following an Indian meal.

(http://www.viz.co.uk/profanisaurus.html)

I always enjoy finding a good rant or otherwise "unprofessional" comment when I'm going through code. It's like a little inside joke that somebody left for you. A little profanity doesn't bother me as long as its funny!

I've had people tell me that they ran into a comment of mine many years after the fact and what a great laugh they got from it. Easily 99.9% of my comments are totally boring but once in a while you run into a situation where it's appropriate to vent a little.

PG wrote about this:

"I've never heard more different explanations for anything parents tell kids than why they shouldn't swear. Every parent I know forbids their children to swear, and yet no two of them have the same justification. It's clear most start with not wanting kids to swear, then make up the reason afterward.

So my theory about what's going on is that the function of swearwords is to mark the speaker as an adult. There's no difference in the meaning of "shit" and "poopoo." So why should one be ok for kids to say and one forbidden? The only explanation is: by definition."

source: http://www.paulgraham.com/lies.html

So swear words are both: Restricted to adults only. Unprofessional.

I would think a likely explanation is: they are emotionally charged. They signal danger. You are not allowed to have dangerous emotions while being a non-adult (lack of self-restraint) or while being a professional (can affect sales or internal relationships).

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