I'm fed up with this kind of oppressive language. This is heteronormative and is discriminatory to the mentally ill. It's stuff like this that leads to the imbalance and under-representation in the industry. Let's boycott this author.
(I would love not to have to write "</satire>" but having seen some of the comments here, I think I need to. I wonder how many white-knights-for-women use language like this without thinking. We need some flexibility in the way people are allowed to express themselves.)
Bah. Your comment is probably one of the less informative ones here, so I downvoted you. Look, there are turns of phrase that shouldn't be used by responsible members of certain communities in public. Saying something like "watch out, woman driver" is pretty offensive universally. We can all benefit from a more inclusive and positive language.
However, the original quote of "Django REST framework is an insane framework" sound innocuous enough to me. The problem I have with it is not that it's discriminatory towards the mentally ill. It's that it makes the author sound like a 13 year old kid. They could improve the sentence by using words like fantastic, great, indispensable, useful, etc. Saying that a "framework" is an "insane framework" is really kind of stupid IMHO. The author could have just excluded that meaningless sentence and the article would have been improved as a result.
Edit: also, searching through the comments on this page, you are the only one bringing up the "insane" word and making (bad) puns around it. Your original comment sounds like a reply to something someone did, except nobody here did anything like what you are accusing them of. Perhaps you might want to take to Twitter or Reddit for pointless venting at nobody in particular. </satire>
At a minimum you chose an odd target for your satire. There isn't really any adjective that can be used in that location that will add much information to the text (it is just expressing enthusiasm).
An experiment: Next time you reach for some euphemism for mental illness, consider a couple of alternative phrasings (that do not use the euphemism). Decide if the alternatives are clearer or more precise. I don't run around taking issue with word choices, but if I run that experiment, I usually choose one of the alternative phrasings.
I was going to say "the equivalent of heteronormative but for mental illness" but I thought that anyone that understood what I was saying might have just let me have that one slip and interpreted the meaning rather than focus on its strict representation.
It wasn't a joke as such, at least its intention wasn't primarily humour. Just highlighting the fact that nearly everything everyone says is offensive or exclusionary to someone and that if we adopt the universal application of the principles of extreme gender-neutral language that we've seen advocated on HN and elsewhere, equally for every issue, we end up with lobotomised language†.
I think the use of 'insane' is fine. And I think the use of gendered pronouns is fine. But I am neither insane nor of a gender that is under-represented in the pronoun
This article has no relevance to gender-neutral language and no one other than yourself is discussing this. It would be better to address this issue in a relevant thread instead of hijacking a random one.
Specifically the casual use of the word 'insane'. I don't think it's unreasonable to discuss the contents of the page and make references to things not contained on the page.
I think you're thinking of the word "retarded". You might as well be arguing against using the word "crazy". Insane and crazy have identical meaning in most contexts.
Or perhaps waterlion should have just not made the joke. It does not relate to the article in any fashion I can find relevant nor does it add anything to the existing discussion.
I'm looking for interesting discussion with intelligent people on a range of subjects guided by user-submitted stories. I'm looking for explorations of ideas, learning new things, synthesis as well as derivative ideas. Open-mindedness and acceptance. Otherwise there's no point.
I'm not looking for pedantry and closed-mindedness (I'm not accusing you of those things).
I'm probably in the wrong place for that on HN, but the articles are interesting and often so is the discussion.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that I would want others to extend to me and not accuse you of pedantry. But I don't think there's much steam left in this conversation.
I was not trolling by the definition I know. I just thought that it might lead to an interesting conversation.
It's just too hard to communicate on the internet, especially with people who don't share your conversational goals. I think I just found a new year's resolution.
It's a shame you think that I'm trolling. You're welcome to go back over my comment history and look at the conversations I've engaged in. Sure my comments provoke a range of responses. It would be a boring world if everyone always agreed with everything. Maybe the writing style isn't to everyone's taste. But they're never intended to provoke anger.
My original point was that the absolute application of principles designed to bring about equality could be harmful and that we need to apply contextual understanding to language. If the expression of that idea makes you angry, that's fine, but it's not trolling.
Anyway, I'm bowing out of this thread as it doesn't look like pursuing this idea is constructive.
sounds oppressive but surely not meant this way - the author's mother tongue is probably german and in german "wahnsinnig gut" is a common idiom. It is just bad translation.
That typeface. Looks a bit like Bank Gothic. Can an American explain the cultural connotations? As a European it has very particular associations. A cross between Real American Hero Military Men With Guns and a certain child-like toy-soldier naïvité (case in point, a computerised machine for killing animals). Not trying to be incendiary, it's quite difficult to define. But people seem unashamed to use it. Is it a cliché?
Data redundancy in multiple locations and good logging can fix that problem better that tests, I think. Most bugs can be found anyways during development without coded tests.
For a very narrow range of software, I suppose. Not for software that has side-effects and actually does stuff in the real world.
What about software that sends emails to people, or places orders, performs billable work, or gives people directions, or supplies them with data that they then carry forward and use in decisions or in other systems?
And are you proposing that instead of writing tests you write a play-back-able-log system that can roll back state and re-apply transformations if a given component did incorrect things?
I think sensible testing is the way forward, where sensible is appropriate to the type of application, language and requirements. 100% coverage is suitable for industrial code and 1% coverage is appropriate for toy projects. But no tests at all seems foolhardy.
Not sure what you mean by "coded" tests, but I agree that most bugs can be found during development - unfortunately, my experience is that that's rarely the case. But if your development team finds most bugs during development, my hat's off to you.
I read the headline and skimmed the article. I only realised at the end, when he's trying to sell you something, that the 'we' is inclusive-marketing-speak.
Before that I thought that it was 'we (my organisation) don't write tests, and here's a defence of why', followed by a list of excuses (in which I thought 'I wouldn't touch this guy with a bargepole'). I only realised he wasn't making excuses for himself after reading the homepage.
tl;dr misleading title and confessional writing style YMMV
Because I'm too lazy to hit the about button and find out its an all female site (which it is), one english language gendered pronoun has one less letter than the other and I'm lazy, in this particular situation scattering some "s" doesn't change the content of the discussion in any productive way, and gendered pronouns as a concept is a fairly stupid language design decision and one way to demonstrate disrespect for a stupid idea is to ignore a stupid idea's ridiculous rules.
If our shared language was poorly designed enough to have racially segregated pronouns as opposed to gender segregated pronouns (don't laugh, its an almost equally stupid design decision) I'd probably call you all martians out of disrespect to a dumb design decision not because you're all actually from mars.
Its not because the website authors profile pics make them look manlier than myself or I admire their beards or anything dumb like that.
Yeah sorry it's not that important. I suppose I was more sensitive to it because the discussion was derailed into misogyny (which derailing I participate in).
Hear hear. But you're not doing it properly. Please be consistent.
"what about being human when it matters most? In person" - doesn't this exclude people with social anxiety disorders?
"mix of knock-off stilettos" - doesn't this exclude people who wear flats?
"people bumbling about who looks a hair too much like Dwight Schrute" - doesn't this exclude people who do look like him and may have body image issues?
"You have just entered the land of networking hell" - this imagery is deeply offensive to some religions
"Screw the schmoozing" - using sexual imagery? No thanks.
"The people who hand out business cards like they are condoms in a high school sex ed. class" - alienates those with a conservative upbringing
"Disclaimer – keep those condoms, kids" - again, pretty offensive to Catholics
"They want meaningful relationships" - again social anxiety
"And people respond to kindness." - not everyone. Exclusionary to those on certain parts of the autistic spectrum.
"The same philosophy goes for networking" - I can imagine quite a few real philosophers getting offended about the belittling of their profession
"One good conversation is better than five quick ones every day of the week" - not the Shabbat!
"It’s for people who will never be more than middlemen" - think of all the middlemen out there, feeling excluded at this hate speech and switching off
"when you remember to be human" - deeply insulting to robots
Sorry, I should have put a <rhetoricalIllustration> tag around that to clarify that I don't actually believe any of the above. (Do I really need to say that?). I won't spell it out again, I've made other comments in this thread.
