3 ms·

Things I’ve Stopped Saying

5 points by sinak 11y ago

angersock 11y ago
A few of these I certainly agree with--using the gender neutral pronouns for hypotheticals is actually handy, because it denotes that gender doesn't matter in the issue at hand and also because it lets me fill in whatever I want. I similarly agree with using "folks" instead of "guys", because it's technically more accurate in a mixed group (and because it sounds...well...folksy and kinda adorable in an anachronistic sort of way). I think the author ignores the infantilizing "boys" in common use as well as "girls", though if called out on it I imagine they'd correct themselves. It can be condescending in either context, even when meant with adoration--such is the problem of diminutives in any language. The entire notion of preferred pronouns kinda is just being nonconformant with the English language, and honestly gets a bit absurd--neutral pronouns exist and are sufficient. "Master/slave" is common and reasonable terminology...in the former case, it pretty well describes the relationship compared with secondary/primary. Consider: does a slave get promoted to master? There's a nuance in word choice (though I'd prefer to see more entertaining language, like top/bottom, domme/sub, etc.) that reflects typical usage. "blacklist/whitelist" is common terminology. "blind spot" is something referring to an inability to see certain things, despite functioning fine otherwise. A common discussion I have with friends on tech projects is "what are our blind spots here"; this is not because we are ignorant, but because we accept the possibility that an issue may approach us from an angle we wouldn't normally be observing. That's pretty much the textbook definition of blind spot. I see what they're getting at, but I don't really think it's something worth doing myself. EDIT: Also, I'd prefer if the npm folk's spent less time being sensitive and more time fixing the fucking lame and short-sighted slapdashery of their package management. Least of all because those chucklefucks are endangering the ecosystem in the pursuit of magical VC funbucks.
- beaugunderson 11y ago
  this is just a list of things that i personally stopped saying--so i wasn't ignoring boys, i just never stopped saying it because i had never started. :) i also would have included "lame" on the list, though, if it was something i'd previously said. what's your problem with npm though? i love it.
  - angersock 11y ago
    NPM managed to look at all the other package managers out there--bundler, etc.--and pick the worst way of doing things. So, first, the entire idea of having arbitrarily nested--and versioned!--dependencies is not good, least of all because it means that you can end up with like five different versions of underscore or lodash in your project. This is just plain ugly. Second, there were two issues spanning like two years of discussion about this nesting. Specifically, on one of the official operating systems supported (cough windows cough), this nesting of directories tends to cause things to break in weird ways. This is especially annoying when bundling for deployment or cleaning during CI. They're still hemming and hawing about fixing it--and that's only after finally admitting they goofed.

5 points by sinak 11y ago

A few of these I certainly agree with--using the gender neutral pronouns for hypotheticals is actually handy, because it denotes that gender doesn't matter in the issue at hand and also because it lets me fill in whatever I want. I similarly agree with using "folks" instead of "guys", because it's technically more accurate in a mixed group (and because it sounds...well...folksy and kinda adorable in an anachronistic sort of way). I think the author ignores the infantilizing "boys" in common use as well as "girls", though if called out on it I imagine they'd correct themselves. It can be condescending in either context, even when meant with adoration--such is the problem of diminutives in any language. The entire notion of preferred pronouns kinda is just being nonconformant with the English language, and honestly gets a bit absurd--neutral pronouns exist and are sufficient. "Master/slave" is common and reasonable terminology...in the former case, it pretty well describes the relationship compared with secondary/primary. Consider: does a slave get promoted to master? There's a nuance in word choice (though I'd prefer to see more entertaining language, like top/bottom, domme/sub, etc.) that reflects typical usage. "blacklist/whitelist" is common terminology. "blind spot" is something referring to an inability to see certain things, despite functioning fine otherwise. A common discussion I have with friends on tech projects is "what are our blind spots here"; this is not because we are ignorant, but because we accept the possibility that an issue may approach us from an angle we wouldn't normally be observing. That's pretty much the textbook definition of blind spot. I see what they're getting at, but I don't really think it's something worth doing myself. EDIT: Also, I'd prefer if the npm folk's spent less time being sensitive and more time fixing the fucking lame and short-sighted slapdashery of their package management. Least of all because those chucklefucks are endangering the ecosystem in the pursuit of magical VC funbucks.

beaugunderson 11y ago
this is just a list of things that i personally stopped saying--so i wasn't ignoring boys, i just never stopped saying it because i had never started. :) i also would have included "lame" on the list, though, if it was something i'd previously said. what's your problem with npm though? i love it.
- angersock 11y ago
  NPM managed to look at all the other package managers out there--bundler, etc.--and pick the worst way of doing things. So, first, the entire idea of having arbitrarily nested--and versioned!--dependencies is not good, least of all because it means that you can end up with like five different versions of underscore or lodash in your project. This is just plain ugly. Second, there were two issues spanning like two years of discussion about this nesting. Specifically, on one of the official operating systems supported (cough windows cough), this nesting of directories tends to cause things to break in weird ways. This is especially annoying when bundling for deployment or cleaning during CI. They're still hemming and hawing about fixing it--and that's only after finally admitting they goofed.