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"Please, don't loosen that bolt until you jack up the rest." is NOT perfectly fine if it does not sufficiently drive the importance of that sentence home. jlgr

• johnchristopher 13y ago
  > One thing's for certain, if you get caught doing something wrong in that situation, you're going to get an earful and it will most certainly NOT happen again. I am really tempted to play the "citation needed" card on that one but in my experience yelling on someone has never prevented them doing the same mistake again. Quite the contrary. Are the geeks on HN that were yelled at senseless during PE better at basket-ball or sports ? I Thought so. Oh I don't say that encouraging someone with swearing or cursing to rise the adrenaline is bad. Cursing someone or yelling at him to get information conveyed ? Ridiculous. > One thing's for certain, if you get caught doing something wrong in that situation, you're going to get an earful and it will most certainly NOT happen again. When do we really man up and just punch the other guy in the face ? That should make sure he doesn't make the same mistake again since we just associate something physically to make things connect. > jlgreco's example of working on a farm is incredibly relevant because one tiny mistake on a farm can literally cost the lives of anyone or everyone in the family. If you're working on a tractor and you get something remotely wrong then suddenly you can't harvest this season, and everyone is broke and starving. Or the tractor falls and kills you and anyone else working under it. Right. Because on the farms, they are dumb enough to let newbies who saw a cow for the first time in their life on the tractor when real dangerous work is needed. I have worked on a farm for some days and my SO's cousins are all farmers. They ain't that dumb. > "Please, don't loosen that bolt until you jack up the rest." is NOT perfectly fine if it does not sufficiently drive the importance of that sentence home. Yes, it does. We don't need cursing words as big punctuation sign to get our attention focused on the task at hand. We need words like "now, listen boy, this is dangerous and this is how you do it safely". It works as well and you don't perpetuate violence and intimidation disguised as manhood.
  • jlgreco 13y ago
    > I am really tempted to play the "citation needed" card on that one but in my experience yelling on someone has never prevented them doing the same mistake again. Quite the contrary. That jack example was a real example. I was disassembling some greenbean processing equipment to move it across the plant floor (a scrubber/rinser, iirc), and decided to take a shortcut. It probably would have taken my hand if I hadn't have been stopped. You can be damn sure I never made that mistake again. This may seem alien, it may seem like something I should have been able to get through my thick skull with kind words after the immediate danger was neutralized, so I'll give it some background: Lots of things can take limbs on a farm; damn near everything has a warning label about that. Most of the time the labels are for stupid shit like "make sure you have this turned off, unplugged, and disabled before you stick your hand in there". Most things you do have very long drawn out procedures that seem over-engineered for the sake of safety (similar to the procedures people being trained to use firearms will learn). It is very easy to become complacent, particularly when you are being worked hard, but when somebody chews you out for something for five minutes then you know that in this case something is deadly serious.
    • ihnorton 13y ago
      This. My first day on my first job I heard the foreman chew out a lineman for a dangerous mistake, no profanity spared. I was young and sheltered, and it scared me half to death; but fear of disappointing that foreman certainly kept me alive and fully-limbed on multiple occasions. I've seen the same dynamic with ship captains and chief engineers laying in when needed. Here's the thing: in situations like this, hurt feelings are much preferred to other possible outcomes.
  • Zikes 13y ago
    > Are the geeks on HN that were yelled at senseless during PE better at basket-ball or sports ? I Thought so. No, in fact I hated P.E. and sports, and you know what happened? I chose not to participate. I had no interest in sports, and I was not cut out for sports, and so I did not participate. > Oh I don't say that encouraging someone with swearing or cursing to rise the adrenaline is bad. Cursing someone or yelling at him to get information conveyed ? Ridiculous. Linus is not a professor, he's not here to teach. When people go to work on the Linux kernel they have huge amounts of experience and it is expected that they already know what they are doing. That expectation is critical, and they are held to the highest standards. > When do we really man up and just punch the other guy in the face ? That should make sure he doesn't make the same mistake again since we just associate something physically to make things connect. That's an entirely facetious statement and not remotely related to what Linus is doing when he calls people out on their mistakes. But sure, what the hell, I'd say we can draw that line right about at the point where someone's "contributions" start to have a net negative affect on the development of the kernel. I'd say that's just about punch-worthy. > Right. Because on the farms, they are dumb enough to let newbies who saw a cow for the first time in their life on the tractor when real dangerous work is needed. I have worked on a farm for some days and my SO's cousins are all farmers. They ain't that dumb. I recommend going back to the farm for more than a few days. > Yes, it does. We don't need cursing words as big punctuation sign to get our attention focused on the task at hand. We need words like "now, listen boy, this is dangerous and this is how you do it safely". It works as well and you don't perpetuate violence and intimidation disguised as manhood. Since we just went right back to where we started, I can see that there's probably no way I can convince you of my (or Linus's) position. I'm okay with that, I think I've laid out my arguments fairly well and you have yours. I still disagree with a lot of what you say, but that's fine, in a week or so the only place this argument will exist is in our HN comment history.
• jlgreco 13y ago
  This is exactly right. Admittedly software development is not usually life threatening (certainly never on the sort of timescales that farm work can be (in the blink of an eye)), but I assert it remains relevant. Profanity, creative imagery, "emotional 'abuse'", and yes, even yelling (which Linus is not doing) convey meaning in a way that polite words cannot. This style of communication is a hard metal needle that allows you to mainline information.