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I don't personally care about language choices in code, but I'll play devil's advocate and speculate as to why a business might be concerned. 1. Reputational h

I don't personally care about language choices in code, but I'll play devil's advocate and speculate as to why a business might be concerned. 1. Reputational harm in the event that code needs to be shared. Say, the code gets read in court, or an outside consultant is brought in who is given access to the code. The company likely wants to maintain the same standard of professionalism that they expect when their employees write or utter spoken language in the workplace for the same reasons. 2. Similar to #1 but nuanced enough to deserve its own mention: code is a business asset. It can be sold or licensed out. The company may fear that language that it deems unprofessional could depreciate the value of that code in the context of selling or licensing it to 3rd parties. Personally I think that the fuss over "bad words" is deeply irrational to a religious degree. The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd. But you can't choose what planet you do business on and, on Earth, there are a lot of silly people.

toast0 1y ago
Also 3, fear of reputational harm if the code leaks. Microsoft got a lot of PR for curse words in code that leaked, and then they locked it down.
didntcheck 1y ago
> the same standard of professionalism that they expect when their employees write or utter spoken language in the workplace for the same reasons. Depends a lot on the culture. In the countries I've worked in, anyone trying to forbid profanity in the workplace would be laughed out of the room. The laughter would likely turn to anger if it turned out to be Americans trying to impose puritanism on another country's project
noworriesnate 1y ago
Yeah I had a coworker who put salty MessageBox.Show debug messages in the code, and one day while demoing the software a pop up appeared that said “BITCH!!!” Needless to say the customer was not amused. So the simple solution is just ban the bad words from the source code.
- mcgrath_sh 1y ago
  I wrote something similar in another comment. This is where I have seen curse words bite teams too. It is always the needless "joke" when debugging that surfaces. Just go boring. No one gets offended by "check 001."
  - falcor84 1y ago
    Well, I do get offended by "check 001" - please just put some words there about what was checked. The worst offender of course is "unexpected error occurred" - my PTSD is so triggered by that one. Just freaking give me some error details!
- bee_rider 1y ago
  Swears are fine and good, slurs not so much.
mcgrath_sh 1y ago
I can swear a lot while talking. I have never written a curse word in my code, especially professionally. Just seems odd and not useful? I wouldn't be offended if I came across one, but it seems weird to use in a professional setting? A lot of the times I have seen inappropriate words used were not in any context and were used as a "joke" when logging/debugging. So "dicks 01" or "fuck me 01" instead of a bland "check 01" or whatever. For some reason, that seems much more unprofessional than a comment like "this code is shitty but works, need to clean up." The contextless swearing seems so unnecessary and adds nothing to the code, whereas a comment with a curse word in it reads way more human.
- gspencley 1y ago
  > So "dicks 01" or "fuck me 01" instead of a bland "check 01" or whatever. For some reason, that seems much more unprofessional than a comment like "this code is shitty but works, need to clean up." Agreed. Context matters a lot. People say "shitty code" all the time. I don't see that as unprofessional. But "dicks01" I would probably change if I came across it in code. Not because I would find it offensive, but because it serves no purpose other than to be juvenile... and that can easily be counter-productive if the goal is easy to read and maintain code. With respects to "shitty code", I'm not even sure that I would personally even consider the word "shit" to be a swear word in 2025. I'm reminded of the TV show on Showtime called Bullshit (by Penn & Teller). They wanted to name the show "Humbug", which was considered profane in the early 20th century when Houdini was alive and famous. But Showtime didn't like it because they figured it wouldn't land with a modern audience. "Bullshit" it was. That said, the article even includes the word "crap" (though perhaps they are making the point that it is replacing other, "more profane" words). That one strikes me as odd. If that is considered rude and offensive, then surely "humbug" ought to be as well. Probably very culture-specific.
  - rybosome 1y ago
    I have a very clear memory of offending someone with the use of the word “crap” years ago. As a kid I worked in a restaurant that sold Cincinnati-style chili - noodles with sweet chili and cheese on top. We were encouraged to offer customers who ordered a plain bowl of chili this noodle concoction instead. Late one night, I had a customer order a bowl of plain chili. I gave her the spiel I was supposed to, suggesting that she try the noodle dish. She said, “so you won’t sell me a bowl of chili?”. I replied, “sorry for the confusion ma’am, I am happy to sell you chili. We are asked to say this crap because management is worried customers don’t know what they want”. She replied, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to use the word ‘crap’ with me”. I apologized again, gave her her order, then was removed from my position 3 days later when she emailed management to complain. I had “refused to sell her chili”, and “used vulgar language”.
thfuran 1y ago
>The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd. No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning or elicit any other response.
- gspencley 1y ago
  > No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning of elicit any other response. I completely disagree. It is a lot more absurd. Language is not a priori. It must be learned. It requires both a speaker and a listener. Both must understand the meaning of the spoken word as well as other factors of communication, including tone and body language, in order to interpret and understand the communicated meaning. The idea behind a "bad word" is that the word is offensive no matter what. It doesn't matter what the dictionary definition of the word is, or the intended meaning of the word or the subject of the sentence that employed the word. The word is intrinsically "just bad" according to this religious belief. Objectively, sometimes there are polite ways to use a "four letter" word such as "fuck." The preceding sentence is one such example. But ... if you hold the irrational view that I am describing, there is no such thing. It is ALWAYS "bad." This is a faith based belief system. There is no grounding for such a position. Under such a position, even an academic discussion of the word would require it be censored for fear of offending someone.
  - thfuran 1y ago
    You describe it as a religious belief. Surely you are aware that there are actually people with religious beliefs? The rationality of religion aside, belief that there are people with religious beliefs is anything but irrational.
    - gspencley 1y ago
      > Surely you are aware that there are actually people with religious beliefs? Yes. What's your point? It doesn't make those beliefs rational. Faith is belief in something despite the absence of evidence. I am using the term "religious belief" interchangeably with "faith based belief system." > belief that there are people with religious beliefs is anything but irrational. I have no idea what you are trying to say in this sentence. - I don't "believe" that there are people with religious beliefs. I observe that to be the case. - I never described "belief that there are people with religious beliefs" as irrational. I think your point might be that, because there are people with irrational beliefs out there we must appease them? Or something? I really don't know what you're trying to say here. There are people out there who believe in crazy things. We agree on that. How we should treat those people, or react to their existence, is entirely outside of the scope of conversation. It is perfectly acceptable to call an irrational belief irrational. We were talking about language and communication and the absurdity that there is a such thing as an arbitrary sequence of phones or characters that would cause anyone exposed to that to be offended. All I was saying is that such a belief is unfounded. I honestly don't know what you are trying to say.
wat10000 1y ago
3. Some of your coworkers may be among that group who finds it offensive or jarring. Maybe this is irrational, but we all are. I bet there's a sequence of ASCII bytes (say, art of certain infamous images from the early internet) that you wouldn't like to stumble across either.
- nomel 1y ago
  And that’s what drives this ever increasing PC culture strangulating the world: fear. You have to fear that everyone will react like the most sensitive that exist (as incredible rare as they are). And, you have to fear those who are offended for others even more so, since those are the only ones you’ll have a nonzero chance of interacting with.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    You call it fear, I call it respect. I know that some of my coworkers may not appreciate seeing that kind of language, so I don't expose them to it. Simple as that.
  - kelnos 1y ago
    I don't like to look at it as fear, but I think fear is what explains a lot of the backlash toward PC culture (people don't like to be afraid; it's common to lash out at things that cause fear). I avoid offending people not because I'm afraid of being yelled at or cancelled; I do it because I know what it feels like to be offended, and I don't enjoy it, so I don't want to make someone else feel that way. Certainly I don't always succeed; sometimes I accidentally say something offensive, but we're all human and don't do what we intend all the time. And sometimes I do find it to be a chore, as the set of offensive things changes frequently enough, and it's hard to keep up, or even always agree why something is offensive. People who get offended on behalf of others are incredibly annoying. I can understand and respect someone calmly saying to me, "hey, you really shouldn't say $WORD because that's really rude and offensive toward people who are a part of $SOME_GROUP", but far too many people get actively angry and try to shame you, often publicly, if you say something bad. And then those same people claim that they would prefer to live in a world where people don't offend each other... while reacting to offensive words in ways that aren't likely to improve things.
miki123211 1y ago
3) in case the code is open sourced or leaks, the company might get cancelled, especially if it's the n or r word.
kelnos 1y ago
> The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd. I find your assertion to be absurd. Do you really believe that no one should ever be upset by something someone else has said? If so, you have a huge misunderstanding of nearly-universal human behavior.

toast0 1y ago

Also 3, fear of reputational harm if the code leaks. Microsoft got a lot of PR for curse words in code that leaked, and then they locked it down.

didntcheck 1y ago

> the same standard of professionalism that they expect when their employees write or utter spoken language in the workplace for the same reasons. Depends a lot on the culture. In the countries I've worked in, anyone trying to forbid profanity in the workplace would be laughed out of the room. The laughter would likely turn to anger if it turned out to be Americans trying to impose puritanism on another country's project

noworriesnate 1y ago

Yeah I had a coworker who put salty MessageBox.Show debug messages in the code, and one day while demoing the software a pop up appeared that said “BITCH!!!” Needless to say the customer was not amused. So the simple solution is just ban the bad words from the source code.

mcgrath_sh 1y ago
I wrote something similar in another comment. This is where I have seen curse words bite teams too. It is always the needless "joke" when debugging that surfaces. Just go boring. No one gets offended by "check 001."
- falcor84 1y ago
  Well, I do get offended by "check 001" - please just put some words there about what was checked. The worst offender of course is "unexpected error occurred" - my PTSD is so triggered by that one. Just freaking give me some error details!
bee_rider 1y ago
Swears are fine and good, slurs not so much.

mcgrath_sh 1y ago

I can swear a lot while talking. I have never written a curse word in my code, especially professionally. Just seems odd and not useful? I wouldn't be offended if I came across one, but it seems weird to use in a professional setting? A lot of the times I have seen inappropriate words used were not in any context and were used as a "joke" when logging/debugging. So "dicks 01" or "fuck me 01" instead of a bland "check 01" or whatever. For some reason, that seems much more unprofessional than a comment like "this code is shitty but works, need to clean up." The contextless swearing seems so unnecessary and adds nothing to the code, whereas a comment with a curse word in it reads way more human.

gspencley 1y ago
> So "dicks 01" or "fuck me 01" instead of a bland "check 01" or whatever. For some reason, that seems much more unprofessional than a comment like "this code is shitty but works, need to clean up." Agreed. Context matters a lot. People say "shitty code" all the time. I don't see that as unprofessional. But "dicks01" I would probably change if I came across it in code. Not because I would find it offensive, but because it serves no purpose other than to be juvenile... and that can easily be counter-productive if the goal is easy to read and maintain code. With respects to "shitty code", I'm not even sure that I would personally even consider the word "shit" to be a swear word in 2025. I'm reminded of the TV show on Showtime called Bullshit (by Penn & Teller). They wanted to name the show "Humbug", which was considered profane in the early 20th century when Houdini was alive and famous. But Showtime didn't like it because they figured it wouldn't land with a modern audience. "Bullshit" it was. That said, the article even includes the word "crap" (though perhaps they are making the point that it is replacing other, "more profane" words). That one strikes me as odd. If that is considered rude and offensive, then surely "humbug" ought to be as well. Probably very culture-specific.
- rybosome 1y ago
  I have a very clear memory of offending someone with the use of the word “crap” years ago. As a kid I worked in a restaurant that sold Cincinnati-style chili - noodles with sweet chili and cheese on top. We were encouraged to offer customers who ordered a plain bowl of chili this noodle concoction instead. Late one night, I had a customer order a bowl of plain chili. I gave her the spiel I was supposed to, suggesting that she try the noodle dish. She said, “so you won’t sell me a bowl of chili?”. I replied, “sorry for the confusion ma’am, I am happy to sell you chili. We are asked to say this crap because management is worried customers don’t know what they want”. She replied, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to use the word ‘crap’ with me”. I apologized again, gave her her order, then was removed from my position 3 days later when she emailed management to complain. I had “refused to sell her chili”, and “used vulgar language”.

thfuran 1y ago

>The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd. No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning or elicit any other response.

gspencley 1y ago
> No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning of elicit any other response. I completely disagree. It is a lot more absurd. Language is not a priori. It must be learned. It requires both a speaker and a listener. Both must understand the meaning of the spoken word as well as other factors of communication, including tone and body language, in order to interpret and understand the communicated meaning. The idea behind a "bad word" is that the word is offensive no matter what. It doesn't matter what the dictionary definition of the word is, or the intended meaning of the word or the subject of the sentence that employed the word. The word is intrinsically "just bad" according to this religious belief. Objectively, sometimes there are polite ways to use a "four letter" word such as "fuck." The preceding sentence is one such example. But ... if you hold the irrational view that I am describing, there is no such thing. It is ALWAYS "bad." This is a faith based belief system. There is no grounding for such a position. Under such a position, even an academic discussion of the word would require it be censored for fear of offending someone.
- thfuran 1y ago
  You describe it as a religious belief. Surely you are aware that there are actually people with religious beliefs? The rationality of religion aside, belief that there are people with religious beliefs is anything but irrational.
  - gspencley 1y ago
    > Surely you are aware that there are actually people with religious beliefs? Yes. What's your point? It doesn't make those beliefs rational. Faith is belief in something despite the absence of evidence. I am using the term "religious belief" interchangeably with "faith based belief system." > belief that there are people with religious beliefs is anything but irrational. I have no idea what you are trying to say in this sentence. - I don't "believe" that there are people with religious beliefs. I observe that to be the case. - I never described "belief that there are people with religious beliefs" as irrational. I think your point might be that, because there are people with irrational beliefs out there we must appease them? Or something? I really don't know what you're trying to say here. There are people out there who believe in crazy things. We agree on that. How we should treat those people, or react to their existence, is entirely outside of the scope of conversation. It is perfectly acceptable to call an irrational belief irrational. We were talking about language and communication and the absurdity that there is a such thing as an arbitrary sequence of phones or characters that would cause anyone exposed to that to be offended. All I was saying is that such a belief is unfounded. I honestly don't know what you are trying to say.

wat10000 1y ago

3. Some of your coworkers may be among that group who finds it offensive or jarring. Maybe this is irrational, but we all are. I bet there's a sequence of ASCII bytes (say, art of certain infamous images from the early internet) that you wouldn't like to stumble across either.

nomel 1y ago
And that’s what drives this ever increasing PC culture strangulating the world: fear. You have to fear that everyone will react like the most sensitive that exist (as incredible rare as they are). And, you have to fear those who are offended for others even more so, since those are the only ones you’ll have a nonzero chance of interacting with.
- wat10000 1y ago
  You call it fear, I call it respect. I know that some of my coworkers may not appreciate seeing that kind of language, so I don't expose them to it. Simple as that.
- kelnos 1y ago
  I don't like to look at it as fear, but I think fear is what explains a lot of the backlash toward PC culture (people don't like to be afraid; it's common to lash out at things that cause fear). I avoid offending people not because I'm afraid of being yelled at or cancelled; I do it because I know what it feels like to be offended, and I don't enjoy it, so I don't want to make someone else feel that way. Certainly I don't always succeed; sometimes I accidentally say something offensive, but we're all human and don't do what we intend all the time. And sometimes I do find it to be a chore, as the set of offensive things changes frequently enough, and it's hard to keep up, or even always agree why something is offensive. People who get offended on behalf of others are incredibly annoying. I can understand and respect someone calmly saying to me, "hey, you really shouldn't say $WORD because that's really rude and offensive toward people who are a part of $SOME_GROUP", but far too many people get actively angry and try to shame you, often publicly, if you say something bad. And then those same people claim that they would prefer to live in a world where people don't offend each other... while reacting to offensive words in ways that aren't likely to improve things.

miki123211 1y ago

3) in case the code is open sourced or leaks, the company might get cancelled, especially if it's the n or r word.

kelnos 1y ago

> The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd. I find your assertion to be absurd. Do you really believe that no one should ever be upset by something someone else has said? If so, you have a huge misunderstanding of nearly-universal human behavior.