6 ms·

Now you can't even say "sanity check", much less mention brain damage.

by elwell 2y ago

steelbrain 2y ago
Wait, I missed the bus on this one. What's wrong with "sanity check"?
- rnd0 2y ago
  These days it would be considered a problematic allusion to people with cognitive or emotional issues.
- Stratoscope 2y ago
  As 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 2y 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 2y ago
      Walter, 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 2y ago
        We 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."
        eesmith 2y ago
        We have literally no idea what the 'sanity test' involved actually did, and the common use in computing has little connection to any such use in psychology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanity_check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanity_check informs me: "A sanity check or sanity test is a basic test to quickly evaluate whether a claim or the result of a calculation can possibly be true." ... "In computer science, a sanity test is a very brief run-through of the functionality of a computer program, system, calculation, or other analysis, to assure that part of the system or methodology works roughly as expected. This is often prior to a more exhaustive round of testing. " ... "In software development, a sanity test (a form of software testing which offers "quick, broad, and shallow testing"[1]) evaluates the result of a subset of application functionality to determine whether it is possible and reasonable to proceed with further testing of the entire application." and further comments that "sanity test" for some people is interchangeable with "smoke test". It also adds: "The Association for Computing Machinery,[8] and software projects such as Android,[9] MediaWiki[10] and Twitter,[11] discourage use of the phrase sanity check in favour of other terms such as confidence test, coherence check, or simply test, as part of a wider attempt to avoid ableist language and increase inclusivity. " I could not find a definition for "sanity test" in psychology. I know about the cognitive test that Trump made famous with ‘Person, woman, man, camera, TV‘.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    1. 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 2y ago
      Can we please change PHP's die() function to unalive()?
      - kyleee 2y ago
        unalive() offends me, let’s do sunset() instead
        latentsea 2y ago
        sunset() 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 2y ago
        cancelled() makes it seem as if PHP is a sexual predator – which may be the case, but as a matter of course... How about goodbye()?
        mikestew 2y ago
        We shouldn’t be using judgemental words like “good” and “bad”. Let’s use bye().
        elwell 2y ago
        goodbye() could offend someone whose father "went out to get a pack of smokes" and never came back
  - acuozzo 2y 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 2y ago
      "quick test" would mean QuickCheck, property-based testing, to me. Let's keep "sanity test".
  - exe34 2y ago
    I'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 2y ago
      Software 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 2y 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 2y ago
      Or 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 2y ago
        Nope. "Sanity" is a perfectly fine word for this particular type of test, and is widely used in industry.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - layer8 2y ago
    Words 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 2y ago
    without 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 2y ago
  According 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 2y ago
  since 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 2y ago
    Usually its offended on someone elses behalf.
    - leeoniya 2y ago
      indeed
HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
I've always thought it a strange and insensitive phrase.
JoachimS 2y ago
And 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 2y ago
  The google guidelines already prevent something like "hung process" because of the "unnecessary violence" rule.

Now you can't even say "sanity check", much less mention brain damage.

by elwell 2y ago

Now you can't even say "sanity check", much less mention brain damage.

steelbrain 2y ago

Wait, I missed the bus on this one. What's wrong with "sanity check"?

rnd0 2y ago
These days it would be considered a problematic allusion to people with cognitive or emotional issues.
Stratoscope 2y ago
As 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 2y 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 2y ago
    Walter, 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 2y ago
      We 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."
      - eesmith 2y ago
        We have literally no idea what the 'sanity test' involved actually did, and the common use in computing has little connection to any such use in psychology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanity_check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanity_check informs me: "A sanity check or sanity test is a basic test to quickly evaluate whether a claim or the result of a calculation can possibly be true." ... "In computer science, a sanity test is a very brief run-through of the functionality of a computer program, system, calculation, or other analysis, to assure that part of the system or methodology works roughly as expected. This is often prior to a more exhaustive round of testing. " ... "In software development, a sanity test (a form of software testing which offers "quick, broad, and shallow testing"[1]) evaluates the result of a subset of application functionality to determine whether it is possible and reasonable to proceed with further testing of the entire application." and further comments that "sanity test" for some people is interchangeable with "smoke test". It also adds: "The Association for Computing Machinery,[8] and software projects such as Android,[9] MediaWiki[10] and Twitter,[11] discourage use of the phrase sanity check in favour of other terms such as confidence test, coherence check, or simply test, as part of a wider attempt to avoid ableist language and increase inclusivity. " I could not find a definition for "sanity test" in psychology. I know about the cognitive test that Trump made famous with ‘Person, woman, man, camera, TV‘.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  1. 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 2y ago
    Can we please change PHP's die() function to unalive()?
    - kyleee 2y ago
      unalive() offends me, let’s do sunset() instead
      - latentsea 2y ago
        sunset() 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 2y ago
        cancelled() makes it seem as if PHP is a sexual predator – which may be the case, but as a matter of course... How about goodbye()?
        mikestew 2y ago
        We shouldn’t be using judgemental words like “good” and “bad”. Let’s use bye().
        elwell 2y ago
        goodbye() could offend someone whose father "went out to get a pack of smokes" and never came back
- acuozzo 2y 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 2y ago
    "quick test" would mean QuickCheck, property-based testing, to me. Let's keep "sanity test".
- exe34 2y ago
  I'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 2y ago
    Software 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 2y 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 2y ago
    Or 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 2y ago
      Nope. "Sanity" is a perfectly fine word for this particular type of test, and is widely used in industry.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- layer8 2y ago
  Words 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 2y ago
  without 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 2y ago
According 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 2y ago
since 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 2y ago
  Usually its offended on someone elses behalf.
  - leeoniya 2y ago
    indeed

HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago

I've always thought it a strange and insensitive phrase.

JoachimS 2y ago

And 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 2y ago
The google guidelines already prevent something like "hung process" because of the "unnecessary violence" rule.