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Comment by CodeMage | Hacker News Reader

I marvel at how much effort is being poured into "proving" that one wording is "better" than the other, with people arguing about culture and paradigm shifts and worldview and audacity.

Are there really only two answers you can offer when asked whether we can do X? Am I still allowed to say "It depends on A, B and C" or "Maybe, but I don't think it's a good idea because of P and Q" or "It would be great, but how do we solve Y and Z?"

I can't help feeling that you people are all arguing about which Oldspeak word to abolish in Newspeak.

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The words we use have a hidden subtext that reflect our unconscious biases. Strangely, using different words to frame an idea is often enough to break through many distortions and biases. It's a mainstay of cognitive behavioral therapy.

And as it relates to the business of building software, which is a tricky and hard thing to do, having a positive outlook and focusing on the end possibilities rather than oncoming challenges is a better attitude for long term success. If you're the type to get caught up in the challenges of implementing stuff, you spend a lot more time saying no and less time finding clever ways to make it a yes.

There's more to it. When you say: No, because ..., you are pointing out SOME of the dependencies that must be resolved before you can get to the final goal. When you say: Yes, if ..., you are enumerating ALL of the dependencies, that when overcome, you can achieve the final goals. In addition to the negative/positive connotations, the former implies that you might have stopped thinking about the problems half way, whereas the latter shows that you've thought about ALL the details.

I used to be in the No, because ... camp when I first got out of college, until I met a mentor who led by example with a "Yes, if ..." attitudes, and I am now firmly in the second camp. Usually comprises and trade off needs to be made, but stop thinking about the problem definitely doesn't help.

> I can't help feeling that you people are all arguing about which Oldspeak word to abolish in Newspeak.

I disagree. I've worked as a consultant for many years and I used to be a "no, because" person, and I noticed a very clear shift in my demeanor and that of clients when I started saying more "yes, if"s.

Initially I didn't know what I was doing so every project was fraught with the fear I'd be found out, this meant that on really difficult things, I'd try to talk myself and the client out of doing them, because I didn't know enough and thought something simpler (that I could do) would be better. As I became a much better software developer, all of a sudden, nothing was impossible, and it translated into my speak with clients.

Instead of presenting problems, I could tell clients exactly how to do what they wanted and how much it would cost them technically and monetarily.

I'll just tell you from experience. People respond to "yes, if"'s a whole lot better than no-anythings

Words matter. To quote Frank Chimero:

"I think words are abstractions, and abstractions become expressions that frame our understanding of our experiences, expectations, culture—everything. Language is an interface, and if an interface can mold behavior and perception, than language does that to your life."

While I think the grandparent is focussed on a non-issue (the two phrases offered are obviously metonymic, not literal), I have to note that this is a much stronger claim than you might gather from a glib programming analogy made by an armchair philosopher. Linguistic relativity is a thing [1], but statements like this widely overstate the extent to which language molds cognition. More importantly, though, I don't think the notion is relevant to the discussion at hand. We're not talking about alternative phrasings of the same idea, but different ideas entirely: yes and no. That different ideas expressed differently carry different semantic payloads is hardly a controversial assertion.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

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