5 ms·

As someone who came second in a DCSS tournament back in the day, let me tell U that this game rocks if U enjoy tactical gameplay. It can brutally punish U until

by SlyShy 10y ago

As someone who came second in a DCSS tournament back in the day, let me tell U that this game rocks if U enjoy tactical gameplay. It can brutally punish U until U learn sufficient caution and U tune your situational awareness and resource management. Have fun!

GavinMcG 10y ago
I might be speaking for myself, here, but I really value clear and precise communication. Saving yourself a single keystroke (shift-U vs. y-o-u) has much greater costs than you might realize in terms of how people perceive you, trust you, and are willing to engage with you. I'm not trying to be prescriptive – I don't think using U vs. you is a moral issue, or makes you good or bad or smart or dumb or anything like that. But people react to things like that, even if it's not fair that they do so.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  I thought it was some sort of pun that I didn't get.
  - fencepost 10y ago
    Yeah, as an old Nethack player my thought was "Does DCSS use 'U' instead of '@'?" but no, it doesn't and a quick look at the source code (mon-data.h) doesn't show any monsters using 'U' as the display character.
- PeCaN 10y ago
  Eye might be speaking for myself, here, but Eye don't really see the point of nitpicking that.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > Saving yourself a single keystroke (shift-U vs. y-o-u) has much greater costs than you might realize in terms of how people perceive you, trust you, and are willing to engage with you. This is true. However, it has no costs in terms of whether your message will be understood as you intended it, or whether the audience will even have any doubt as to what you meant. Thus, I find your lead comment, "I really value clear and precise communication", interesting. What about the U symbol do you feel is unclear or imprecise? On a different note, I generally see people use "u" rather than "U". U is harder to type, but it does bring out a certain parallelism with "I".
  - DanBC 10y ago
    > However, it has no costs in terms of whether your message will be understood as you intended it, or whether the audience will even have any doubt as to what you meant. I'd be interested to know how well people with dyslexia or with English as a second language cope with it.
    - thaumasiotes 10y ago
      It poses no problems for English-as-a-second-language people, if my experience with Chinese students going to the US and immediately developing the style is any indication. Think about it for a minute, and you'll see that (1) it's an extremely common word, so anyone with any experience with it at all is likely to have quite a lot of experience with it, and (2) there are no other candidates for what "u" could mean. It might pose problems for foreigners living abroad whose only method of determining what a word means is looking it up in a dictionary; it poses no problems for anyone talking to the person using it (even pretty difficult things can be understood if the other person is there to help you), or just living in an english-speaking country.
  - Pyxl101 10y ago
    It is flagrant and a distraction. Just like someone who writes messages like this in all lower case without capitalization. It breaks the norm so much that it constantly draws my attention to the choice of writing style rather than the message itself. As I was reading the original comment, and before seeing any of the comments about the style, I found myself highly distracted by the "U". Wondering why someone wrote that way, what the purpose was, and so on. Because of the fact that it significantly distracts from the message, I think these abnormal styles are insulting to the reader and so are not something I would recommend or condone in contexts where normal writing is convention. (On IRC or in instant messages/Slack, the style is different and it's OK. But you can see what the style is on HN by reading comments on this page.)
  - GavinMcG 10y ago
    This was nominally a question for me, but I think Pyxl101 has it: the fact that it's far outside the norms makes it unclear whether I as the reader am correctly understanding what's going on. Since the author seems to just mean "you", creating the spectre of other meanings/intentions muddies the waters.
- kibwen 10y ago
  Given the way that Crawl is scored, you don't come in second in a Crawl tournament by wasting keystrokes. :P
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

by SlyShy 10y ago

GavinMcG 10y ago

I might be speaking for myself, here, but I really value clear and precise communication. Saving yourself a single keystroke (shift-U vs. y-o-u) has much greater costs than you might realize in terms of how people perceive you, trust you, and are willing to engage with you. I'm not trying to be prescriptive – I don't think using U vs. you is a moral issue, or makes you good or bad or smart or dumb or anything like that. But people react to things like that, even if it's not fair that they do so.

cmdrfred 10y ago
I thought it was some sort of pun that I didn't get.
- fencepost 10y ago
  Yeah, as an old Nethack player my thought was "Does DCSS use 'U' instead of '@'?" but no, it doesn't and a quick look at the source code (mon-data.h) doesn't show any monsters using 'U' as the display character.
PeCaN 10y ago
Eye might be speaking for myself, here, but Eye don't really see the point of nitpicking that.
thaumasiotes 10y ago
> Saving yourself a single keystroke (shift-U vs. y-o-u) has much greater costs than you might realize in terms of how people perceive you, trust you, and are willing to engage with you. This is true. However, it has no costs in terms of whether your message will be understood as you intended it, or whether the audience will even have any doubt as to what you meant. Thus, I find your lead comment, "I really value clear and precise communication", interesting. What about the U symbol do you feel is unclear or imprecise? On a different note, I generally see people use "u" rather than "U". U is harder to type, but it does bring out a certain parallelism with "I".
- DanBC 10y ago
  > However, it has no costs in terms of whether your message will be understood as you intended it, or whether the audience will even have any doubt as to what you meant. I'd be interested to know how well people with dyslexia or with English as a second language cope with it.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    It poses no problems for English-as-a-second-language people, if my experience with Chinese students going to the US and immediately developing the style is any indication. Think about it for a minute, and you'll see that (1) it's an extremely common word, so anyone with any experience with it at all is likely to have quite a lot of experience with it, and (2) there are no other candidates for what "u" could mean. It might pose problems for foreigners living abroad whose only method of determining what a word means is looking it up in a dictionary; it poses no problems for anyone talking to the person using it (even pretty difficult things can be understood if the other person is there to help you), or just living in an english-speaking country.
- Pyxl101 10y ago
  It is flagrant and a distraction. Just like someone who writes messages like this in all lower case without capitalization. It breaks the norm so much that it constantly draws my attention to the choice of writing style rather than the message itself. As I was reading the original comment, and before seeing any of the comments about the style, I found myself highly distracted by the "U". Wondering why someone wrote that way, what the purpose was, and so on. Because of the fact that it significantly distracts from the message, I think these abnormal styles are insulting to the reader and so are not something I would recommend or condone in contexts where normal writing is convention. (On IRC or in instant messages/Slack, the style is different and it's OK. But you can see what the style is on HN by reading comments on this page.)
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  This was nominally a question for me, but I think Pyxl101 has it: the fact that it's far outside the norms makes it unclear whether I as the reader am correctly understanding what's going on. Since the author seems to just mean "you", creating the spectre of other meanings/intentions muddies the waters.
kibwen 10y ago
Given the way that Crawl is scored, you don't come in second in a Crawl tournament by wasting keystrokes. :P
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]