11 ms·
The kind of company I want to be a part of
- tyleo 11mo agoI’d say overreaction. The real world is full of tradeoffs and I’ve seen people try to get minutia like this correct in convoluted contexts which actually broke the core application logic. Given the limited time we can spend on things, supporting proper plurality falls below some of my other UI priorities like proper accessibility settings. I don’t think plurality is bad, just low in the stack rank of things that matter.
- clickety_clack 11mo agoI’d like to think I do pluralization right, but sometimes it’s just that bit too time consuming because of an awkward internationalization issue or something so I don’t. There’s only so much polishing you can (or should) do before you ship. If I found that my team suddenly had a lot of time for cleaning up this kind of thing, I’d start worrying about job security tbh.
- jon-wood 11mo agoIf pluralisation of a status message in the UI is breaking core application logic then you've got bigger problems than the pluralisation code.
- jordanb 11mo agoEvery code path is an opportunity for a bug that escapes validation. Plus this particular example doesn't work with i18n. It would be more complicated in that case.
- wavemode 11mo agoThe (s) alternative that the article is arguing against is even worse for i18n, so what's your point?
- jordanb 11mo agoYou'll have to look up the way i18n frameworks work, but no the "(s)" is not worse. It is far better because it's a simple string that the framework can substitute without embedded business logic trying to manipulate the individual characters in a way that only works in one language.
- tyleo 11mo agoYeah, I'm with you. I've worked on several i18n frameworks, including ones for AAA game titles at Microsoft. You can make pluralization work but the "(s)" is going to tend to work better. And localization isn't just an opportunity for development bugs, localizers get things wrong too. Some non-English speakers mentioned to me that some translations are so bad, it's better to use the English version anyways.
- wavemode 11mo agoHuh? "(s)", itself, only works in one language! Other languages (and even English, sometimes) don't always pluralize by appending lettters to the end of words, so the parenthesized suffix thing very regularly doesn't even work. And who exactly is talking about "embedding" business logic in the i18n framework? Every serious framework I've used has supported placeholders, so at the application level you just select between singular and plural form and then the translation framework can handle arranging the words. e.g. `items.length == 1 ? _t("%d item", items.length) : _t("%d items", items.length)` and then within your translation files you can specify translations that rearrange the phrase, like "<noun> %d" for languages where they are reversed. (though usually of course, you would use much longer phrases, so that the translation is done in-context.)
- citelao 11mo agoMany languages have very complicated pluralization rules. For example, Russian has different plural forms for numbers ending in 2. That doesn't prevent a good translation framework from working properly, but it proves why the sample code in your example & the OP would not work. https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/43/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html#ru https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/43/supplemental/language...
- ghosty141 11mo agoEspecially once you get into i18n this becomes increasingly more complex for various reasons like different formats for translation programs etc.
- skeeter2020 11mo agoI agree; there's probably higher value UI work, or something that should be more important to you above this. Examples: Have you ever run your app at 500% in high contrast with no mouse or with a screen reader? What's the happy path for most popular workflows? How many layers bury them with options and edge cases? What language support are you missing?
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- BrtByte 11mo agoSure, not every edge case deserves top billing, but when the little things stack up, they subtly signal whether anyone cared. It's a vibe thing
- ivape 11mo agoDeath by a thousand paper cuts Proverbs become eerie the longer you live. Almost like, woah, that one sentence was actually universally true? Well hot damn! Keep neglecting these small things and you’ll see the level of unconstrained shit you will have unleashed onto the world. With enough of us doing so, we can take part in the great collective festival of mass garbage accumulation (aggregate all the paper cuts). The few neurotic types that lament over this are actually, believe it or not, the closest thing to a sewage system for the accumulation. As of 2025, shame as a utility, is a weak tool. The modern website needs to be in MOMA with no explanation, just a small title that reads ‘Despair’ (Perhaps even ‘Futility’, or the more modern ‘There was an attempt’).
- ctxc 11mo ago"As of 2025, shame as a utility, is a weak tool" This is going on a t-shirt
- cantor_S_drug 11mo agoI think there was an article on English stackexchange where linguists proved that the word "the" is a useless word. It's a filler word like umm, etc.
- dullcrisp 11mo agoYou mean, “I think there was article on English stackexchange where linguists proved word “the” is useless word. It’s filler word like umm, etc.”
- m_w_ 11mo agoGlad the snippet is == 1, this problem drives me extra insane when it doesn't handle the zero case. Not only has my upload failed for some mysterious reason, I have successfully uploaded zero item!
- blux 11mo agoCould not agree more. As a child in the 80s I read a programming book (can't remember the name anymore unfortunately) where the reader was encouraged to write software that is always friendly and human when it comes to communicating with the user. For example, 'Please input a number:' instead of 'Input a number:'. But also exactly the thing the writer talks about in the article; do not be lazy when it comes to pluralization. I get nostalgic remembering that era in computing.
- lowercased 11mo agoWhen you interacted with a 'computer' once or twice a week, perhaps... seeing "please" is ... neat? A 'wow' factor ("wow! It knows English!")? Peppering input fields and forms and folksy welcoming language scattered thoughout might be useful now and then, but for systems where people are using it repeatedly hourly/daily/weekly... it's (at best) clutter and noise.
- abraxas 11mo agoNumber "two" in Polish (depending on context): dwa, dwoje, dwie, dwóch, dwiema, dwom, dwojga, dwojgu, dwójka, dwójki, dwójkę, dwójką, dwójce, dwójko So that's just my mother tongue. It think your problem is a bit more complex than (s).
- kachnuv_ocasek 11mo agoSame argument applies. You, as the developer, always know in what context the text appears. Whether it's "dwa zdjęcia przesłane" or "dodano tagi do dwóch zdjęć".
- abpavel 11mo ago> You, as the developer, always know Definetely not "always".
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- maratc 11mo agoI think it's more about inclination of the words that can't be replaced with a number. In English, it's easy: * 1 *file* sent But: * 2 *files* sent * 12 *files* sent * 21 *files* sent * 16,777,221 *files* sent. How does Polish go about that?
- thewisenerd 11mo agogiven the image in the post is specifically of the azure portal, the following is a very real notification message from the same: Deleting load balancer '[object Object]'
- ctxc 11mo agoPlease don't get me started on Azure!
- cynicalsecurity 11mo agoFalse title.
- ctxc 11mo agoOpen to suggestions to make it better!
- zkmon 11mo agoNot for me. Exccessive customer obsession puts me off as customer. Don't try to read too much into me. Don't try to sell too much. Don't try to please me too much. Don't think about me too much. Instead, think about the stuff you are offering. Treat it as if you are building it for yourself, and not for selling. Build it the way your like most. Sound as if you don't care about selling. Be proud of it. Get off of the sales pitch and pleasing talk. Stay equal with your customer regarding who should please whom. It's an exchange of value between equals. No need of one pleasing the other too much. Customer need not have the upper hand. They should be just as desperate to buy, as you are for selling. If selling is seen as a win for the seller, then it should always be a loss for the buyer, which is not true. Once you stop seeing it as win, you will stop this overreaction.
- robofanatic 11mo ago> Instead, think about the stuff you are offering. This is exactly what the author is doing. Paying attention to detail. Not upselling you anything. He is not getting any direct ROI for doing that. I recently hired a contractor to clean ducts in my house. He was really nice guy, while his partner was working, he chatted with me about how their carpet cleaning service could make my carpets look like new, and even pointed out a few spots in the kitchen where grout cleaning might help. He was a great salesperson and very personable but when they finished the duct cleaning, they left a bit of debris behind. It wasn’t a big deal, but was enough to make me forget all the upselling he did before. Just goes to show that a little attention to detail can make a big difference. Next time I might shop around or may hire them again only if they give me a much better price.
- nickelcitymario 11mo agoI feel like I'd agree with your comment if it was in reply to an entirely different article. As in: I agree with your sentiment and ideas. Out of context, you're bang on correct. But I don't think paying attention to details (like pluralization) is an indication of obsession with the customer, at least not for me. It's about caring about the craft. When I'm building something for my own use, I care about every aspect of it. I care about the unseen parts. I care about the process. It brings me satisfaction. And when I'm buying something, I like to know that the person who made it cared as much about their craft as I do. I don't consider than pandering. It's respect: Respect for the craft, for the craftsperson, and for the end recipient/customer. But maybe I missed something. What was it about the original post that felt like excessive customer obsession? Genuinely curious and open to being mistaken here.
- shermantanktop 11mo agoThis is the brown m&m theory. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-did-van-halen-demand-concert-venues-remove-brown-mms-from-the-menu-180982570/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-did-van-hale... A trivial, superficial fact is assumed to be indicative of a much more substantial concern. For Van Halen, the candy dish indicated adherence to contract terms; here, pluralization indicates the integrity and values of an entire company. It’s a cute idea that suggests an easy way to understand something complex. But there’s no free lunch. If you want a free lunch, you’re asking to be taken for a ride.
- skeeter2020 11mo agoVan Halen was playing giant stadium shows that were massive logistical and coordination challenges and used this contract language as a canary for more important aspects like the scafolding setup. If they didn't read the catering closely, did they also skim the electrical schematics? Their concerts were perfect scenarios for heavy-weight process, defined procedures and scientific management. A lot of software is punk rock DIY; get something of value out there asap and then iterate. If you don't release until your pluralization is perfect you've waited too long. I think we're in agreement, just highlighting these are very different approaches to essentially management at different phases of the project lifecycle. Van Halen probably didn't have that rider in their contract at their first show.
- jordanb 11mo agoThis is the excuse Van Halen used much later after to explain his extreme princess behavior. I have never bought it. If you want to make sure the venue is set up right you probably need to send an electrician to check on it before your tour arrives. The M&M thing may show if the venue operator read your contract not if they bothered fulfilling the parts that would be expensive (upgrading a building's electrical is expensive, making an intern pick the brown M&Ms out is not). It probably didn't even prove that the venue operator read your contract. More likely the first time Eddie stormed out after seeing a brown M&M word would get around to everyone that "Eddie will flip his shit if there's a brown M&M so get rid of them. Yes, Seriously."
- cjs_ac 11mo agoFor non-technical users, the user interface is the program. To them, there's nothing beneath the shell. My last boss didn't like Macs because his PowerPoint presentations rendered differently on them compared to Windows. There are millions of real people with consequential positions in important organisations who think like this.
- sevensor 11mo agoGetting your program to render the same on different platforms takes a lot of work the user will never see, and that goes double if you actually want it to behave the same. There are some very deep problems you have to work through, like what behaving the same and rendering the same even mean. Same window decorations? Same menu layout? Same dialog boxes? How are you doing font rendering? How much do you embrace platform defaults versus steamrolling over them in the name of uniformity?
- cjs_ac 11mo agoYou're not wrong, but making these sorts of arguments was the start of me being managed out of that company.
- 1dom 11mo agoThere's so, so many different reasons in the real world as to why/how details like that end up in front of the customer. Is OP happy to work for Satan as long as he appears grammatically accurate, polite and concise? Alternatively, OP is a nightmare to work with because every single other role in the company has to do things in exactly the way the engineers want, otherwise they're careless morons.
- cluckindan 11mo agoSatan is very underappreciated as an employer.
- 1dom 11mo agoI'm sure he pays well too!
- rkomorn 11mo agoDoesn't he always barter for your soul?
- 1dom 11mo agoI'd guess he barters for soul(s).
- cluckindan 11mo agoTo quote Wikipedia: ”Nontheistic Satanism, as exemplified by LaVeyan Satanism (practiced by the Church of Satan and First Satanic Church) and The Satanic Temple, holds that Satan does not exist as a literal anthropomorphic entity, but rather as a symbol of a cosmos which Satanists perceive to be permeated and motivated by a force that has been given many names by humans over the course of time. In this religion, "Satan" is not viewed or depicted as a hubristic, irrational, and fraudulent creature, but rather is revered with Prometheus-like attributes, symbolizing liberty and individual empowerment. To adherents, he also serves as a conceptual framework and an external metaphorical projection of the Satanist's highest personal potential.” You see, Satan is not just a biblical figure, but also the average IT company.
- shaan7 11mo agoQt has provided a solution for this since its early days: https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/i18n-source-translation.html#handle-plural-forms https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/i18n-source-translation.html#handle-p...
- techblueberry 11mo ago+1! I really appreciated this post(s)
- ctxc 11mo agoTouche ;)
- jordanb 11mo agoThis is the Californian Ideology in a blog post. The implication that title and intro mean to imply is working for companies that build products that are not evil and hostile to their users. But the call to action is to.. embed logic in the programs to pluralize properly (in English). It's possible to write evil software that pluralizes words. It's possible to write beneficial software that does not pluralize words. This blog post is about the color of the bikeshed next to the torment nexus.
- canes123456 11mo agoI am baffled why you are inserting good and evil into this. He just seems to want to work at companies that value craft and attention to detail. It just like the jobs quote about the back of the furniture also being attractive.
- cj 11mo agoIronically, I could see the author's logic being used as a justifcation to build more "evil" features: > Talk to me like I’m used to. Be familiar, be approachable. I want to feel like you care about helping me. Not “me” as in “all the prospective 99,99,999 users”, but “me” specifically. Users shouldn’t feel like they’ve been dropped into a cookie cutter template - a cold, hard reminder that this is clunky, soulless machinery removed from their world. In other words, the author wants a personalized experience. A personalized news feed. An experience that is tailored to them. (Isn't that what everyone is complaining ruined Facebook, insta, youtube, etc?) I don't think that's what the author actually wants. I think it's just poor framing / unclear writing. If the idea is "I want to work at a company that cares about its craft" -- the example they picked to illustrate that point is just odd. Whether or not a company uses a combined singular/plural form like "Uploading File(s)" is not a very good indicator of whether that company values its craft, IMO.
- John23832 11mo agoPersonalization != using appropriate common language to express what is happening to the user.
- annodomini2019 11mo agoAlways thought you kinda have to do this to create a product that can even be translated considering languages like French where plurals take many forms.
- ebiester 11mo agoThat was my first thought as well, but interfaces that take care of pluralization with an i18n framework can handle all of these. It just takes longer and is at the expense of another feature. In truth, it mostly takes more skill - once you have that skill, it's another 5 minutes. There are a few edge cases, but you largely have the necessary context to translate a string. You have to translate the string in its entirety instead of relying on composition of translated chunks. (This is already best practice.)
- lionkor 11mo ago> a cold, hard reminder that this is clunky, soulless machinery This is where my view differs fundamentally. If I get another "let's set up your account!" text in a soulless, cold software, I am throwing my laptop out the next window. It's a machine. It needs to communicate information to me. A large part of the AI boom is that we can now pretend that it's not a machine by using enough compute power to probably solve every problem ever, just to say "Of course -- you're so right!". We made sure to write software so inefficiently and badly that you can barely tell how powerful modern computers are. Just another little layer, one more branch, one more step between the user and the hardware -- just buy more ram. Buy a better CPU. They now have double the cores, you hear?
- mantas 11mo agoWait before author finds out there're languages with more forms than singular and plural...
- Blackarea 11mo agoI literally couldn't care less. You can call it '1th of April' for all that i care if the actual functionality you offer is clean and fast I'll gladly accept!
- commandlinefan 11mo agoI get where the author is coming from, but having grown up in the 80's, I always thought "1 item(s)" looked slightly _more_ professional since it followed the way printed documents were usually produced.
- angiolillo 11mo agoIt's a tradeoff. I love projects where I can "sweat the details" and refine not just wording but typography, padding, visual alignment, layout, edge cases, colors, workflow, etc. And where the back-end, QA, doc teams are similarly able to hone their work to perfection. But I know that this isn't always Pareto optimal. Sometimes your user, customer, and business are better off if you swallow your pride and deliver an imperfect solution now instead of a better solution in the future, and knowing when and where to strike that balance is a sign of maturity, not disrespect.
- ungreased0675 11mo agoAs a software product manager, UX is one of the areas I’m inclined to spend more time and money than strictly necessary. Details and polish matter. Users can tell the difference, even if it’s subconsciously.
- angiolillo 11mo agoTotally: users can absolutely tell the difference and details and polish absolutely matter, but so does shipping the product. As a UX designer I'm always happy to have more time/money to spend on usability testing and refining ever more granular details in workflows and UI. But I'm also grateful for the wise product managers I've collaborated with who know where to draw the line to make sure we don't end up losing out to our "worse is better" competitors.
- ctxc 11mo agoAgreed! But I suspect several of these decisions are not intentionally made and are "...meh, whatever".
- angiolillo 11mo agoFair enough, and honestly I agree with you that supporting the n==1 case is the bare minimum of care I'd expect from an application developer. Though if you support languages other than English even the decision to simplify pluralization logic to n==1 seems like a form of "...meh, whatever" given various pluralization rules: https://cldr.unicode.org/index/cldr-spec/plural-rules https://cldr.unicode.org/index/cldr-spec/plural-rules
- jasode 11mo ago>You can’t have your UI disrespecting [...] and I care too much! I think it just highlights that people care about different things. I've seen the "(s)" placeholder for decades in computer UIs and it's never bothered me. On the other hand, blog article characteristics that bug me are titles consisting of a non-descriptive teaser with ellipsis (...) that doesn't describe the main point and not having a publication date at the top. But I'm not going to complain about blog articles that "disrespect" readers that way because apparently, it's ok with some writers and some readers. Likewise, someone using the Comic Sans font enrages some folks but it never bothers me. On the other hand, displaying big numbers without any thousands separators is very annoying. I code a lot of utilities for myself and I always avoid the "(s)" problem by re-ordering the text. Instead of: Uploading 3 image(s) The UI is: Number of images uploaded: 3 That looks ok for all quantities and doesn't require tedious ternary logic everywhere : Number of images uploaded: 0 Number of images uploaded: 1 Number of images uploaded: 2
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- socalgal2 11mo agoI'd be curious if that holds for all languages. The plural version does not and as you pointed out, there's a solution in English that works. But, I'm curious if there are any languages were that type of solution doesn't work. https://perldoc.perl.org/Locale::Maketext::TPJ13#A-Localization-Horror-Story:-It-Could-Happen-To-You https://perldoc.perl.org/Locale::Maketext::TPJ13#A-Localizat...
- BrtByte 11mo agoThe quiet tragedy of "almost good" software
- codegeek 11mo ago(minutes == 1) ? "minute" : "minutes" I really care about this one. One option I suggest is to use minute(s) etc that can take care of both 1 and higher numbers. 1 minute(s) works
- SirensOfTitan 11mo agoWhile I don’t think proper pluralization is indicative of anything outside of real world time constraints, I am a fan of these kinds of tacit signals. Last week, my wife and I toured a school for our daughter. The school gave us these pretty notebooks with a blackwing pencil, saying that they “take writing seriously here.” I noticed that the students, however, did not use blackwings but cheap low quality yellow pencils. This signal prompted me to pay closer attention, and I found half a dozen things that affirmed the bad feeling I had about the place. It’s a simple rule, but in the era where everyone is trying to sell me, I use Bill Hamilton’s Say Mean Do rule from his “Saints and Psychopaths” about finding real spiritual mentors. Broadly: saints say what they mean and do what they say. Unfortunately it’s probably just as hard to find tech companies who are honest as it is to find a true spiritual mentor. B2B SaaS sales cycle is usually just checkbox hunting and CYA.
- strickjb9 11mo agoI know this is besides the point but translation libraries are perfect for this even if you aren't creating a multilingual site. You define your singular/plural forms in one place.
- WorldMaker 11mo agoThere's an old proverb that the best time to add i18n support is today. It takes a bit of extra effort to build new stuff with it in mind, but that little bit of extra effort today goes a long way (and builds good habits) versus the large projects to add it tomorrow when it becomes tech debt and needs a full audit of every possible way a string might be formed for display to a user, because you just got a client/customer who needs it tomorrow.
- barumrho 11mo ago“이/가” is the Korean version of this. It depends on the sound of the word that precedes. I still remember seeing it when I first started using Windows 95. As a kid, I was amused that it didn’t know which one to use. Really, I didn’t even know that I was making that choice (and couldn’t say what the rule was). If anyone is interested about it, this page explains https://www.90daykorean.com/i-ga-grammar/ https://www.90daykorean.com/i-ga-grammar/
- ctxc 11mo agoHaha, interesting!
- commandlinefan 11mo agoI feel the same way about wasteful software. I've spent most of my career working for people who would rather I sit idle and do nothing at all than "waste" valuable programmer time trying to optimize our software. We have websites that load slowly, downloading gigabytes of unused and useless scripts that nobody has the courage to remove because nobody remembers why it was put there in the first place.
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoI wouldn't want to be part of a company that uses a ternary to make an English only i18n thing. Please use a proper i18n framework that supports proper pluralization, as the Polish example highlights. Keep in mind English is a super weird language, it's three languages in a trenchcoat with stuff like 'beef' coming from French and 'meat' from Germanic.
- computerthings 11mo ago[dead]
- Communitivity 11mo agoThe article makes sense for me. I see it like the broken windows policy of software development. If you allow sloppiness in the small places, the places where you allow it will grow, until your code base is riddled with it. The fight for code quality is also a fight against damaging bugs and against exploitable vulnerabilities. One big problem with the fight is that industry is incentivized to cut corners. '(Fast, Cheap, Good)..pick two' often results in managers picking fast and cheap. In some ways,they seem legally obligated to fast and cheap due to fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders. That's only if you look at the potential profit and risks from a very short term. Alas, that is what most of the world's businesses do at the moment. To paraphrase Dom from the Fast and the Furious, "We live our lives one business quarter at a time". Eventually Dom discovers the futility of that during the course of the series. Hopefully we will too, before we crash.
- OhNoHereWeGo 11mo agoThank you so much for the laugh! > Hopefully we will too, before we crash. I think LLMs are helping us to bolt rocket engines to cars.
- philk10 11mo agothe broken windows theory that was shown to be flawed? :)
- ctxc 11mo agoThank you, well said!
- OhNoHereWeGo 11mo agoThe essence of this post is about craftsmanship, value, and caring about what you're doing. It's really hard to put this into words. There's certainly a gradient and trade-offs to be made. In most businesses, the priority is to make money. This is not bad. Business owners deserve to make money for their efforts. It's always been the case that "bean counters" will optimize to increase profits. If you want a superior product, you have to pay for it. Particle board furniture sold at Walmart certainly wont last nearly the same way as hand-crafted pieces by Gomer Bolstrood. The contrast is dramatic. Mass produced disposable products vs one-of-a-kind products built with a high attention to detail. The idea of paying more for quality doesn't seem to apply to software. Maybe I'm romanticizing the past, but I believe it did once. I believe that the software developers of yore cared more about their craft than most of the ones employed today. I think they had to. If a product didn't sell, it was pulled from the shelves. It would be dropped by distributors. Somewhere along the way it's become more important to prioritize minimal time to market, and minimal viable products. People who care about software quality still exist, but they are slowly being squeezed out by others who don't. Profit, growth, and market share have become more important than providing real value to users.
- calvinmorrison 11mo agooutside of instiutions of granduer and programming greats like bell labs, eriksson, and so forth, no, programming has been TERRIBLE and has gotten a lot better. Version control, documentation, language capabilities are all better than they were 10 or 20 years ago Fewer people are writing horrible applications in VBx and Access, more people are writing things with good fundementals. So - in many ways it's easier than ever to write "good" software.
- ricardo81 11mo agoagreed. we interact with so many different types of software and I presume like me, we designate a confidence score of how things will work out because there's so many unknown quantities out there. Those little thoughts you have while an app/page is doing what it's doing, wondering whether it even works as it says in the first place. I place value on grammar but appreciate in the web today that surely around half of English words in it are ESL (while ignoring AI). And that's fine, it's a human thing- not everyone was taught English or has known it a long time, or has dyslexia etc etc. I guess in the end, allow end users to have full confidence in you in all ways possible.
- ashv 11mo agoThere's an npm package for that! https://www.npmjs.com/package/pluralize https://www.npmjs.com/package/pluralize
- krowek 11mo agoThere's always an NPM package, even for trivial things like function fn(val) { return typeof val === "number" && isFinite(val) && Math.floor(val) === val; };
- nilirl 11mo agoSo: The author wants to work for a company with resources. Unfortunately, details take time and time takes money. For a business's survival, the company's relative positioning in the market, access to sales and marketing channels, financing are much stronger concerns. This is a designer longing for endless tinkering.
- BobbyTables2 11mo agoI wonder if the blog author has ever had to write automated tests for what they propose.. Sure it’s doable, but trivial things are now non-trivial. Ignoring i8n is also a significant issue.
- ctxc 11mo agoTests? What tests? ;) Seriously though, "Files deleted: {0 or 1 or 1000}" would also work :)
- stevenjgarner 11mo agoWith such a clear vision of the "company I want to be a part of", maybe you should walk the walk and establish such a company? Perhaps then you will find out that what actually floats to the top is what we've got, rather than what we want. Or perhaps you will be the next GOAT.
- ctxc 11mo agoOuch. Unfortunately I don't think I will. I'll probably always be hired by someone else to build a shared vision and aspire to do it as well as I possibly can :)
- stevenjgarner 11mo agoI didn't mean that to be demeaning at all. I seriously urge you to implement that vision even as a bootstrapped side project to your main gig. If you want to "build something (you're) proud to sign (your) name on", chances are whatever you build will display that authenticity, which will either resonate with customers or not. People love authenticity, perhaps customers not so much. The market can be brutal and just because something is "better" or more genuine does not necessarily equate to revenue. You have already started a big part of your story, explaining why your vision is "better". Go ahead and implement something incorporating that vision, explaining its advantages to the market. At the end of the day, you will at the very least feel true to your self. A job may not give you that.
- ctxc 11mo agoHaha, I understand. I actually agree with the sentiment in your first comment. These aren't what defines if a company is successful. A good experience, care and craftsmanship are important, but not company defining. I have decided for myself that most company defining areas are not where I want to gain expertise in (focused user research, finding PMF, funding, GTM, sales, marketing, etc) - I'm passionate about tech and am intentional about excellence in this area. Which is why I will probably never establish a company. But of course I can lead a team to do good technical work and would like coworkers who do the same. One can dream ;)
- lacoolj 11mo agoMan I'm so far away from being concerned about this...just like, we still need to fix duplicate icons that mean different things, phrases like "Are you sure to delete?", mis-aligned text/inputs EVERYWHERE... If this is your biggest concern at a company (regarding the UI at least), you are miles ahead of us. Congrats
- ctxc 11mo agoHaha, one can dream! ;)
- aswegs8 11mo agoI'd say there are about 100 thousand variables that correlate more closely with if a company is a good place to work at than pluralizing some frontend stuff.
- cindyllm 11mo ago[dead]
- stackedinserter 11mo agoSometimes devs go too far with that, e.g. with timestamps, like "2 days ago". Just give me ISO timestamps I'm dying.
- 0xbadcafebee 11mo ago(s) is important, but cosmetic. I'd rather you care if the product works well first, and then care about the cosmetic. Is it solving the user's problem like they want? Is it not creating more problems for them? And is the work being done in a sustainable way (for the employees, environment, etc)? That's the company I want to work for.
- GMoromisato 11mo agoIn GridWhale I made sure the String function could handle pluralization variants: String(0, "=0:no birds|=1:1 bird|# birds") // "no birds" String(1, "=0:no birds|=1:1 bird|# birds") // "1 bird" String(2, "=0:no birds|=1:1 bird|# birds") // "2 birds" [For translation you can imagine that we replace the literal string with a string code.] This is still more work, of course, but having it built-in to the language is super-useful.
- jackblemming 11mo agoThat’s not craftsmanship, the same way being snobby that a restaurant didn’t garnish a meal isn’t craftsmanship. And working at uptight places that focus more on the garnish than the actual meal, suck.
- OfflineSergio 11mo agoIf I was writing this I wouldn't put the "Has smart, humble coworker(s)." right there on top. I there is no reasonable solution for that (s) in this case but stil...
- mdriley 11mo agoObligatory oldnewthing: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030929-02/?p=42363 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030929-02/?p=42... > Multilingual support also explains why you see things like “1 folder(s)” instead of “1 folder” and “2 folders”. Why not have two format strings, one for when the number of items is exactly one, and one for when the number of items is two or more? > Well, for one, that would significantly increase the number of strings we would have to carry around. (If you say “just add s to make the plural” then you really need to get out more!) > For two, some languages (such as Slovene) have a “dual” number in addition to singular and plural. The Lahir language has singular (one), dual (two), trial (three), paucal (a few), and plural (many). So now you have to have perhaps five versions of every string that contains a replaceable number.
- sivaraam 11mo agoI suppose Raymond chen has shared enough insights for us to build a whole wiki out of it :-) A couple of other related ones: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20241007-00/?p=110345 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20241007-00/?p=11... https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20241101-00/?p=110447 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20241101-00/?p=11...
- jay_kyburz 11mo agoWe are a small team and localize our product into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, Japaneses, Simplified Chinese, and Russian. We avoid pluralization where we can. The localization team taught us a trick, if you flip it around, in many cases its acceptable to simply have single term. Items Loading: 5 Uploading: 3 User Added: 1 Minutes Remaining: 1
- john-h-k 11mo agoFor a restaurant booking, I like this. For blob uploads, I’d significantly prefer a fixed format! If I want to automate anything off the back of it it just becomes that few % easier
- constantcrying 11mo agoThis article describes pretty perfectly why software does not have engineers, software only has craftsmen. Craftsmen who see their craft as something deeply personal and deeply aesthetic.