4 ms·
This was the good 'ol days, back when you could put stuff in comments like that and not worry about legal
by freedomben 3y ago
This was the good 'ol days, back when you could put stuff in comments like that and not worry about legal
- elwell 3y agoNow you can't even say "sanity check", much less mention brain damage.
- steelbrain 3y agoWait, I missed the bus on this one. What's wrong with "sanity check"?
- rnd0 3y agoThese days it would be considered a problematic allusion to people with cognitive or emotional issues.
- Stratoscope 3y agoAs someone who recently asked our QA team to change the name of one of our test suites from "sanity test" to "quick test", maybe I can provide some perspective. Many software developers like me have faced challenges to our mental health. Indeed, there has been a time or two when I questioned my own sanity. And perhaps the sanity of some of my colleagues! It's not so much that there is something inherently wrong with the term "sanity check". We all know what it means. It's just that there are more descriptive and neutral terms available to us, so why not use them?
- WalterBright 3y ago> It's just that there are more descriptive and neutral terms available to us, so why not use them? Because it's boring.
- Stratoscope 3y agoWalter, you and I have known each other for a long time. Not in person; we've never met. But through our interactions here on HN. I have a lot of respect for you and for everything you have accomplished. So I have to ask you directly: Is being "boring" or not the way we should decide how to express ourselves? Regarding a "quick test" vs. a "sanity test". Instead of judging this on what is "boring", why can't we make a choice on which is more respectful to our peers and colleagues?
- at_a_remove 3y agoWe should make choices based on communication, first and foremost. Words that do not communicate are not useful. A "quick test" implies almost nothing, other than it is faster than some other, unnamed test out there. Is a quick test good or is it bad? No way to tell. This term, quick test, it does not inform. On the other hand, a sanity test, well, it is more evocative. You definitely want to pass a sanity test. If you reach back to your psychology classes, they talked about a four-part test that is useful for determine if a behavior is sane or not. 1) Is it abnormal? Unusual? Out of the ordinary? for the situation. 2) Is it unjustifiable, unreasonable given the circumstances? 3) Is it counter-productive? Which is to say, does the behavior serve the individual, or does it in fact make things worse? Or simply do nothing? 4) (and this is where my memory is fuzzy) I think it involves personal distress. For the life of me I can't find it via Google and it annoys me. Now, interestingly, a sanity test matches the first three! (The fourth, well, there is no "I" in the program to be distressed) In programming, a sanity test looks for something abnormal, not reasonable for the program, and represents a state that won't get us the desired output. In short, it's highly congruent to the other context for sanity. This term, it communicates, and in a way "quick test" does not. In general, one of the main critiques of political correctness which few really notice is that the new term is less specific and less useful, that it fails at communicating. Consider when "Oriental" fell off of the euphemism treadmill for "Asian." We all knew that the first term referred to a particular part of the world, from the Latin for "east." (Ex lux orient and so on) "Asian," however, could refer to people in Russia or people in India, but nobody in the US does (I note in the UK India does get the "Asian" pass). So here the new term is less specific and less useful, and is confusing to boot because we deliberately ignore parts of Asia when using the term "Asian." If you want something to supplant "sanity test," you gotta work harder for it than "quick test."
- bigstrat2003 3y ago1. Other terms are neither more descriptive nor more neutral. 2. If someone has a problem with the term "sanity check", they are overly sensitive and they need to adjust to the realities of life. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to coddle them.
- elwell 3y agoCan we please change PHP's die() function to unalive()?
- kyleee 3y agounalive() offends me, let’s do sunset() instead
- latentsea 3y agosunset() triggers me due to all the times I've seen companies "sunset" APIs only to still have them in production 5 years later. Let's change it to cancelled()
- randomdata 3y agocancelled() makes it seem as if PHP is a sexual predator – which may be the case, but as a matter of course... How about goodbye()?
- acuozzo 3y ago> It's just that there are more descriptive and neutral terms available to us, so why not use them? "quick test" does not convey what is usually intended with "sanity test". The intention of the latter is to verify that a base set of assumptions hold true whereas "quick test" can be just about anything.
- ok123456 3y ago"quick test" would mean QuickCheck, property-based testing, to me. Let's keep "sanity test".
- exe34 3y agoI've struggled with mental illness all my life and have made several attempts to catch the bus. I'm diagnosed with several mental issues. Somehow I'm still not offended with the phrase "sanity check". What am I doing wrong? Is it possible to learn to get offended by this sort of thing? Will it make me happy?
- com2kid 3y agoSoftware engineering is a field full of neurodiverse people. Trying to police each other's language around mental health in a field where, at least historically, the majority of practitioners are going through some sort of mental health struggle, is borderline rude IMHO.
- justinclift 3y ago> Many software developers like me have faced challenges to our mental health. It's a stressful industry at times, probably almost everyone has had crap times at one point or another. And then there's Covid, which affected everyone. Doesn't mean every mention of the word "sanity" needs to be expunged from our language though. :( :( :( That way lies er... madness. (!) ;)
- cdchn 3y agoOr maybe you, having faced those challenges, next time your fingers hover over the keys to type "sanity" simply pick another, perhaps more descriptive word.
- justinclift 3y agoNope. "Sanity" is a perfectly fine word for this particular type of test, and is widely used in industry.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- layer8 3y agoWords have multiple meanings. In that context, “sanity” means something like “reasonable and rational behavior” (look it up in a dictionary!). It’s counterproductive to forbid the use of words just because someone is somehow unable to differentiate between the multiple meanings words have. That would be insane — as in “highly unreasonable”, obviously.
- redeeman 3y agowithout knowing what the test did, quick test in no way conveys the same information. Honestly, did you really need to ask them to do that? please dont be that guy on the team (sorry, meant please dont be "that working set of hands on the team" (hope this illustrates the point somewhat))
- arp242 3y agoAccording to some it's ableist language, e.g.: https://developers.google.com/style/inclusive-documentation#ableist-language https://developers.google.com/style/inclusive-documentation#... Not really interested in discussing this and not saying I agree (or disagree!) with that. Just answering the question.
- leeoniya 3y agosince 1984 no one was offended by it, but in 2024 it became offensive to insane people AFAIK "sanity check" doesnt even have a history like "retarded" (which actually became an offensive slur). maybe some folks just feel left out if they cant rage about and feel offended by something these days. ::eyeroll::
- smegger001 3y agoUsually its offended on someone elses behalf.
- leeoniya 3y agoindeed
- HeatrayEnjoyer 3y agoI've always thought it a strange and insensitive phrase.
- JoachimS 3y agoAnd please don't use 'brain dead', which is a mortuist expression. Using 'brain dead' in a negative way may be insensitive to zombies. Also avoid the expression 'zombie process' or the word 'expired'. You don't want to step on the toes of a zombie do you? (It's probably gross.)
- AshamedCaptain 3y agoThe google guidelines already prevent something like "hung process" because of the "unnecessary violence" rule.
- eesmith 3y agoOh, you had to worry about legal. But since lawyers are concerned with risk, if the source is all proprietary and internal, the risk was lower. When Mozilla went open source back in the 1990s, Netscape's lawyers required the source first be bowdlerized. (Search for "censorzilla" for some examples.)