6 ms·

Real geeks die early

30 points by norbu09 16y ago

dca 16y ago
Apparently so do their shift keys.
- nollidge 16y ago
  And their kerning. EDIT: Yep, http://norbu09.org/css/screen.css http://norbu09.org/css/screen.css: #content p { line-height: 140%; letter-spacing: -0.03em; }
- jmtame 16y ago
  does it bother you that people don't capitalize properly in their personal blogs? i never understood that. i read through it just fine. i know it's proper, but i guess i'm kind of lazy in that way. in the words of christopher walken: "i never liked capitalization. it felt like more of an imposition."
  - pg 16y ago
    th prblm s nt tht ts mprpr, bt tht yr gvng th rdr lss nfrmtn
    - tumult 16y ago
      It looks like no-vowels slows down my reading to about 50% of original speed, whereas no-caps slows me down only to maybe 90%. This might be because I spend so much time on IRC.
    - jmtame 16y ago
      if acronyms and proper names were capitalized, we'd have everything covered? punctuation already signals the end of a sentence. i could read and comprehend what you said in your example, but it required more mental effort. i don't think reading a blog without caps requires more mental effort, but if it does to most people, then i might have to switch back.
      - pg 16y ago
        Only 1/3 of the periods in e.g. this sentence signal the end of it.
        jmtame 16y ago
        i believe the correct grammatical use of "e.g." uses commas anyway, in which case i would have easily understood the example without caps: only 1/3 of the periods in, e.g., this sentence, signal the end of it.
        pg 16y ago
        No, whether you want commas depends on the sentence. Most good writers wouldn't punctuate that sentence as you did. Too halting for such a short sentence. But this is not the point here, is it? The point is that any abbreviation with periods in it could appear in the middle of a sentence.
        jmtame 16y ago
        i don't think i'd use it that way either. i did a quick google search to check and the first thing that came up was this: http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/abbreviations/f/ievseg.htm http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/abbreviations/f/ievseg.ht... i can only think of three exceptions where you'd need capitalization for additional information: acronyms, proper names, and abbreviations. i've been doing this as a test since may 13, 2009. i've never run into the problem of a misunderstanding before due to lowercase and i usually write this way in all casual written forms of communication (email, sms texting, blogs, comments). i originally picked it up from a designer i admired back in 2008, and the habit kind of stuck after trying it.
        nollidge 16y ago
        But it's not about misunderstanding. We've all been on the Internet long enough to be able to slog through 1337speak and poor spelling and grammar, if we have to, with probably 99% understanding. However, it takes longer. As it is with capitalization--it doesn't prevent overall understanding, but it does slow it down, at least a little. That said, maybe that's acceptable to you. Maybe you're going for a certain aesthetic.
  - dca 16y ago
    I just found it to be an unnecessary distraction. It's not that it bothers me. It just makes it more difficult than necessary for me to read. I make an assumption that by posting something on the internet, the person wants me to read it and wants to share their ideas with me. Why distract readers from one's ideas by not following simple grammatical convention?
  - wwortiz 16y ago
    It bothers me; lack of capitalization makes me think a person didn't care enough to read over what they wrote even if it is just looking at the text as they write it.
- george_morgan 16y ago
  Well, there was a politicised line of thought in 20C modernist typography towards abandoning capitals due to their implied hierarchies. Herbert Bayer’s experimental Architype (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_Architype http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_Architype) would be one example of a specific typeface designed with this in mind, but there were also many other typographic designs of the time which abandoned capitalisation. We’re still seeing the filter down of these experiments now, every few years another company rebrands and drops their capital letters to “humanise” their image or some such reasoning. So… maybe it was a conscious decision by the author along these lines. Or as you say probably just a broken shift key.
- norbu09 16y ago
  my shift key is fine (programming in erlang actually forces me to use it) but growing up in a non english country - and being forced to a lot more capitalization than english has - made me decide to refuse the capitalization thing entirely. it was a mix of movement and point against overly stressing the beginning of sentences and i somehow stuck with it. did not think that is was that much of a problem though :-)
  - dca 16y ago
    It's not a huge problem. I enjoyed your post and can relate. Thanks for sharing it.
param 16y ago
I am making a transition from being a developer to a manager these days. I consider myself a passionate developer, and hence I never thought twice about spending time beyond 9-5 and getting a job done (as it made me happy). Now that I am a manager, I am working with multiple resources, some of which like to work for work's sake, some are good resources that will only work 9-5, and some losers that won't get a good job done at all. Could someone explain how they manage people who won't a)estimate right when given the chance, b) understand the criticality of the deadlines, c) put in a fair 40 hr/week if the deadline is still a month away (i.e. start missing internal milestones from day one), d) not escalate/be concerned unless you probe them etc?
- seiji 16y ago
  > I am working with multiple resources, First step: stop calling people "resources"
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    Second step: stop referring to people as "which". "which" is for things, "who" is for people. Replying to param, but don't want to spam another comment: > "b) understand the criticality of the deadlines," Why is the deadline critical? For whom? What is the programmer's stake in this deadline, and do your people feel like they have been treated fairly? To answer the first part, ask yourself seriously: what happens if we don't hit this deadline? Does it truly impact the company and/or team, or does it impact you? I've seen many a time when deadlines are touted as hyper-critical, but have minimal actual business impact. They were hyper-critical because it was critical for the manager to get it done on-time, otherwise he/she looks bad. This is not something I would normally presume about a manager, but you've already demonstrated some misguided overly corporate buzzword-notions in your post. I personally am much more likely to trust my manager's prioritization of tasks (and thus, deadlines) when I feel that he is looking out for the team (or hell, the company) rather than himself.
    - param 16y ago
      sorry - English is not my first language. (Not fixing the comment to keep yours relevant) I think my question is being taken the wrong way. Let me try asking again: I have work X to get done. I have a team member who I would like to work on this. I ask them to estimate the work, validate the estimates and then track against the same. In the weekly status calls, if they are behind schedule, can not give a justifiable reason for being behind (like personal reasons, unexpected technical complexity, hardware issues); how does the group manage?
Tamerlin 16y ago
Why has it taken so long for developers to figure this out?

30 points by norbu09 16y ago

dca 16y ago

Apparently so do their shift keys.

nollidge 16y ago
And their kerning. EDIT: Yep, http://norbu09.org/css/screen.css http://norbu09.org/css/screen.css: #content p { line-height: 140%; letter-spacing: -0.03em; }
jmtame 16y ago
does it bother you that people don't capitalize properly in their personal blogs? i never understood that. i read through it just fine. i know it's proper, but i guess i'm kind of lazy in that way. in the words of christopher walken: "i never liked capitalization. it felt like more of an imposition."
- pg 16y ago
  th prblm s nt tht ts mprpr, bt tht yr gvng th rdr lss nfrmtn
  - tumult 16y ago
    It looks like no-vowels slows down my reading to about 50% of original speed, whereas no-caps slows me down only to maybe 90%. This might be because I spend so much time on IRC.
  - jmtame 16y ago
    if acronyms and proper names were capitalized, we'd have everything covered? punctuation already signals the end of a sentence. i could read and comprehend what you said in your example, but it required more mental effort. i don't think reading a blog without caps requires more mental effort, but if it does to most people, then i might have to switch back.
    - pg 16y ago
      Only 1/3 of the periods in e.g. this sentence signal the end of it.
      - jmtame 16y ago
        i believe the correct grammatical use of "e.g." uses commas anyway, in which case i would have easily understood the example without caps: only 1/3 of the periods in, e.g., this sentence, signal the end of it.
        pg 16y ago
        No, whether you want commas depends on the sentence. Most good writers wouldn't punctuate that sentence as you did. Too halting for such a short sentence. But this is not the point here, is it? The point is that any abbreviation with periods in it could appear in the middle of a sentence.
        jmtame 16y ago
        i don't think i'd use it that way either. i did a quick google search to check and the first thing that came up was this: http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/abbreviations/f/ievseg.htm http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/abbreviations/f/ievseg.ht... i can only think of three exceptions where you'd need capitalization for additional information: acronyms, proper names, and abbreviations. i've been doing this as a test since may 13, 2009. i've never run into the problem of a misunderstanding before due to lowercase and i usually write this way in all casual written forms of communication (email, sms texting, blogs, comments). i originally picked it up from a designer i admired back in 2008, and the habit kind of stuck after trying it.
        nollidge 16y ago
        But it's not about misunderstanding. We've all been on the Internet long enough to be able to slog through 1337speak and poor spelling and grammar, if we have to, with probably 99% understanding. However, it takes longer. As it is with capitalization--it doesn't prevent overall understanding, but it does slow it down, at least a little. That said, maybe that's acceptable to you. Maybe you're going for a certain aesthetic.
- dca 16y ago
  I just found it to be an unnecessary distraction. It's not that it bothers me. It just makes it more difficult than necessary for me to read. I make an assumption that by posting something on the internet, the person wants me to read it and wants to share their ideas with me. Why distract readers from one's ideas by not following simple grammatical convention?
- wwortiz 16y ago
  It bothers me; lack of capitalization makes me think a person didn't care enough to read over what they wrote even if it is just looking at the text as they write it.
george_morgan 16y ago
Well, there was a politicised line of thought in 20C modernist typography towards abandoning capitals due to their implied hierarchies. Herbert Bayer’s experimental Architype (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_Architype http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_Architype) would be one example of a specific typeface designed with this in mind, but there were also many other typographic designs of the time which abandoned capitalisation. We’re still seeing the filter down of these experiments now, every few years another company rebrands and drops their capital letters to “humanise” their image or some such reasoning. So… maybe it was a conscious decision by the author along these lines. Or as you say probably just a broken shift key.
norbu09 16y ago
my shift key is fine (programming in erlang actually forces me to use it) but growing up in a non english country - and being forced to a lot more capitalization than english has - made me decide to refuse the capitalization thing entirely. it was a mix of movement and point against overly stressing the beginning of sentences and i somehow stuck with it. did not think that is was that much of a problem though :-)
- dca 16y ago
  It's not a huge problem. I enjoyed your post and can relate. Thanks for sharing it.

param 16y ago

I am making a transition from being a developer to a manager these days. I consider myself a passionate developer, and hence I never thought twice about spending time beyond 9-5 and getting a job done (as it made me happy). Now that I am a manager, I am working with multiple resources, some of which like to work for work's sake, some are good resources that will only work 9-5, and some losers that won't get a good job done at all. Could someone explain how they manage people who won't a)estimate right when given the chance, b) understand the criticality of the deadlines, c) put in a fair 40 hr/week if the deadline is still a month away (i.e. start missing internal milestones from day one), d) not escalate/be concerned unless you probe them etc?

seiji 16y ago
> I am working with multiple resources, First step: stop calling people "resources"
- potatolicious 16y ago
  Second step: stop referring to people as "which". "which" is for things, "who" is for people. Replying to param, but don't want to spam another comment: > "b) understand the criticality of the deadlines," Why is the deadline critical? For whom? What is the programmer's stake in this deadline, and do your people feel like they have been treated fairly? To answer the first part, ask yourself seriously: what happens if we don't hit this deadline? Does it truly impact the company and/or team, or does it impact you? I've seen many a time when deadlines are touted as hyper-critical, but have minimal actual business impact. They were hyper-critical because it was critical for the manager to get it done on-time, otherwise he/she looks bad. This is not something I would normally presume about a manager, but you've already demonstrated some misguided overly corporate buzzword-notions in your post. I personally am much more likely to trust my manager's prioritization of tasks (and thus, deadlines) when I feel that he is looking out for the team (or hell, the company) rather than himself.
  - param 16y ago
    sorry - English is not my first language. (Not fixing the comment to keep yours relevant) I think my question is being taken the wrong way. Let me try asking again: I have work X to get done. I have a team member who I would like to work on this. I ask them to estimate the work, validate the estimates and then track against the same. In the weekly status calls, if they are behind schedule, can not give a justifiable reason for being behind (like personal reasons, unexpected technical complexity, hardware issues); how does the group manage?

Tamerlin 16y ago

Why has it taken so long for developers to figure this out?