Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Insults No Developer Wants To Hear? (infoworld.com)
snydeq writes: Flame wars in the bug tracker might be exactly the right (harsh) feedback your code needs, writes Peter Wayner in his run-down of the insults no programmer wants to hear about their code or coding skills. "The technology world is a bit different than the pretty, coiffed world of suits and salesdroids where everyone is polite, even when they hate your guts and think you're an idiot. Suit-clad managers may smile and hide their real message by the way they say you're doing "great, real great pal," but programmers often speak their minds, and when that mind has something unpleasant to say, look-out, feelings." Instead of posting this story in a click-bait fashion as presented from InfoWorld, we thought we'd ask the developers of Slashdot: What are some insults no developer wants to hear? Some of the classic insults include: N00b, /dev/null, Eye Candy, Fanboi, and [Nothing]. Are there any insults you are familiar with that aren't mentioned in the list?
What kind of frat-house development shop are you running? These are the people who are going to help make you successful, not some new pledges to haze. Grow. The. Fuck. Up.
Sorry, but so far, almost every story posted by BeauHD has been completely irrelevant. Perhaps SD is better than HD? Either way, all his posted stories don't belong on this site. They're all click bait.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
"Yes but as I'm not a moron I never thought of the user story from your perspective..."
I hope this was intended as a joke in poor taste.
Something really hard for some developers to understand is that our peer groups are usually not representative of our user base. We're used to hanging around with really bright people, people who apply logic to questions and use evidence to arrive at conclusions. When we forget that not everyone in the world is like that, we assume that everyone who touches our applications is smart, quick, logical, and willing to read instructions. In reality, we should be constantly aware that 50% of our users are literally below average (by definition, not because we think they're "morons".)
That means a lot of attention needs to be paid to User Experience. A few years ago we went through our application and made sure that every screen was at a 5th grade reading level. We made sure our users could be trained on the basic functions, features, and processes in less than half an hour. Error messages have to be focused on correcting the problem, not accusing the users of being "morons" and making a mistake, and not leaving them fearing punishment. And if a person runs into a feature that's difficult, frequently gives them error messages, or that takes them a long time to figure out, it's not their fault that the UI didn't help them. It's the UI that needs work.
John
Something that a lot of developers seem to take pride in, but which is really at the root of unprofessionalism is
Wow, your code is so complex I can't understand it.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
No developer ever never ever wants to have Linus critique their code.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Programmers who hurl insults at each other like to think it's because they're honest, no-nonsense efficiency machines that get things done. The reality is that they never bothered to learn how to interact effectively with other human beings, and that deficiency is typically far more detrimental to their professional lives than they realize."
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
People have very long memories, especially in the career department when their house, and food for their family is on the line. Wisecracking about devs in general in IT is one thing. Insulting people to their face or their manager's face is not exactly a very wise career move.
Plus, devs have heard it all. They have heard they can be replaced by offshore dev houses, H-1Bs, monkeys, or almost anything. They are not going to perform any better when someone continues to compare them with inanimate objects or people in a persistent vegetative state.
To boot, there may be a good chance that the college intern or H-1B fresh off the boat that is the brunt of insults this week may be one's manager the the next week after a corporate reorg or a buyout.
I agree with most of your user interface principles, except for the the "fifth grade reading level" one. You might have a point, but I really don't like talking down to grown-ass adults.
I've worked on software where I put a lot of thought into describing the error in clear, complete, accurate, and accessible terms, only to be told that the users aren't going to "even bother to read it because it's too long". In my view, the kind of people who object to error messages that are complete sentences and contain three-syllable words are the kind of people who won't read any error message under any circumstances, but whatever. "ERR 34: Bad srvc" it is. Choke on it.
And if you have no living enemies, you stood up, crushed your enemies, saw them driven before you, and heard the lamentations of the suits.
Insults are the first refuge of the insecure. I'm not talking Torvalds-style insults of the code, I'm talking about when they insult you.
Bad code deserves insults, although not all insulted code is bad, since people will insult good code as an indirect insult of the coder, which is completely different.
Flaming people in order to build oneself up by putting other people down is at least as old as the Internet, but it's not conducive to better coding - it's more likely to drive away people who could potentially be valuable contributors.
Because of that, there is at least one online forum (coderanch.com) whose primary purpose is to allow people to ask stupid questions with the assurance that they won't be flamed.
In my view, the kind of people who object to error messages that are complete sentences and contain three-syllable words are the kind of people who won't read any error message under any circumstances, but whatever. "ERR 34: Bad srvc" it is. Choke on it.
*sigh* The error message isn't for that user, it's for the person they call for help.
"Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
Which is why error messages need to be two-part dialogs. There needs to first be a friendly, clear, non-technical message intended for the end user indicating that something went wrong, it probably isn't their fault, and that they should pass the error on to either their IT staff or the developer (depending on the situation), and second a more technical error message, possibly hidden behind a "more information" button, actually describing what went wrong for whoever the message is passed on to so they can debug the problem.
If the technical error is all that the end user sees, their only reaction will be to mash buttons until they can continue with whatever they were doing, and get mad when that doesn't work.
One should be grateful for one's mother's sexual habits.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
*sigh* The error message isn't for that user, it's for the person they call for help.
Then it's a crap error message. This is one thing that IBM actually has completely fucking nailed, at least as compared to anyone else. They give you an informative error message and a unique code. The error message is for anyone who happens to be at the keyboard. The code is for techs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
place where I come from you get your balls smashed with two big stones for this.
Insults are just part of the trade and I do not care if somebody is calling me an asshole or hiding this behind a wall of words. Personally I am trying to be extremely polite when I encounter a real empty-head. This is because such discussions sooner or later end up at some sort of arbitrage where calling names is not acceptable. This said many insults are not insults per se - on one job I asked a guy whether he actually let somebody test his code or I was first victim - this was enough to be considered offense and bring y ass to management office. It was surely fun especially as I was right.
At one point my then employer and I had a great idea, which we never implemented, that we should show pictures with each error message, so the call would go "Hey, I just used your product, and it showed me a picture of a tree and said 'Software Error'", "A tree? Ah, that means you're out of memory. Might mean a memory leak. Can you tell me what you were doing before you saw the tree..."
That probably is one of the best ideas I have heard in a while. It would likely give the user something they would remember that would be able to provide useful info.
Time to offend someone
You don't have to insult them. Just do their job for them and they'll get the point.