57 ms·

Just don’t

• gerad 4y ago
  “Just” is a 4 letter word
• h2odragon 4y ago
  > you’re not inside their head and don’t understand what they see and feel. This is also information worth communicating. The newcomer to the project is expected to be ignorant of the problems and the mental set of those addressing them, in any reasonable setting. To confess your own ignorance and declare your readiness to learn in that situation is better, I think, than to pretend knowledge you do not actually posses. "Just do this?" questions are re-phrasable as "Would this work?" questions, if the language environment is prickly.
• sgeisenh 4y ago
  This is great advice. Anecdotally, I've been having pretty bad anxiety this year from work that I feel should be easy but turns out to have many unexpected wrinkles. In retrospect, it seems like there may have been a lot of "justs" when discussing early solutions. I've started to take a step back when approaching problems to better understand potential obstacles, but this was still a pretty big toll on my confidence.
  • t-eckert 4y ago
    I am going through the same thing this year. You're doing the right thing in reevaluating. Have confidence knowing that even if your previous work didn't go how you wanted it to, stopping and taking a look at _how_ you do that work is a sign of progress towards a point where your work meets and exceeds your expectations.
• wodenokoto 4y ago
  I really wish there was a version of "just" and "only", that has the connotation of there is one and only one thing, but not the connotation of that being trivial. Something that expresses "there is 1 thing and that makes it a big deal!"
  • ISL 4y ago
    "Precisely one" may cover many of the relevant situations.
  • XCSme 4y ago
    "Just do the dishes." "It is sufficient to do the dishes." ?
    • XCSme 4y ago
      Or maybe instead of "did you just try clearing the cache?", "would clearing the cache solve it?".
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • jodrellblank 4y ago
    Soleley? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=define%3Asolely&ia=definition https://duckduckgo.com/?q=define%3Asolely&ia=definition PJ Eby used your sentiment in writing about self improvement, where some instruction might say "write a list of three things you are grateful for" and instead what people do is "complain that their life isn't good, wallow in self pity, consider things they want but don't have, write a list of three things they feel obliged to be grateful for but aren't really, roll their eyes at the idea that such a thing could possibly help, etc. etc." and he said "just write a list of three things you are grateful for, and don't drag that other baggage along". See also, telling people to "just get out of bed" in The Article which means "move legs, lift bodyweight" not "find purpose in life and reason to go on living, discover religion, and only then excitedly jump out of bed cured and full of joie de vivre". And not "reject getting up because it won't cure you and you don't want to be cured anyway because life is shitty".
• taeric 4y ago
  Rhetorical tricks to reframe problems are annoying to me. More so when I find myself reflexively doing it. For example, calling something simple. Or referring to a desired feature as "making it easy." I think often you can be specific. Don't push for the team to make a feature easy. Push for the number of steps necessary for something to be reduced. Or to enable undo/redo. I wish I had an easy exit for the "just" advice here. I don't, sadly. Empathy is the best I can come up with.
• pornel 4y ago
  Related: if someone has a chronic condition, don't drop on them unsolicited medical advice, especially things like "have you tried yoga?", "you just need more sunshine", "you must try my cousin's healing tea!". You're not their doctor, and they haven't shared all the medical details with you. Your 3-second diagnosis is almost certainly terrible. They've heard it a dozen times already, and it's difficult and tiring to politely decline well-meaning but frustratingly useless advice.
  • MajimasEyepatch 4y ago
    Or to an overweight person: "you know you'd be a lot healthier if you just lost weight" or "why don't you get a gym membership" or "it's just calories in minus calories out, bro"? Gee, thanks, you're the first person ever to tell me that I should lose weight and it's just a matter of diet and exercise, like every fat person on the planet doesn't already know. It's like saying to a smoker, "You know that's bad for you. You should quit." That sort of comment is almost entirely self-serving.
    • 0xcde4c3db 4y ago
      > "you know you'd be a lot healthier if you just lost weight" Not least because weight loss is unlikely to make someone much healthier unless they have type 2 diabetes, severe hypertension, or are way beyond "overweight". There is a substantial population-level association between obesity and morbidity, but it's heavily influenced by those who are extremely obese (which tends to come with a variety of other issues not immediately relevant to the average fat person).
      • maerF0x0 4y ago
        obviously the actual weight matters, but on average this advice is poor. Across the spectrum of over weight people (from mildly to extremely obese) there are a range of health markers from blood pressure, HDL/LDL/Triglycerides, insulin sensitivity, leptin/ghrelin, sex hormones (and PE/ED), blood sugar, cortisol, inflammation, arterial calcification (on and on the list goes) that are all positively improved by returning to healthy "normal" (not average) weights. Layne Norton's book "Fat Loss forever" and youtube channel are excellent resources to begin understanding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUxVCtScf8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUxVCtScf8U https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43596925-fat-loss-forever https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43596925-fat-loss-for...
• unsupp0rted 4y ago
  I get a lot more mileage out of "have you tried..." than "why don't you just...". As a recent example, I wrote a system that auto-generates PDF packing slips from an order form, to send to a warehouse for picking and packing. Yesterday a client told me to "just make it landscape" while I was explaining why "just making it landscape" won't solve the problem of giving the warehouse whitespace to pencil stuff in, because even though "just making it landscape" solves this same problem in Excel, when the client was sending out Excel files as packing slips... the current system is not Excel". I couldn't find a way to get the client to get from "just make it landscape" to listening to me ask "what is the warehouse actually trying to pencil in?" and "how much space do they need? Are they penciling in notes globally at the top of the document or on a line-item basis next to each SKU?" To the client I was wasting their time because "just make it landscape". Needless to say working with this client is challenging on an interpersonal level. The work itself is fun though, and it's improving my EQ handling a client like this.
  • andsoitis 4y ago
    > "have you tried..." Or: "what have you tried?"
    • Cthulhu_ 4y ago
      Even better, since it's an open question instead of a suggestion; the suggestion itself can already be condescending or insulting someone's intellect. Even though sometimes it IS that simple, see Occam's Razor. But really, "have you tried turning it off and on again", while a funny quote, can be quite condescending as opposed to "What have you tried".
      • andsoitis 4y ago
        Yep, exactly. The only caveat I'd offer is that sometimes this is not a good question to ask ("what have you tried?") because it can be interpreted as "are you doing anything about it?" Edge case, true, but still worth being intentional about.
• sfpotter 4y ago
  I mentor students on research projects. I think it can be fine to use the word “just” in this context exactly to telegraph that I think a particular task should be easy. Student says, “But what about X?” I might say, “Oh, just do Y.” It’s fine if they feel the tension of me knowing how to do something and thinking it’s easy and them not. The key part is providing a supportive environment so that they know they can ask questions. At this point, it’s on them: they can challenge themselves and try to do Y without any help, or they can ask for more guidance. This is what they call a “teachable moment”. Learning how to differentiate between when it’s reasonable to ask for more help and when it’s not is an important skill to pick up since there’s a dividing line for basically all roles you might find yourself in.
  • mastermedo 4y ago
    I’m not sure I agree. I’m a very outgoing extroverted person, and even I feel cut-off when someone points out they think something is super easy, especially when it’s really not easy. Just a few weeks ago at work, one of the TLs told me I should ‘just do X’, and when I pushed back saying it’s going to take a few weeks, he said ‘oh it’s just a couple of lines, I can do it in 10 minutes’. I challenged that. 5 integrations and 2 weeks later we had a first working version, that caused more harm than good in the end because of an assumption that didn’t hold. I think easy things might be easy in theory, but not necessarily in execution. So when a student comes to you, I suspect they have thought about theory, but find the execution hard because of the knowable unknowns they are not aware of and you are. Many times people don’t even propose things that might seem obvious to them out of fear they might say something stupid. Indicating something is easy in a demeaning fashion is bad. Phrasing it differently has a different effect. E.g. Oh, I think that might be solved with X. It should be relatively straightforward. Look at the work I did <here>, it should match your use case.
    • sfpotter 4y ago
      You missed the part of my post where I said that I work hard to create an environment where it’s OK to ask questions. My point is that it’s not just about the language you use. Not saying “just” isn’t a magic bullet. Regardless of the phrasing, there’s a lot more pedagogical work that needs to take place to build a good environment.
• dislikedtom2 4y ago
  Great article. It's like people assume that you are some free rational actor, instead of being totally shaped by your history (specially childhood).
• readthenotes1 4y ago
  We just can't address the instability/fragility of correspondents with one-off word play. Neuroticism, which we all have, is the most important personality/communication style factor and it's the one that the HR approved courses rigorously ignore...
• deleted 4y ago
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• ISL 4y ago
  I like to use the word "just", but find that it frequently makes my writing worse. Furthermore, I find that it is often easy to write a sentence that contains the word in order to get a thought out of my head and then simply remove the word. Just give it a try someday... ;).
  • geerlingguy 4y ago
    Now you can remove the simply too ;)
    • ISL 4y ago
      I thought about it :).
    • mellavora 4y ago
      oh happy day when that word is removed. Pet peeve.
  • krono 4y ago
    This is how I've seen most professional writers work too, except they edit quick in-place copies of previous iterations in case some path doesn't work out. Should sound somewhat familiar to programmers.
  • tenebrisalietum 4y ago
    Adverbs are easily overused.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• gnuvince 4y ago
  A few months ago, I wrote a blog post[1] about the word "just" that echoes the thesis of Tim's article: avoid using the word "just" if you can, it's reductive. [1] https://vfoley.xyz/just/ https://vfoley.xyz/just/
  • themodelplumber 4y ago
    I wrote about the same word a while back too, along the lines of personal development: https://www.friendlyskies.net/maybe/just-is-a-dangerous-word-for-your-personal-development https://www.friendlyskies.net/maybe/just-is-a-dangerous-word... Also related IMO is a general tendency to under-think summarization (related to reduction): https://www.friendlyskies.net/maybe/so-just-to-sum-that-up-summarize-and-understand-summaries-more-effectively https://www.friendlyskies.net/maybe/so-just-to-sum-that-up-s...
• kayodelycaon 4y ago
  The corollary to just is "should". It took me a while to accept some things aren't trivial to change and telling myself things should be a certain way is not helpful. Almost every advice I come across on self-improvement is wrong for me. Very few people have considered my experience and limitations. Most of it is actively harmful to implement. Funnily enough, the project management strategies I use at work are extremely helpful with this. Given a problem (a "should"), we need ask "what needs to change", "what is required to change it", and "what is the priority" (urgency X impact). Then we can decide if this needs to be focused on right now. :)
• newaccount2021 4y ago
• gjvc 4y ago
  Interesting how single words can have such an impact. I find it jarring to hear someone begin a sentence with "So", as if they have given the current topic some thought (when 9 times out of 10 they haven't), or to hear them end a statement with ", no?" where turning a positive assertion into a question sounds somewhat underhand.
  • Dylan16807 4y ago
    Where did you get the idea that "So" implies that? I feel like one of us is significantly wrong here but I don't know if it's you or me. And a sentence with ", no?" is still an assertion that you think it's right.
    • gjvc 4y ago
      neither is "significantly wrong" -- it's just an opinon.
      • Dylan16807 4y ago
        Opinions about the definitions of words can be wrong.
        • gjvc 4y ago
          And a sentence with ", no?" is still an assertion that you think it's right. Not rising to this bait.
          • Dylan16807 4y ago
            I have no idea why you think that's bait. That's the only way I've heard such things used. A claim, but checking that everyone is on the same page. Maybe it's regional?
  • WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
    Many people for whom English is like their third language (coming from Russian or Ukrainian background specifically) tend to abuse “So,” as a sentence opener, like other people may abuse “Well,”. Same thing with “…, no?”. More cultural than linguistic. I’ve also heard it’s a Mexican quirk, too. Still annoys me, but I can see where they’re coming from.
• gavinray 4y ago
  > "They’re not making good progress, and someone’s asked you if you can help. You look at some graphs and error messages. It’s easy (once again, I speak from experience) to say something like “Could you just cache the hot partition keys?” or “So, just scan the logs for the high-latency signals and frequency-sort them.” > This. Will. Not. Help. I wouldn't have thought to do this and would have appreciated this advice. I'm also not an SRE. Fixing issues/helping others isn't about sparing their feelings, it's about effectively solving a problem. Not that you should go out of your way to be hurtful, but any genuinely useful advice/suggestions should be given without regard for emotion. You're at work, not a social club.
  • coldpie 4y ago
    > but any genuinely useful advice/suggestions should be given without regard for emotion. You're at work, not a social club. Aside from just being bad manners, this is a recipe for a hard cap on your career. Work is made up of people, not robots. Being friendly and considerate takes relatively little effort (not none!), and may mean you will be the one who gets the call next time an ex-coworker is looking for an acquaintance to recruit up the ladder at their new workplace.
    • kayodelycaon 4y ago
      > Being friendly and considerate takes relatively little effort You snuck in a just. ;) My brain doesn't have working emotional processing. It took me decades to build up a complex enough logic tree to handle social interaction. As a result, I find being friendly and considerate taxing. At least I enjoy the challenge communicating correctly, otherwise I wouldn't consider it to be worth the effort. (ADHD and short term rewards... ugh)
      • coldpie 4y ago
        > It took me decades to build up a complex enough logic tree to handle social interaction. Yeah I feel pretty much the same way fwiw :) I wasn't saying one needs to be an outgoing social butterfly, just that being "that smart person that no one wants to talk to" is poison for your career, all emotional considerations aside.
• adnmcq999 4y ago
  Slow news day?
• taneq 4y ago
  For bonus points, suggest they “should just quickly” do X. Because if you tell someone that a task is quick, you’re not asking as much from them, right? /s
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  If I had had a nickel for every time someone has said "Can't you just write me a little app?", I'd be obscenely wealthy. One of the downsides of being good at something, is that we make it look easy, so people think it's easy.
• KIFulgore 4y ago
  Funny... my roommates and I used "just" for comedic effect in college. I was stuck writing an algorithm and asked my more-experienced roommate for help. He briefly scanned my code and said, "well, you kind of just... code it." I looked at him quizzically and just blurted, "straight up?" "Yep, just straight up code it." Then we all laughed at the absurdity. He wasn't trying to trivialize the problem, to be clear, but didn't know exactly how to express what he was thinking. But that became our standard answer to any programming challenge. "Just straight up code it."
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • sixhobbits 4y ago
    I remember a meeting at FAANG where there was a bunch of discussion about a difficult problem and then a higher-up manager stopped the conversation to interject with > Guys, we're thinking about this in the wrong way. The solution is to just get the right people together into a room and build the solution. Which was definitely true but also not useful.
  • JackFr 4y ago
    I had an office mate, who after our abusive and demeaning boss would leave our office, would quote Gene Hackman from Superman III: “I ask you to kill Superman, and you're telling me you couldn't even do that one, simple thing.” (Sometimes if she was still in earshot he would say it in Spanish which somehow made it even funnier.)
    • bryceacc 4y ago
      "it's simple, we kill the batman"
  • TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
    As an engineer, I once opined to a fellow engineer, I wonder how Static Guard works? And he said, "You know what causes static electricity?" Naturally, I said yes. He said, "It makes that go away."
• iquerno 4y ago
  the biggest productivity milestone we've ever hit while doing freelance programming work was to just don't. there certainly already is a solutions for what we were trying to solve, because clients come and go, but the problems are generally the same
• spansoa 4y ago
  For those that don't get the subtle reference to Nike's slogan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Do_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Do_It
• sshine 4y ago
  I stopped using the word "just" in the meaning "only" when I took math courses at university. The lecturers were so good to use that term ("trivially", "evidently", etc.) when it was anything but. The smartest students were good to follow up. Everyone else were quiet.
  • BlueTemplar 4y ago
    And yet in the introductory classes teachers heavily insisted that "obvious","evident","trivial" shouldn't be part of your vocabulary (you would lose points) and when using a shortcut you should always reference it... until you got several levels above it (you wouldn't do it for basic arithmetic when doing calculus of course, OTOH in algebra commutativity is not to be assumed...) Of course teachers/researchers didn't always follow these best practices themselves...
  • glitchc 4y ago
    "The proof is left as an exercise for the reader" is often short-hand for "I don't know how to prove it myself and will defer the question to someone with greater expertise."
• havblue 4y ago
  It's definitely true you need to avoid giving unwanted advice to people you care about if you want to stay close to them. On the other hand though, I think the inability to talk openly about problems is why they don't get resolved in the end.
• quelltext 4y ago
  Not saying it's not good to learn about how "just" might be perceived or avoided but I am surprised this article is getting so much support. I feel like in the environment I'm in "just" never implied anything negative (e.g. lack of understanding on the receiver's part, making it seem like they should have considered ... but didn't, etc.), rather: - I don't yet understand why steps x, y, z are necessary. To me it would seem simply/naively doing ... might work but I'm probably missing something. - Would an (objectively) simpler (though possibly not perfect) solution (which I'm just putting on the table here) suffice here? - I think we can do ... here and it'll be fine. Should we / let's see if that works, and revisit ? / . Sure, "just do it" would often be bad, indicating a variety of things like "stop dwelling on this or arguing, do what I say". Or "can you just quickly do this (thing I find trivial but don't understand at all) for me", but in the end it's the context that matters. Like, I can turn this around as well. The word "don't" is negative and should be avoided at all cost. Better: "could we try ... instead of ..." (see submission title). Then conclude "don't worry about it" should not be said. Which to be fair is also true in some contexts but again, context! EDIT: To be clear it is valuable for me to learn that usage of "just" could be problematic. That's important when not knowing the other party but among coworkers I also happen to have more of a relationship with than just one-off comments, these kind of word choices are not what make or break things. Especially in a diverse environment I assume everyone is acting in good faith and I would only let word choices affect me if the sum of my interactions with a coworker has been negative already and I "know" they are trying to incite an argument.
  • robertlagrant 4y ago
    We're in a bit of an era of establishing finer- and finer-grained politeness laws, all of which presuppose that the recipient's perception of a communication is all that matters.
    • area51org 4y ago
      > all of which presuppose that the recipient's perception of a communication is all that matters ... and assuming that the listener is able to parse and then object to phrasing on the fly. Phrasing can matter, but fine-grained hypercriticism is mostly a useless exercise.
• alex_young 4y ago
  This usage of just is fascinating. For instance: Can't we just apply this small change to remediate the larger problem? Why not? Saying such a thing can actually be helpful. Perhaps (and in many cases probably) the other party hasn't considered doing so. However, we're also almost stating that the listener has spent considerable resources coming up with solutions which seem overly complicated to the speaker... "Just" is an almost perfect linguistic trap to set for oneself. It really does seem like the perfect cousin of "I told you so", a turn of phrase which never wears well in any form.
  • nvahalik 4y ago
    I'd say yes. But only in one of a couple of contexts: 1. Its solicited advice. Hey so-and-so, what do you think about X? I've tried X, Y, and Z and they haven't worked. 2. Its part of a brainstorm/solution meeting. All ideas are on the table.
  • quelltext 4y ago
    > However, we're also almost stating that the listener has spent considerable resources coming up with solutions which seem overly complicated to the speaker... To be fair, it also indicates that the listener hasn't done a good enough job at explaining why their solution isn't "just" doing that. It could also indicate that the speaker admits to maybe not getting the problem and "just" can sufficiently signal that the speaker thought the solution was simpler/smaller and needs more details on what's up (why not?). So there it serves as a crutch for the speaker's insecurity. In the end it can be a useful word even if sometimes it isn't. In the end I'd suggest we don't always overanalyze and ask more additional questions, and adapt to each others use of words instead. I have coworkers who a) don't speak English well and b) have a very blunt way to point out things. Might be difficult the first few interactions to gauge their sentiment but I didn't jump to conclusions, and basically after a Zoom call to chat casually it became clear that's just how they communicate. I do suggest to them sometimes that using a different word might make them seem more approachable or nicer but ultimately I know they are nice and who is to say that my assumptions of how people should talk for me tp deem them polite are the right ones.
• simonw 4y ago
  I've been trying to teach myself not to use the word "just" in my documentation. I was inspired by this legendary PR to the Django docs that fixed all kinds of words that "minimize difficulty involved": https://github.com/django/django/pull/11482 https://github.com/django/django/pull/11482
  • justin_oaks 4y ago
    Awesome. It's one of my pet peeves to see "just" or "simply" and similar words in documentation. It makes the documentation clearer and less condescending to remove words that imply a task is easy. Implying a task is easy doesn't help people to perform the task. It's especially frustrating when the documentation is incomplete, as most documentation is. For example, "If you need different behavior, just implement a custom component" ... and the custom component documentation is incomplete or missing. sigh
• notacoward 4y ago
  To re-purpose a popular quote: everything after the "just" is BS. It's not that there are never valid uses, but 99% of uses that I see tend toward careless and condescending. Sometimes they're part of an "adversarial learning" process in which the person making the suggestion knows it's probably wrong but uses it as a way to be educated without having to ask for it. You'll recognize this one because they'll "just" over and over and over. Other times "just" is an expression of the person's own frustration with the constraints of the problem or the pace of progress, which isn't really helpful either. Often, as tbray points out, it's a way to make light of others' struggles. Only rarely is it constructive, most often as a way to snap someone out of "analysis paralysis" or other kinds of mental looping - and even then there are better alternatives. And don't get me started on "should" or we'll be here all day. ;)
• void_msgs 4y ago
  I've been trying to remove the word 'Just' from my vocabulary. As the author states when you use it speaking to someone else, it implies a sense of triviality to the person's problems. When I use it in reference to my self, ie "I was just going to move this over" It implies a sense and feeling of defensiveness. Since realizing these things I find myself more confident when I check my speech and remove just from it.
• jkingsbery 4y ago
  You know what else doesn't help? That obnoxious thing where each word in a sentence gets a period after it. I'm pretty sure that doesn't help either. Just write out sentences with the period at the end so you don't sound condescending.
  • Dylan16807 4y ago
    Sometimes you want to be condescending. Alternatively, sometimes a persuasive piece will use different language than you should ever use to an average coworker.
  • smolder 4y ago
    The period every word thing could. Not. Go. Away. Fast. Enough. I haven't really seen UsInG aLtErNaTiNg CaPs to indicate mockery lately, so maybe there's hope.
• deleted 4y ago
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• wink 4y ago
  I had a coworker who, in planning poker, every time someone said "We just need to..." switch the number he originally picked for the next higher one. Very effective way to get people to actually think about what could go wrong. And no, the people who know 100% what the story was, hardly ever said "We just need to...", even before that.
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  For the case of helping someone with a technical problem, as author notes. words like 'simply', 'merely, 'just' are downplaying the person's efforts and inherently cause unnecessary strife, discouragement, resentment, etc. Sometimes, letting them work through it for a while longer on their own is the better course. In the situation where help is clearly needed, 'let's consider possible solutions' is a better entry point, along with 'let's ensure we don't make it worse' - i.e. take a snapshot of the current situation, store the current working file, etc. Now you've gone into a collaborative situation, and if there's a solution the person will feel like they've been a part of it, not like they're an idiot who should have been able to figure it out on their own. Makes for a much better working environment, better morale, sense of being on the team, etc. For the person on the other end, the person who needs help, this is where keeping a log of your activities (in the lab world, this means a detailed and updated lab notebook, maybe a logging app of some kind for programming), so if someone asks the (sometimes irritating) question of 'what have you tried already' you can just point them to it. For the case of seriously depressed people who can't get out of bed, that's a bit tougher. Cup of psychedelic mushroom tea perhaps, plus someone to hold their hand for a few hours?
  • mindcrime 4y ago
    In the situation where help is clearly needed, 'let's consider possible solutions' is a better entry point, along with 'let's ensure we don't make it worse' - i.e. take a snapshot of the current situation, store the current working file, etc. Meh. Just goes to show how communication is a very subjective and personal thing. To my ears, both of those phrases would sound extremely condescending and patronizing. If I were struggling with a problem and someone approached me and said either of those things, I'd be more inclined to say "go f%#@ yourself" than anything else. shrug
    • dinvlad 4y ago
      This. I’ve done the same mistake with a person who, due to their condition could not possibly _recognize_ there’s a problem. To anyone who doesn’t relate to this - imagine being a perfectly “normal” human being (if there’s even such a thing) and someone walking up to you and saying straight up that you have a problem and need help and here’s the advice etc. The perfectly rational reaction to that would be the opposite of the intention. On top of that, there’s always room for ourselves to be wrong and the person receiving the advice be right in their circumstance, so forcing our opinion on them just shows our own ignorance and inability to consider other points of view.
• Swiffy0 4y ago
  I'll go ahead and say that a sprinkle of humor would help a lot here. If a coworker comes to you with a problem that is trivial to you, it shouldn't be a problem in the first place for you to say "Oh just do X". The problem lies in how the other person takes it and most importantly if the environment allows people to safely "confess" they don't know something, regardless of how trivial it is. If it does, there shouldn't be any problem. The dialogue can continue in multiple positive ways such as "Oh that didn't cross my mind, thanks!", "I don't know how to do X", "Can you show my sorry ass how to do X?", "Just do X huh... How do I do X again?“, "See the problem with X is that I don't know how to do Y / how to apply X in this case" and "Well obviously I should do X! I was just testing you" If it doesn't, the problem is with the environment. When you have a problem with the environment, you shouldn't try to "solve" it by making it impossible for the problematic thing to enter the environment (censoring comes to mind), but instead teach the environment how to deal with the problem when it eventually and inevitably enters it.
• reifyx 4y ago
  "Just" is used in chess commentary frequently and usually a bit too flippantly as the speaker hasn't gone through all the necessary calculations as the players have to. Sam Shankland mentions this. https://youtu.be/GbFgmXqVLl8?t=1069 https://youtu.be/GbFgmXqVLl8?t=1069; https://streamable.com/yuglrw https://streamable.com/yuglrw
• andscoop 4y ago
  I'm torn on this article. To start I think this is good advice, but I'm not sure it is the __best__ advice to help the people it proclaims to help. I'm actually not sure it even targets the right side of the issue. The article is likely good advice for those looking to improve the gentleness of their communication skills, but ultimately this will only be a small portion of the people that care enough to improve their communication skills and put these learnings into practice. This still leaves the majority of ones communication open to the use of this word out of ignorance to the issue. Instead I'd like to encourage those who feel resentment or anger over the use of this word to recognize it for what it more likely is. A mistake on the part of the speaker. An artifact of speech they picked up along the way. Generally just ignorance, nothing personal. I apply this advice myself in many areas of my life. You can't change everyone, but you can change yourself. So make yourself more resilient where you can. I'm not exactly sure why I bothered to type all this up, other than I have a feeling there is another perspective here that will reach more people and help those struggling other than trying to correct the speech of the masses. Of course it's never quite that black and white, it's probably a little bit of both.
• phreack 4y ago
  Another one of these that I hate is "why haven't you done X" or "you know X right" not as a question but as a suggestion. When I didn't know about X, or didn't even realize X was an option (particularly when it's niche knowledge that's not obvious), I get extra ticked off about the assumption. Please share your ideas without being condescending, it's worth it.
• vanviegen 4y ago
  I'm reading the 'just' in (most of) these examples a bit differently: the person making the suggestions is using the word to acknowledge that the suggested approach is probably a lot simpler than what the struggler was considering, but perhaps good enough (to get started). If however it turns out the suggestion is not significantly simpler than what was being considered (perhaps because what's being suggested is not as easy as it appears to the one making the suggestion), I can see how that can come across as condescending.
• billbrown 4y ago
  In my world, "just" is a four-letter word.
• klooney 4y ago
  I love this article, but now I'm worried my "never say just" schtick will seem derivative.
• rufus_foreman 4y ago
  Just draw the rest of the owl.
• diydsp 4y ago
  haha yes. mirrors my frustration from senior EEs telling me: "All you need is a capacitor." or "That's just a diode." or other people saying, "Multiplication without an ALU is easy. It's just shifts and adds."
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• rootusrootus 4y ago
  I routinely remark to both our product folks, and some of our lower level senior leaders that 'just' is one of the most expensive words in the English language, and please avoid using it when you're trying to decide how much effort something will take. They're not intentionally trying to trivialize the effort, but they're causing themselves to misunderstand the effort involved by presuming it to be simple. Just ask the development team for a real estimate.
• justinlloyd 4y ago
  Conversely I have learned to distrust any software developer's opinion on a subject of how easy it is to do something, especially when it comes to replicating the actions by a layperson, when they blurt out "Oh, it's easy, you just..." "Oh, it'll be easy to distribute this update to our customers (who are Doctors), you just have FTP into our server, unzip it, and copy the files into your Program Files directory." "Oh, that's an easy problem to solve, you just have to get the client site to standup a docker container on their infrastructure and..." Just... don't.
• 3pt14159 4y ago
  "Just" is just like the word "k" To some people it's seen negatively, like they should have thought of something or other, to others it's a stand-in for "merely" or "simply" but I find "simply" much more condescending. Speaking generally, I heard the word "just" mostly when working on motorcycles or other hands on things like laying down floor boards or finishing concrete. There's a shared respect for the workers in those environments that ascents to a quick course correction by someone that has a better idea. If I heard someone on a construction site say "simply hammer in the cross beam from the ladder." I'd probably throw the level at them. I don't want politician speak at a job site. But then I found out about how some people in tech hear the word "just" as a signifier of thinking the person is stupid. So I've toned it down. But sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes, really, just put in a caching layer for your webserver or tell me why I'm wrong.
• vsareto 4y ago
  I'm all for cutting this out with medical advice and such (unsolicited advice, and importantly wrong advice), but this example annoys me: >You look at some graphs and error messages. It’s easy (once again, I speak from experience) to say something like “Could you just cache the hot partition keys?” or “So, just scan the logs for the high-latency signals and frequency-sort them.” >This. Will. Not. Help. It's not fair to ask people for help and then complain about their word usage when trying to help. This is a situation where solicited advice was asked for. Some people diagnose and troubleshoot by starting simple -- this is especially true if they've been roped into an incident in progress and no one has caught them up. Is it plugged in? Is it turned on? Have you power cycled it? Have you done other simple things that humans tend to forget when dealing with a crisis because we aren't perfect? >Do not, to quote the OED, “represent as a small thing” the difficulty of something you’re asking someone else to do, when you’re not inside their head and don’t understand what they see and feel. Why don't you turn this around and consider that there may not be any bad intentions from someone when you hear the word 'just'. It's possible it's just a habit of speaking they've developed. You are not in their heads just like they are not in yours. If you want to work it out like adults, then talk about the phrasing and see if you can come to an agreement. That will help you see if they are being condescending rather than reacting to hearing the word 'just' used.
  • dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
    > It's not fair to ask people for help and then complain about their word usage when trying to help. This is a situation where solicited advice was asked for. This is not wrong but it's not always useful. Being more kind in your language when giving help will carry your point across more clearly. Consider a junior engineer stressed out by deadlines -- sure, they should listen to you calmly and fix the problem, but it can be hard when you're not used to the right mindstate. A bit of finesse when choosing your words will go a long way. This goes the other way too -- ignoring when people use unnecessary language when giving help is for the best, even though in a perfect world they wouldn't. Communication is about being understood, not being fair. Giving a bit from your side to speak on terms the other side is more comfortable on is a great skill to have.
    • 4y ago
• KaiserPro 4y ago
  Active listening is a learnable and useful skill. Most of the time we are predicting what people will say, and using the spare time to work out what we are going to say in return. This means that we often miss nuance or vital details. This means that we can squander time or emotional capital by projecting our mental model of the person onto them. (this is a long winded way to say biases, but that triggers people, so I tend to avoid using that.) So how do you active listen? number 1) Slow everything down. You do not need to reply instantly. Use non verbal queues to indicate that you are thinking and paying attention (nodding, saying hmm, etc, etc) number 2) pay attention to non verbal cues. Are they getting more fidgety? are they relaxed? are they looking more sad, can they keep eye contact? All of these cues give insight to the person's feelings. You should be able to spot if you are making sense, as they will change their pose/behaviour. number 3) repeat what you think they are saying back to them to get agreement "If I understand correctly you feel that [..] is that correct?" You will need to pay attention to your body language and tone. Are you butting in? are you feeling angry? pity? annoyance? why are you feeling those emotions? is it better to come back later? There are many more parts to active listening, but most of it can be learnt. Basically its practical empathy (as in understanding what people think, and why they might think that, rather than aiming to feel the same emotion as someone else.)
• BurningFrog 4y ago
  "This one trick will make you a great communicator"
• londons_explore 4y ago
  If anyone is trying to help me or tell me something, please ignore all this advice. If you think something is simple, just tell me how you find it simple and show/tell me how you'd do it. I'm pretty sure I'll catch on, and before long I'll think it's simple too. If everyone interacting with me has to tiptoe round every mental health issue I may or may not have, then I'll learn slower and together we'll get less done. Lose lose.
  • nnm 4y ago
    Same here. "just do X" is more informative that "do X" as it infers that "do X" is a simple thing. I would like to know that. Also "just do X" infers that the person is very confident that "do X" will solve the issue. I like to get confident advice.
• ipiz0618 4y ago
  Reminds me of a colleague who, upon seeing every little issue of a massive program, complains the whole thing is "completely broken". And when people try to explain why the issue happens, he would interrupt and say "I don't care, just fix it right now". The intention is obvious - to show authority and frame everything as urgent.
• RobinL 4y ago
  As soon as you recognise the word 'just' is problematic it can be very useful. As in, 'why don't you just'. If you find yourself about to say 'just', it's a great time to pause and think about why the person hasn't 'just' done what you're about to suggest. It usually gives a deeper insight into the problem - usually (but not always) it's a harder problem than it initially looks. And even if the solution really is obvious, it's often useful to think about why it wasn't obvious to the other person.
  • avg_dev 4y ago
    this is an interesting technique. it sounds a bit difficult, but i will give it a try.
• 1shooner 4y ago
  If the recipient of "just" thinks the speaker is so dismissive that they can't pursue clarification, the two probably have bigger communication problems than a single word choice.
• Aeolun 4y ago
  I feel like this is more or less the same thing as everything before the word ‘but’ often being invalidated by the use of that word.
• Hermitude 4y ago
  While it’s all great advice, it doesn’t need to clutter a space dedicated to upstart tech ventures.
• thethetermin 4y ago
  Wow. Didn't expect to see this banalities supported here on HN. If we believe something is simple, "Just" or "Simply" is fine. It's about the tone and what the person speaking really mean. If the sentence is told in a way that implies that the problem is trivial, and yet the other person is no capable of anything, then it's going to be offensive anyway, regardless of the wording. Leave this stuff to social justice warriors and JUST try to be nice with others.
• Lornedon 4y ago
  To me, things like this often feel inherently patronizing. In many situations, I feel that "Why don't we just" is the natural choice of words. So if you don't say that, I assume that you are making a conscious effort do say something that isn't what you actually want to express. It feels like you are tiptoing around me because you thought I couldn't handle how normal people talk. That reminds me of saying things like "It's not you, it's me" in a breakup. We all know it's bullshit. Stop trying to protect my feelings and tell me what you actually want to say! All of that is subjective of course.
• devchix 4y ago
  And if you're a woman, cut the word "just" from your vocabulary, especially in professional communication. It diminishes your voice. "I just want to make sure ..." vs "I want to make sure ..." "Just letting you know ..." vs "I want to let you know ...", "I want you to know ..." "This is just one example ..." vs "This is one example ..." "I'm just going to unblock ..." vs "I'm unblocking ..." I struggle with this myself, it's a self-effacing learned behavior.
  • kapp_in_life 4y ago
    Feels odd to gender this suggestion. I find myself doing this as well.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • scelerat 4y ago
    Good advice for stronger written and spoken language, regardless of gender.
    • devchix 4y ago
      Agree, although I think more women fall into this habit of speech, due to societal conditioning to appear non-confrontational and direct. It also seems to reflect more negatively on women as a diffident signal. Thus, while it's generally good advice for everyone, it's more important that women pay attention to their use of the word "just".
• draw_down 4y ago
• lyptt 4y ago
  I've noticed it puts people on the defensive when I put 'just' in a sentence, even though I have no intent to disparage others with my words, so I make an effort to avoid using that word at all in any business setting. I've found it goes over much better when framing suggestions as 'Maybe you could try..." than 'Just do...'.
• _pastel 4y ago
  I see this when giving and receiving form advice in a few physical disciplines. "Just relax your shoulders here and move naturally." Physical mastery often looks relaxed, natural, and simple, because all extraneous effort has been removed. When you're training hard to reach that state, the "just" can really sting. It feels like: "not only are you bad at this, but it's simple to not be bad at this".
• jodrellblank 4y ago
  https://wiki.c2.com/?JustIsaDangerousWord https://wiki.c2.com/?JustIsaDangerousWord https://www.excitant.co.uk/just-is-a-dangerous-word/ https://www.excitant.co.uk/just-is-a-dangerous-word/
• macinjosh 4y ago
  A better way to live your life than allowing yourself to get worked up over simple and slight turns of phrase others use or worrying constantly if your phrasing might trigger someone would be to assume the robustness principle and simply live as if everyone is doing the same. "Be conservative in what you do/say, be liberal in what you accept from others". Don't take other's words so seriously and cynically and always assume they have the best intentions.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• sagaro 4y ago
  Seems like a recipe for creating snowflakes. People should just grow a thicker skin and move on with their lives instead of taking offense and getting depressed that someone told them "just"
  • j6zauas4gz 4y ago
    I dont think you are right about that, but for the sake of this comment lets assume that you are right and that this will create snowflakes. Even if that's true on the macro scale its still incredibly useful to keep in mind the impact your language has on the mind of the person you are communicating with. If my goal is to get the person I am communicating with to do a thing, most of the time idgaf about whether or not I contributing to them becoming a snowflake. It does not matter why the persona you are talking to is getting offended. Offending people is counter-productive, so it should be avoided if you can avoid it.
    • quesera 4y ago
      I agree with you, because in the real world I do need to talk to people -- and people come in all psychological shapes and sizes! But on the flip side, there are few things I personally dislike more than being spoken to by someone who is being cautious of my feelings. It's slow. It's tedious. Most of them are bad at it. And honestly it's more disrespectful to imagine that you are going to upset me, than to just bravely take that risk. I concede that I'm the weird one. But we do exist.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • sagaro 4y ago
      The issue with that line of thought, where people are justified to take offense to anything and then you ought to watch your language to not offend them to make things productive, is there is no limit to what people can take offense to. A few days back I saw how using the thumbs up emoji offends people. Eventually, we will all be discussing at the least common denominator, the lowest quality of talk, because everything will offend everyone. Point is to educate people that it is stupid to take offense to such things, because there are better things to do in life than be offended because someone said some word.
• gooseyman 4y ago
  I thought this aversion was just my own insecurities. I once had a manager that used to start every ask with this. I finally shared with him that every time he throws the word "just" into an ask, it seems to minimize the actual work required to get X done. He acknowledged that he understood that things don't JUST happen, and to his credit, I want to say he stopped using can we just as his lead in. It be became. Can "we" We.
  • avg_dev 4y ago
    i used my imagination and took that to be a very good outcome. can you confirm this is the case?
    • gooseyman 4y ago
      Confirmed!
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• tdiff 4y ago
  I think that just too much attention is being paid to somebodys feelings nowadays
• dshpala 4y ago
  I don't mind receiving "just", in my view "what do you think" is far worse. You can just brush "just" away (which is kind of expected), but "what do you think" implies some kind of reasoned answer. Which then can be debated, even if the original idea was bogus from the start.
• dang 4y ago
  Jerry Weinberg used to say that when you hear "just" you should substitute "have trouble", and when you hear "should" you should substitute "isn't". So, "just cache the keys" -> "we'll have trouble caching the keys"; "should be easy" -> "isn't easy". Maybe we could call that Weinberg Substitution or something. Sort of like Russell Conjugation. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=weinberg%20word%20just%20trouble&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
  • cwkoss 4y ago
    Is this something quippy, or do people actually believe this?
    • dang 4y ago
      He was talking specifically about software projects—I forgot to mention that. He was pointing out how phrases like "that should take less than a week" or "let's just fix it this way" tend to mask problems and often indicate wishful thinking. Of course there's a quippy element, but if you pay attention to such language you'll find that these heuristics work a surprising amount of the time.
      • cwkoss 4y ago
        Interesting, yeah makes more sense when confined to software domain.
• LeonB 4y ago
  There’s a saying “Beware of giving advice before you’re asked, or after.”
• arkh 4y ago
  When estimating tasks difficulty, every time we hear the word "just" it gets bumped one more level. Experience tells that this small word always hide a world of hurt and not thought out edge cases or legacy code.
• daenney 4y ago
  My favourite one is “surely it’s as simple as…” or other equivalent things of “I have no clue how to do your job but will tell you anyway”.
• Nakisha 4y ago
• usefulcat 4y ago
  This is a great example of the value of avoiding extraneous adverbs. In the given examples, ‘just’ is never necessary, and avoiding its use avoids condescension.
• adenozine 4y ago
  Alternatively, if you’re not fit for work, then don’t be at work? I mean, at what point is it over the line to be useless at a job you’ve agreed to do, and that you demonstrated competence for and interviewed for? Many times I’ve said things like “just restart the cronjob for this” or “just tag this issue to so-and-so if you can’t get it, they wrote the original” etc. I’m all for taking care of yourself, but if you can’t handle the literal word “just” then maybe there’s bigger issues riding on your shoulders than my vocabulary. These types of article are alienating to me, a bit. I’ve lead teams in government sector contracts, private mil, *-int, and many different analytical capacities and I’ve never heard someone criticize me for saying “just restart rstudio” or “just put a cache in and tag the issue to me for later”. Truly bizarre. I don’t think the youth are this soft. The young folks I work with, granted are graduate age and older for the most part, are often very cordial and respectful and slick. Occasionally I see some hangovers, some sick calls, some romance drama, the usual bullshit, but never anything as microscopic as this.
  • redhale 4y ago
    Just don't feel alienated by articles like these.
    • eyelidlessness 4y ago
      I tried to provide a more productive response, but I’m noting for posterity that you got my upvote for succinctly demonstrating the point.
    • mrzool 4y ago
      The perfect response. Thanks for your comment :)
    • haberman 4y ago
      Your comment is being intentionally dismissive of the grandparent's post. The false inference is that everyone who uses the word "just" is intending to be dismissive. That's what I don't like about articles like this. It tries to establish some kind of universal rule that questions like "Could you just cache the hot partition keys?" are automatically rude, without considering any context. Context matters. A person could ask that question in a well-meaning way, and it could even end up being a helpful suggestion! A person could also ask that question in a dismissive and arrogant way. It depends on the person and the relationship between the speaker and the listener. Intent matters.
• aj7 4y ago
  Good post.
• dockd 4y ago
  My daughter would hear this when she worked in a cafeteria. It typically came with an extravagant request: "Can I just have a non-fat sugar-free vanilla latte with one pump of hazelnut? Not too hot."
• aaron695 4y ago
• jaza 4y ago
  A former boss of mine, who was an extremely hands-off manager, and who was cynical and black-humoured about everything, said (only half tongue-in-cheek) that he didn't do Agile, he preferred the JFDI (Just F*** Do It) methodology. So I just f*** did it.
  • swyx 4y ago
    in the final analysis, was he a good boss?
    • jaza 4y ago
      Yes! And we're still friends.
• AYBABTME 4y ago
  This banning of the "just" word is one of those "people are fragile" derived behavioral fashions. It's rather annoying to get stuck in the carpet's flowers in this manner. Interlocutors can meet half-way, and always putting the burden on the speaker to not utter anything that might be construed as unpleasant is quite detrimental to efficient communication. But it seems some people find enjoyment and social prestige in spending a lot of time finding things to be offended about. Infantilizing your listener by continually attempting to neutralize your speech of any unpleasantness seems like a race to the bottom. In the end, we're all so fragile that nothing can be said rapidly, in jest, without having to first pass your speech through an internal thought police filter?
• im3w1l 4y ago
  More and more over the years I have come to distrust rules like this. I see it as a bandaid solution. Communicating what is easy and what is difficult is valuable, and not saying just is throwing in the towel. "I can't communicate at well so I'll just be silent". The harder but better strategy is to strive to improve your knowledge. There is also another thing to take away, a sort of principle of caution. When you don't know how hard something is for someone, because it's the first few times you can a certain skill of theirs in action, you should be cautious about assumptions. For instance don't make something out to be easy, and give them a little extra margin. But as you know them better you will have a good estimate of their skill and this will no longer be needed. Another thing with not saying just, is that it's a strategy for avoiding conflict. Avoiding conflict is a good default, but adopting what amounts to a never engaging in conflict is detrimental. Sometimes conflict is needed. Sometimes you need to subtly or not so subtly tell someone they suck. Sometimes being polite is the kinder move, and sometimes brutal honesty is the kinder move. If someone doesn't know there is a problem then how can you expect them to fix it? If a task should be easy but isn't that's a signal that you have to skill up.
• cat_plus_plus 4y ago
  A good system is solving easy problems quickly so that time can be freed up for rare tricky ones. 9 out of 10 people should just use Glide to manage images in an Android app. The remaining one has a good reason to do something else and has the best chance to be helped by an expert who is not being bugged by 9 others. Heuristics is not bad, it's just not 100%.
• eloeffler 4y ago
  In German, "Just do XYZ" would be "Mach doch einfach XYZ" where einfach is the translation of just (and doch is emphasis). Einfach can also be translated to easy, so the assumption that saying something like this means not taking the other person's problem seriously rings even more true here.
• scotty79 4y ago
  I think it's not about 'just'. It's more about how unsolicited is the advice. How strongly the person in trouble is looking for a solution. I had a few times the experience that when I had a programming problem it was immensely helpful to tell about it other person, even non-programmer, because it forced me to state what the problem is so clearly that in theory this person should be able to understand. This made me notice some things about the problem I didn't notice before which sometimes enabled me to either find a solution or slightly, acceptably alter the problem so its solution is way easier. And even if after explaining my problem I'm still stuck, then the advice the person who listened to it gives me, while not being the solution, will activate my mind even further, because trying to explain why this solution won't work can point me out in the direction of how this solution or the problem itself could be developed or adjusted so that it could possibly work. This thinking might reveal to me completely different solution. So by all means, please say to me "why don't you just ..." when I'm asking. I probably won't do what you say, but it might lead me somewhere and I really do appreciate listening to me and your input as it might be the key factor that will enable me to find solution.
• grappler 4y ago
  This brings to mind a coworker a decade and a half ago. A web designer who decorated his door with drawings and quotes. My favorite among the things on his door, and the one I can still recount now, read as follows: “Can you just…” no.
• Communitivity 4y ago
  I'll go one further. 'Just' is never appropriate (except in irony, such as Mr. Bray's article), in my opinion. It signifies some combination of frustration, an opinion of the speaker's mental superiority, and an opinion of the listener's mental inferiority. For these reasons it also often causes listeners to focus on the speaker's opinion or the listener's underlying emotional response, rather than the solution or message you are trying to convey.
• chousuke 4y ago
  I've learned that sometimes, there's literally nothing you can do to directly solve a problem; you might not even know what the problem is, so how could you come up with solutions to it. In those cases it helps me to then think that maybe there's something in my circumstances that is creating my problem, rather than it being a problem with me directly. For example, if your problem is that it's difficult to get out of the house for a daily walk, a solution to "just do it" will not accomplish anything. It's extremely difficult to just start wanting something out of thin air. However, if instead of focusing on "how do I go for a walk" you think about "what am I doing when I go for a walk", you immediately open up questions that are very easy to act on: Are you dressed comfortably? Is the path you take for your walk enjoyable, or do you have options? Is there too much noise? Maybe headphones would help. These are things that are easy to try and change, and free you from having to blame yourself for lacking some ill-defined quality of "having willpower" that no-one can even measure. If there's something you can easily change, but don't want to, then you know it's a problem with you, and you need to deal with it accordingly. But many things are not a problem with you. I use the walking example because I literally solved my own "I don't want to go for walks" problem by realizing that I was habitually walking along a noisy road and I hated that and not the walking itself; once I found a more pleasant path, the "chore" became something that I could enjoy instead. My problem wasn't "I'm lazy and I hate walking", it was "cars are noisy and the environment is too grey"
• caseysoftware 4y ago
  I start really simply: "What have you tried so far?" And at least half the time, someone just going through their list out loud makes them think of something viable or that they missed. The other half of the time, I can often throw out an additional idea or two and we talk about how to (in)validate solutions. I once got a rep for "debugging .Net code" despite writing 0 lines of it in the decade before. It's all about asking good questions.
  • mgkimsal 4y ago
    Good simple ideas. I too have been able to help debug rails code, despite not having touched rails in years. "Debugging .net code" is often just like "debugging python code" or "debugging java code"... it's generally the thought process vs any specific syntax. :)
• martopix 4y ago
  If you wanna see this applied in a didactic and CS context, we teach this as part of the Software Carpentry instructor training: https://carpentries.github.io/instructor-training/04-expertise/ https://carpentries.github.io/instructor-training/04-experti... (see "Dismissive language")