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OpenJDK Bug Report Complains Source Code 'Has Too Many Swear Words' (java.net)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the professionalism dept.

Thursday a bug report complained that the source code for OpenJDK, the free and open-source implementation of Java, "has too many swear words." An anonymous reader writes: "There are many instances of swear words inside OpenJDK jdk/jdk source, scattered all over the place," reads the bug report. "As OpenJDK is used in a professional context, it seems inappropriate to leave these 12 instances in there, so here's a changeset to remove them."
IBM software developer (and OpenJDK team member and contributor) Adam Farley responded that "after discussion with the community, three determinations were reached":
  • "Damn" and "Crap" are not swear words.
  • Three of the four f-bombs are located in jszip.js, which should be corrected upstream (will follow up).
  • The f-bomb in BitArray.java, as well as the rude typo in SoftChannel.java, *are* swear words and should be removed to resolve this work item.

He promised a new webrev would be uploaded to reflect these determinations, and the bug has been marked as "resolved."


3 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Kill all the children... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    One of my favourite code comments came from a French Canadian coder in a shutdown routine for a Unix daemon process that spawned a lot of child processes where he wrote: "And now we kill all the children...".

  2. Heat by JBMcB · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've seen very select cases where swearing in comments can be useful.

    There was a piece of code I saw that people thought was a bug, but was actually purposefully written a particular way to get around a bug in the compiler. Even after comments like // SERIOUSLY do not touch this it's a workaround for CVXXXXXX

    People kept messing with it. Finally the dev checked in // DO NOT F****ING TOUCH THIS

    and the regressions went away. Again, niche applications, but still valid.

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
  3. Re: Well, for an expansive definition of "bug" by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is your definition of annoying?

    People who go around looking at code comment sections and bitch about swear words while adding absolutely nothing to the actual code development. That's pretty fucking annoying.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.