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Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

standard.co.uk

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Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#61

Post by commandlinefan »

> ignorance and laziness

It’s not just ignorance. Plain ignorance is normally corrected by education. In the case of grammar and spelling, people actually get DEFENSIVE about doing things wrong. “I’m not writing a college essay, you know what I was trying to say” is a common retort when somebody’s spelling or grammar is pointed out to be incorrect. If you can’t even remember the correct rules of written speech in a single language (your NATIVE LANGUAGE), you really ought to step back and consider whether or not you’re really as smart as you think you are.

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#63

Post by nkrisc »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #38
jackjeff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I found there is a high correlation between one’s ability to write correct English and one’s ability to write correct code. If I’m in the hiring side and I see a “its” vs “it’s” mistake it counts against you. A higher correlation is with consistency in spacing. The worst coders I met are the one who keep changing the rules about how many spaces they leave after commas and brackets... within the same file.

Glad to know the difference between me having money to survive and being jobless will be a typo.

What, your keystrokes were streamed to the hiring manager as you typed? Writing is not real-time communication, take the time to review it before you send it. I corrected a few typos while writing this comment.

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#65

Post by Brian_K_White »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #38
jackjeff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I found there is a high correlation between one’s ability to write correct English and one’s ability to write correct code. If I’m in the hiring side and I see a “its” vs “it’s” mistake it counts against you. A higher correlation is with consistency in spacing. The worst coders I met are the one who keep changing the rules about how many spaces they leave after commas and brackets... within the same file.

Glad to know the difference between me having money to survive and being jobless will be a typo.

I cannot express how little sympathy I have for this tale of woe.

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#66

Post by LikeAnElephant »

commandlinefan wrote: post #61

> ignorance and laziness It’s not just ignorance. Plain ignorance is normally corrected by education. In the case of grammar and spelling, people actually get DEFENSIVE about doing things wrong. “I’m not writing a college essay, you know what I was trying to say” is a common retort when somebody’s spelling or grammar is pointed out to be incorrect. If you can’t even remember the correct rules of written speech in a s…

Fair, but also consider: If the rules are confusing and the proper meaning can be conveyed without following them anyway... maybe it's not worth remembering the minutiae?

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#67

Post by Brian_K_White »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #24
exergy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moreover, I think of it like how I think of clothes. You dress well not just for yourself but also as a mark of respect to those whom you're about to meet. Properly typed posts convey similar respect. Also, sorry to invoke the slippery slope argument, but otherwise what's stopping us from devolving all the way back to scriptura continua ?

> otherwise what's stopping us from devolving all the way back to scriptura continua ? The facts that 1. People once trained generally do not have a problem identifying word boundaries. There are edge cases, but for whatever reason they don't tend to cause problems. 2. People overwhelmingly agree that marking of word boundaries in text is useful. Neither of those is true for apostrophes. They're hard for people to re…

They are not hard to remember, and they add value.

Gee it's almost like stating an opinion as though it were a fact is free, and anyone can do it, and it means nothing, and so is a pointless waste of time, which says something about the worth of the insights of whoever does it.

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#68

Post by greenyoda »

guiraldelli wrote: post #49
jackjeff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I found there is a high correlation between one’s ability to write correct English and one’s ability to write correct code. If I’m in the hiring side and I see a “its” vs “it’s” mistake it counts against you. A higher correlation is with consistency in spacing. The worst coders I met are the one who keep changing the rules about how many spaces they leave after commas and brackets... within the same file.

> Anecdotally I found there is a high correlation between one’s ability to write correct English and one’s ability to write correct code. I have been thinking a long time about it and I concluded it is about one being methodical. A methodic person tends to put extra attention on (all) the tasks they perform, as well as they are more critic to correctness, and those features combined might make them “better programmer…

I agree, but I think it's more than just being methodical - it's also a sign that someone cares about and respects their co-workers.

People who take the time to write their code carefully understand that they're writing the code for other people to understand, not just for a machine. They're considerate of others, not wanting them to waste their time in the future trying to make sense of sloppy code. The same is true for e-mails, doc and other written communication - if I take an extra minute to make my message clear, it can save a lot of confusion down the road. (This is even true for things like Slack messages and HN comments.)

Re: Apostrophe society shuts down because 'ignorance and laziness have won'

#69

Post by guenthert »

guiraldelli wrote: post #49
jackjeff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I found there is a high correlation between one’s ability to write correct English and one’s ability to write correct code. If I’m in the hiring side and I see a “its” vs “it’s” mistake it counts against you. A higher correlation is with consistency in spacing. The worst coders I met are the one who keep changing the rules about how many spaces they leave after commas and brackets... within the same file.

> Anecdotally I found there is a high correlation between one’s ability to write correct English and one’s ability to write correct code. I have been thinking a long time about it and I concluded it is about one being methodical. A methodic person tends to put extra attention on (all) the tasks they perform, as well as they are more critic to correctness, and those features combined might make them “better programmer…

Absurd oversimplification. What are "better programmers"? There clearly will be a difference in requirements whether you'll be programming assembly code for a space probe or javascript for yet another web site.

Beside, one would think that proper English (which?) grammar and orthography comes easier to native speakers. The same isn't true for Math and logically stringent thinking, which I'd think is more closely related to programming.

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