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I hope there's no problem submitting my own blog post. I've been thinking about making a website like the one I described on the post for a long time but never
by inerte 18y ago
I hope there's no problem submitting my own blog post. I've been thinking about making a website like the one I described on the post for a long time but never got up and did it.
Anyway, I also hope the "fuck" up there isn't too offensive. I don't live in the USA (and english isn't my primary language), and while it seems people use this word every minute of their lives, on written material (and social contexts) of the web is rarely seen, so I don't quite grasp the ethic relationship of daily english and the internet.
If you could read my mind (in portuguese) and see what I really think when I am trying to remember how trim is named in Python, worse profanities would appear anyway :)
Oh, and I don't know if this is "HN material". I've complained about some articles that appeared here, blog posts without much content at least. But I've also seen worse stuff live longer on the main page, so I thought, what better way to see if what I wrote would survive than just submitting it?
- bprater 18y agoAh, I wondered what nationality you were. (I'm Portuguese too, but not natively.) Fuck is a bit strong for this type of article. Also, rather than saying 'how the fuck', we would say, at least in American English, "what the fuck is 'trim' in Python?" or even more clearly, "what the fuck is PHP's trim in Python?" But yeah, I have the same problem when moving through languages. I know the concept, but I have to read through the docs to find out the exact function syntax.
- siong1987 18y ago.com.br - Brazil???
- okeumeni 18y agoYup
- okeumeni 18y agoI appreciate your remark on this post. In general I have to say I am sick of people using the "F" word so lightly on this forum. I have an 11 years old very curious daughter that I adore, she get on my laptop all the time and is very interested in what I do. I have been very concern about what will happen if she sees that I’m reading stuff with such language in it. We should all do something about this. Demod me if you want but this is a real problem from the concern parent that I am.
- tptacek 18y agoMine are 9 and 7. If your 11 year old isn't already using the word "fuck", I would be concerned about social norms. The fact is, the Internet is a big scary place, and Hacker News is the very least of the problem, so let's not bother addressing this issue.
- okeumeni 18y agoI’m far from being an expert on this, so take it easy from a fellow parent. There’s a huge difference about you reading or using profanity near you child than him/her hearing it on TV or reading on the internet.
- Jebdm 18y agoI agree. Eleven years old is ~6th grade; she probably hears words like "fuck" on a regular basis at school. The only logical arguments I've heard for not letting kids swear are: - It's against the social norm (it'll get them in trouble) - It lessens the words' value. Since kids invariably will encounter swear words at some point, trying to shield them is pretty hopeless. The best solution is to mitigate the two problems above; teach them when they shouldn't swear (mainly in front of adults) and not to swear like a sixth-grader ("Hey, man, what the fuck are you doing today? Shit, I've got a fuckton of goddamn homework.") Swearing at people is another thing entirely, though.
- kirubakaran 18y agoWhile I don't give a fuck about your choice of words, I am unable to read the article as "Websense" blocked the website as pr0n coz of words in the URL :-(
- jsdalton 18y agoI think it's a really awesome idea. As others have pointed out, "what the fuck" is the right way to say it. More common than that these days is "WTF" (the abbreviation). This allows you to get the same point across without using profanity. (Keep in mind that in some environments like schools or corporations, sites with profanity can get flagged and blocked.) So maybe "WTF is ___ in ___?"
- j2d2 18y agoI gotta disagree about "what the fuck" being the right way to say it. I am not concerned about the rebellious nature of cursing, but I am bothered by using words that contribute so little to the meaning. I've heard arguments that they serve to express things in a more emotional manner. Like anything, they've been so over used that the emotional enhancement is diluted to simply being a socially rebellious expression. Edit: On this topic, I think people, at some level, are aware of this. That's why it's not as commonly found in written word vs. spoken word.
- tptacek 18y agoThe nice thing about it here is that it very effectively conveys the frustration that underlies the value proposition for the site.
- SapphireSun 18y agoAt some level I would like to use this sort of site for the humor value. It not only sympathizes with me; it empathizes with me AND works to solve my problem - so long as it works right. If it doesn't I'd be adding a few more colorful words to the mix :-) Edit: Grammar
- jsdalton 18y agoOh, I think what I meant was "how the fuck" was not idiomatic English, and that what he meant to say was "what the fuck." I more meant the "proper" way to say the phrase he was referring to.
- jcl 18y ago
- fallentimes 18y agoI think a well timed & placed swear word adds some zing. As long as you're posts and titles aren't filled with them, you should be fine.
- karim 18y agoI'm just tired of reading blog posts full of swearing. It's always the same bland content without nuances. I'm sure that you could have written a better post, without resorting to swearing - or perhaps you belong to the Zed Shaw school of writing.
- benmathes 18y agoApologies if this gets mentioned elsewhere, but I suspect you'll have trouble dealing with two functions in separate languages that do _almost_ the exact same thing, but differ in some tiny way that screws people up. Maybe they return different values on an error, one does it in-place while the other returns the new value, or even worse are the really tricky differences like what happens if certain variables are/aren't static.