4 ms·

We should have a gentleman's agreement to stop saying "blazing" + "fast".

lucisferre 7y ago
Can we agree to stop using the phrase "gentleman's agreement" while we're at it? It's unnecessarily exclusive and plays up the relatively true stereotypes about the members of HN.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  I don't know if you're familiar with the expression, but you don't have to be a man to enter a "gentlemen's agreement". You don't even have to be a gentleman for that matter. Of course, "gentlemen's agreement" is actually what it's called in French as well, and we don't go around thinking it's exclusive to French people because it uses English words (not that we don't do that with other terms…). It's just what it's called, and been called for hundreds of years. ---- Edit: OK this is way off-topic but I can't help but snicker a bit when I see these kinds of comments. The idea that we even genderize words is very arbitrary in the first place, and very inconsistent between languages. French for example has the word "écrivain" (author) which is very masculine-sounding and as such sounds weird when used for women; but the feminine "écrivaine" sounds atrocious to French speakers. Our canadian friends exported the word "auteure" (feminine of auteur; phonetically identical). It's a whole thing. Apparently we used to use "autrice" which actually rings pretty nice (similar to acteur / actrice == actor / actress). You'd be hard pressed to see the debate in English around Author / Authoress. These are potentially legitimately exclusionary though, because it's not completely absurd to think that grammatical rules can influence how friendly we perceive a profession to be to that sex; eg. "fireman" vs. "firefighter", or in french "Femme de ménage" [cleaning lady] vs. "aide ménagere" [cleaning helper]. Point is, there's no reason why most of these words can't be made gender-neutral in the first place. English speakers are lucky to have a mostly gender-neutral language at all. Did you know that in french, Banks, postboxes, cars and churches are feminine, whereas computers, telephones, ovens and monasteries are masculine?
  - Fr33maan 7y ago
    I don't get why it's a good argument to say that something exists for hundreds of years. Thinking about flat earth was also thought for hundreds of years.
    - aarpmcgee 7y ago
      I agree with you. It is not a convincing argument for me either.
    - scrollaway 7y ago
      > Thinking about flat earth was also thought for hundreds of years And round even longer :) I didn't say it's a good argument to keep things that way, I meant to say that the naming itself doesn't mean women are excluded. A gentlemen's agreement is a well-understood term, and if you start saying something gender-neutral such as "gentleperson's agreement", you may sound more inclusive, but you're also less likely to be understood, especially by non-native-speakers.
      - supportlocal4h 7y ago
        What about..."agreement"? Or just "agree"? "Can we have a gentleman's agreement to" -> "Can we agree to" Fewer words. Well understood. Any inclusivity issues? Ah, the life of an editor.
        scrollaway 7y ago
        Yes, OP could have just said "can we agree to", and in their case that would have worked fine. But I hope you're not proposing to hard-swap "gentlemen's agreement" for "agreement", because those are two very different things.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        toastal 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  The moral panic around gender in tech is even more stereotypical of HN / social media to me. And how about all the women who don't want to be infantilized to the point where you presume they cannot handle a phrase like "gentleman's agreement"?
- root_axis 7y ago
  Is any mention of gender "exclusive"? Are you suggesting we should never use gendered words?
  - alangpierce 7y ago
    Mentioning gender isn't inherently exclusive, like using "gentleman" to refer to a specific man. The term "gentlemen's agreement" is exclusive because it's a relic from a time when men were the only people who would conceivably enter into such an agreement. Even if it's "just an expression", it has a lot of assumptions tied up in it, and there are many, many alternate ways to say the same thing these days without those connotations. If you take it literally (not "just an expression"), then it's an agreement where only men are allowed to participate, and hopefully it's obvious that that's exclusive. Good terminology should ideally be understandable to someone who hasn't seen the term before, so by that metric, "gentlemen's agreement" is just not a good term and doesn't seem worth keeping in the language.
    - CharlesW 7y ago
      Thank you for posting what I found to be an unbiased and helpful response, alangpierce. I know it's easy for equality to feel like oppression to people who've never known life without whatever priviledges they may enjoy (race, gender, looks, height, etc.). To combat that, I flip it and see if I feel the same way. In this case, if "gentlewoman's agreement" were the dominant idiom, I'd probably feel excluded no matter how many women assured me that the phrase wasn't biased.
ksec 7y ago
I think Webpack 5 is around the corner, which was suppose to speedup Webpack to blazing fast ( With Caching and Hashing if I remember correctly ) . Not sure if it is up to the speed of Parcel though.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
e12e 7y ago
Doesn't that just mean how quiqly it can burn down your CI pipeline due to a bug introduced deep in the dependcy graph?
mrspeaker 7y ago
Agreed. Either we ditch the term, or reach a scientific agreement on how many "blazing fasts" there are to a "regular fast".

Can we agree to stop using the phrase "gentleman's agreement" while we're at it? It's unnecessarily exclusive and plays up the relatively true stereotypes about the members of HN.

scrollaway 7y ago
I don't know if you're familiar with the expression, but you don't have to be a man to enter a "gentlemen's agreement". You don't even have to be a gentleman for that matter. Of course, "gentlemen's agreement" is actually what it's called in French as well, and we don't go around thinking it's exclusive to French people because it uses English words (not that we don't do that with other terms…). It's just what it's called, and been called for hundreds of years. ---- Edit: OK this is way off-topic but I can't help but snicker a bit when I see these kinds of comments. The idea that we even genderize words is very arbitrary in the first place, and very inconsistent between languages. French for example has the word "écrivain" (author) which is very masculine-sounding and as such sounds weird when used for women; but the feminine "écrivaine" sounds atrocious to French speakers. Our canadian friends exported the word "auteure" (feminine of auteur; phonetically identical). It's a whole thing. Apparently we used to use "autrice" which actually rings pretty nice (similar to acteur / actrice == actor / actress). You'd be hard pressed to see the debate in English around Author / Authoress. These are potentially legitimately exclusionary though, because it's not completely absurd to think that grammatical rules can influence how friendly we perceive a profession to be to that sex; eg. "fireman" vs. "firefighter", or in french "Femme de ménage" [cleaning lady] vs. "aide ménagere" [cleaning helper]. Point is, there's no reason why most of these words can't be made gender-neutral in the first place. English speakers are lucky to have a mostly gender-neutral language at all. Did you know that in french, Banks, postboxes, cars and churches are feminine, whereas computers, telephones, ovens and monasteries are masculine?
- Fr33maan 7y ago
  I don't get why it's a good argument to say that something exists for hundreds of years. Thinking about flat earth was also thought for hundreds of years.
  - aarpmcgee 7y ago
    I agree with you. It is not a convincing argument for me either.
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    > Thinking about flat earth was also thought for hundreds of years And round even longer :) I didn't say it's a good argument to keep things that way, I meant to say that the naming itself doesn't mean women are excluded. A gentlemen's agreement is a well-understood term, and if you start saying something gender-neutral such as "gentleperson's agreement", you may sound more inclusive, but you're also less likely to be understood, especially by non-native-speakers.
    - supportlocal4h 7y ago
      What about..."agreement"? Or just "agree"? "Can we have a gentleman's agreement to" -> "Can we agree to" Fewer words. Well understood. Any inclusivity issues? Ah, the life of an editor.
      - scrollaway 7y ago
        Yes, OP could have just said "can we agree to", and in their case that would have worked fine. But I hope you're not proposing to hard-swap "gentlemen's agreement" for "agreement", because those are two very different things.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - toastal 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hombre_fatal 7y ago
The moral panic around gender in tech is even more stereotypical of HN / social media to me. And how about all the women who don't want to be infantilized to the point where you presume they cannot handle a phrase like "gentleman's agreement"?
root_axis 7y ago
Is any mention of gender "exclusive"? Are you suggesting we should never use gendered words?
- alangpierce 7y ago
  Mentioning gender isn't inherently exclusive, like using "gentleman" to refer to a specific man. The term "gentlemen's agreement" is exclusive because it's a relic from a time when men were the only people who would conceivably enter into such an agreement. Even if it's "just an expression", it has a lot of assumptions tied up in it, and there are many, many alternate ways to say the same thing these days without those connotations. If you take it literally (not "just an expression"), then it's an agreement where only men are allowed to participate, and hopefully it's obvious that that's exclusive. Good terminology should ideally be understandable to someone who hasn't seen the term before, so by that metric, "gentlemen's agreement" is just not a good term and doesn't seem worth keeping in the language.
  - CharlesW 7y ago
    Thank you for posting what I found to be an unbiased and helpful response, alangpierce. I know it's easy for equality to feel like oppression to people who've never known life without whatever priviledges they may enjoy (race, gender, looks, height, etc.). To combat that, I flip it and see if I feel the same way. In this case, if "gentlewoman's agreement" were the dominant idiom, I'd probably feel excluded no matter how many women assured me that the phrase wasn't biased.

ksec 7y ago

I think Webpack 5 is around the corner, which was suppose to speedup Webpack to blazing fast ( With Caching and Hashing if I remember correctly ) . Not sure if it is up to the speed of Parcel though.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

e12e 7y ago

Doesn't that just mean how quiqly it can burn down your CI pipeline due to a bug introduced deep in the dependcy graph?

mrspeaker 7y ago

Agreed. Either we ditch the term, or reach a scientific agreement on how many "blazing fasts" there are to a "regular fast".