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When your first reaction is to interrupt with “can you just” you’re implicitly calling your co-workers stupid. Because if they weren’t stupid then they’d have f

by adrusi 10y ago

When your first reaction is to interrupt with “can you just” you’re implicitly calling your co-workers stupid. Because if they weren’t stupid then they’d have figured out the solution in under a second like you did. Sure, many common patterns of speech can be insulting if you're this uncharitable in your interpretation. Just like the speaker should consider how the listener will interpret their words, the listener should consider the speaker's intent, and give them benefit of the doubt. Communication is a two-way street. A more charitable interpretation would be that the "just"-sayer is actually asking a question: "Can you explain to me why you didn't do X, I feel I'm missing something". The difference between that question and "why didn't you just do X?" is more a reflection of the tone of the conversation and the speaker's mood than of the speaker's opinion of you. Personally I'm always worried about how the least charitable listener might understand my words, but while it's a useful communication skill, it's also a curse: it puts a barrier of distrust between me and the people I'm speaking with, and often results in overly-formal sounding communication. And, of course, the least charitable listener will interpret formality as pretentiousness.

mbostleman 10y ago
Exactly. Many times I'll ask people from another domain, "Why can't you just...", so that they can explain why that seemingly simple idea won't work. And I know full well that it won't, I'm just not sure why. But another problem with the idea of banning speech is that "just" recognizes that there are levels of complexity, effort, and risk. No, there is never a solution so simple that it is zero effort and risk. But there are certainly some solutions that have more or less effort and risk than others. And if you're asking if you could just do something else, you're implying that the something else is less effort or risk - not zero effort or risk. I have worked with people that have a similar approach as never say "just" in that they insist that every problem is hard and should never be trivialized. That's a reasonably wise stance to take as a default in software development, but kills the recognition that some approaches are, in fact, easier than others.

by adrusi 10y ago

mbostleman 10y ago

Exactly. Many times I'll ask people from another domain, "Why can't you just...", so that they can explain why that seemingly simple idea won't work. And I know full well that it won't, I'm just not sure why. But another problem with the idea of banning speech is that "just" recognizes that there are levels of complexity, effort, and risk. No, there is never a solution so simple that it is zero effort and risk. But there are certainly some solutions that have more or less effort and risk than others. And if you're asking if you could just do something else, you're implying that the something else is less effort or risk - not zero effort or risk. I have worked with people that have a similar approach as never say "just" in that they insist that every problem is hard and should never be trivialized. That's a reasonably wise stance to take as a default in software development, but kills the recognition that some approaches are, in fact, easier than others.