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>the meanness of programming communities is a the biggest problem we have Or maybe it's our biggest asset. In a world filled with bullshit (how many people you

• doorhammer 13y ago
  You can cut out a lot of bullshit without being an asshole; it's just another set of social skills. Being an asshole also doesn't inherently cut out bullshit.
  • egypturnash 13y ago
    Where do you think bullshit comes from anyway? Bull assholes. n.n
  • vacri 13y ago
    However it should also be pointed out that being polite doesn't inherently mean being worthy. The top comment in this thread is polite, is complaining about the hacker culture not being polite... and is making flat-out lies to promote the case.
    • doorhammer 13y ago
      Yeah, you're right. Being polite doesn't make you more honest or sincere than being an asshole. I'd say that they're just not as correlated they seem to be at times. I'm always suspect of any solution that goes to any extreme. I also think there are enough micro-cultures in the programming space, themselves crossing a myriad of geocultural contexts, to defy broad generalizations. I think it's most constructive and useful to approach it as a way of generally dealing with people and not a specific group. We haven't developed in such a way to easily and rationally react to abrasive responses in conversation. I don't think it creates a social atmosphere that optimally takes advantage of our modern context.
• john_fushi 13y ago
  I often see the 'honesty' argument when people talk about the programmer community being mean. The way I see it, most of the time there is no more honesty than anywhere else. People jump on some hate bandwagon whether it is bullshit or not. Or sometimes, there is just some fad going on and everyone jump on the love train where critical thinking is met with a defensive/reactionary attitude.
• shadowfiend 13y ago
  There is no fundamental incompatibility between being honest and being respectful and understanding. You can tell someone “you suck, go back to the corner of the Internet you came from, I don't have time for this”, or you can tell them “your skills don't seem to be quite at the level where we can accept your contributions; in particular, you don't understand X, Y, and Z very well and it shows in your code. I'm short on time, but if someone else has time to explain why that would be great.” The difference is almost immeasurable between those two interactions, even though they are saying the same thing. I've made this point before regarding derision, which I think is the true issue. I'll quote myself, since I've already written the thing[1]: “Derision is not curtness. It is not impatience. It is explicit, intentional putting-down of someone because they aren't as good at something as you are or think they should be. And it is a poison. Unfortunately, if you take it frequently enough, it becomes habit. It becomes second nature. And you stop noticing it's poisonous. And so, unfortunately, it is an oft-enjoyed poison in intellectual circles. It doesn't help anything. It doesn't help you understand the world or other people. It doesn't really save you that much time. It simply makes you feel better about yourself.” [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4921579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4921579
  • stackcollision 13y ago
    Or, to quote Heinlein: 'Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naïve, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.'
    • 6d0debc071 13y ago
      Formalities indicate social distance, they're general-fit heuristics. Of course they seem dishonest to kids, when you're friendly with your friends and don't need them, and when the other option is that you hold someone in poor regard, they can never be anything but lies. I suspect anyone who's ever written an inter-company email will know the value of having a formal way of speaking that is unlikely to give offence though.
• dmor 13y ago
  In my journey as a programmer I discovered that sometimes people who told me my ideas sucked turned out to be wrong, and many of the folks who leaned on superior background were stagnant and became institutionalized in a way that is similar to a professor who relies on tenure for credibility. There are a lot of false idols to be worshipped in programming if you are looking for someone else to tell you what to do. The elitism isn't shocking anymore, but it is sad and limiting. I want to hang out with / work with a programmer like this as much as I want to hang out with a religious zealot. Which is to say not at all.
  • pfortuny 13y ago
    This is the proverbial: if someone smart starts by telling you that they are unsure or that it depends, (in a field you are quite sure they know something), then you had probably better listen to what they say: at least it will not be rubbish. On the other hand, dogmatism is frequently a way to relieve insecurity.
• tbomb 13y ago
  But you can be honest about a bad/terrible idea without being and asshole about it. I thrive on the criticism I get from others and look forward to speaking with people who think my ideas are no good, as long as they can explain their reasoning. There's a world of difference between "Your idea sucks." and "Your idea sucks because,"
  • rahoulb 13y ago
    Or even better "I'm not sure about your idea because..." as that leaves the door open to it being a misunderstanding on my part, which is always a possibility.
    • pfortuny 13y ago
      This is always a good way to start a conversation because at least the other party feels safe and that he will be dealt with as a person with ideas, not a donkey.
• ritchiea 13y ago
  Did you read the thread the OP is responding to? The top comment is a personal insult that doesn't respond to the content posted and basically says "the feature you had a meeting with Google about is unimportant, so get over it" [1]. The comment itself is completely in contrary to the relentlessly critical attitude that believes every detail is important. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5738455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5738455
• mwfunk 13y ago
  I think people are talking about multiple phenomena here. Yeah, there's the whole blunt/direct/borderline asshole behavior when someone is making a mistake and someone else is trying to correct that mistake in the most efficient way possible, hopefully educating the person making the mistake and maybe being a jerk about it to highlight for everyone what a huge mistake it is so everyone else remembers not to do that thing. That's what the Linus defenders are usually standing up for, at least. Maybe in his case it's an effective way to run his project, I don't know. He's the boss and it's up to his contributors whether or not they want to deal with that kind of thing. I don't think that's the phenomenon that's being discussed here though. You say it's refreshing to be told when your ideas suck by someone who knows better, but in my experience that's not the case in most programming communities. Most of the time, the people who are going to tell you that you that your ideas suck are not actually that much more experienced and may not even have better ideas. When I first got on Usenet in the early '90s, I was just starting to learn programming. I thought the people on comp.lang.c and elsewhere were just the smartest people in the world (some of them were, of course). I loved it when they skewered people asking dumb questions or proposing dumb ideas, and I felt like I learned a lot from reading their posts. In hindsight, they only seemed to be so smart because I knew so little. Looking back on it now, many of them just seem like bitter and pedantic people that knew a lot of technical minutiae but didn't necessarily know or care about creating software that actually did things, that other people could use. They were smart and knew a lot of useful things, but just as often they would make very personal and subjective observations about things, but mask those observations as bold, objective proclamations about This Is How Software Should Be Written. Unfortunately, in my larval hacker stage I couldn't tell the difference. Anyway, what I was getting at was that it's good to learn things from people who know more than you do, but just because they're assholes about it doesn't mean they're right (it frequently means the opposite). Programming communities tend to be dominated by the assholes though, because they're the most motivated post comments and get into arguments with people about technical minutiae. It's the way it is, but it's not necessarily a good thing.
  • gosu 13y ago
    I qualify as a Linus defender, but I disagree with your "he's the boss and it's up to his contributors to leave" idea. The whole point of these discussions is to use reason to encourage problematic people to change themselves, rather than cutting those people off entirely, as you suggest.
• smrtinsert 13y ago
  But its not honesty as you're implying - its blind vitriol. Anything that turns off communication which is always a Bad Idea, especially when dealing with subjective topics. Also I find it disturbing that you connect bug fixes to a world view, the two couldn't be more separate.
• pfortuny 13y ago
  No, being impolite does not come with the profession, this is an easy excuse which sidesteps the problem. The difference between: "You cannot use a pointer without previous initialization becuase it may lead to corrupt memory, or some other error". and "Nobody with a fking idea of C would dereference a pointer as you have done" is politeness. And the first one helps, the second one just offends. Both are right, but one is more useful than the other. Especially in public discussions. Being polite requires, as any other virtue, habit. And usually, acquiring it requires effort. But we, all of we, expect it from all of us.
  • sirclueless 13y ago
    There's plenty of legitimate reasons to give brusque, dismissive answers. It's tough to distinguish between someone dismissing an idea because he sees the inevitable problems that make it unworkable, and someone dismissing an idea that falls outside his comfort zone. It's tough to distinguish between someone giving an abrupt answer because her time is too valuable to spend on a detailed one, and someone giving an abrupt answer because she doesn't have the understanding to formulate an actual rebuttal. And of course it's impossible to tell any of the above from a nice guy having a shitty day. There's a lot of gripe about our shitty community, and I often wonder whether the griping is just a byproduct of having so many conversations in permanently archived public fora, or whether there really is some force at work that makes impolite people choose programming or makes programmers impolite.
    • roguecoder 13y ago
      It's not actually that hard: A) They politely provide reasons, citations or rational for their opinion and may ask you to address those concerns. B) If their time is too valuable and mine isn't there had better be a significant actual differential in our importance in the world. I'd take it from my CEO, but I expect explanations from anyone under him. Otherwise the "brusque" answer is like someone who doesn't bother capitalizing and using proper punctuation: a mark of disrespect for my time. C) The nice guy having a shitty day feels bad when you call him on acting like an asshole.
• Tloewald 13y ago
  This might be credible if I noticed any correlation between this kind of bad behavior and actual talent, but I don't. It's the folks who cling to their sekrit knowledge who tend to be the dicks.
• Garoof 13y ago
  "(how many people you think really empathize with you - vs. just going through the motions?)" I don't know that I prefer people going through the motions of hating on each other. It's not necessarily honest and genuine just because it's unpleasant.