Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Being Slow to Criticise

solipsys.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 103 posts

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#41

Post by kle »

chrismsimpson wrote: post #13
narag wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, much of the FOSS currently available is either itself crap... I understood the article was about criticizing persons and their reasons for doing something. What you say is an opinion on results, an opinion that could be correct. But you can't make a convincing criticism of behaviour based on results, except with better results.

I think the Linux kernel is crap, for what it's worth. That's not to say there isn't very smart people solving very complicated problems with it. But it is a monolith with a egomaniac in charge. This view is not solely my own.

beautiful to find people yelling "the software is garbage" in the discussion of this particular post

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#42

Post by abnry »

Hokusai wrote: post #12
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

There's another factor at play in these discussions: Cynicism tends to look smart to outside observers. Cynicism is often mistaken for competence to outside observers. If a piece of software has a specific problem, the person chanting "This software is garbage" is going to look smarter than the people saying "Hold on, maybe this software is this way for a reason". There are various (somewhat weak) studies on the topi…

Cynism also has the advantage that no solution needs to be provided, so you are never wrong. > In toxic and mismanaged environments, being a cynic from the sidelines can be a better political strategy than being the positive person in the trenches trying to find solutions and compromises. Yes. In the best awesome places I have worked, there are great constructive discussions on how to solve problems. If anyone is an…

>If anyone is an environment that cynism is rewarded, run from there. There are better places to be.

This is why I quit Twitter.

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#43

Post by balnaphone »

chrismsimpson wrote: post #4

Being slow to criticise, particularly with colleagues you have to work day in and day out with, is critically important. That said, much of the FOSS currently available is either itself crap, or built on libraries and/or toolkits that are crap. I cite specifically anything of the GTK flavour, many popular things built in C/C++, and to a lesser degree QT. Why is this? Writing capstone technology (compilers and languag…

I'm guessing you mean something other than FOSS (free / open source software) in your critique of FOSS. Reason being, Swift is FOSS (https://github.com/apple/swift), both the compiler and the standard library. Likewise, the Microsoft C# compiler is also FOSS (https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn).

You seem to enjoy closed-source platform libraries (WinForms, AppKit), and want to promote developing software that relies on them. The survival characteristics of this approach don't seem very strong. Good luck!

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#44

Post by tilolebo »

zimpenfish wrote: post #21
grahamburger wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found that this can be a dangerous gamble on the part of the cynic. Often the cynic's argument can't even withstand a single clarifying question. The first person to ask "can you explain in detail why this won't work?" can often elevate themselves above the level of the cynic, sometimes humiliating the cynic in the process. I have experienced this from both perspectives and as a bystander. Today I try as much…

> The first person to ask "can you explain in detail why this won't work?" Unfortunately, in some forums, that often leads to that person suffering a barrage of negativity whilst the cynic ignores the question in favour of blustering elsewhere.

Exactly, someone else will just pop in the thread and post a provocative/insulting GIF/pic, and that's it, you'll have lost the argument.

I'm looking at you, Twitter...

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#45

Post by ColinWright »

lmm wrote: post #39
Daub wrote: post #15

Holding back on criticism is one of the founding principles of the brainstorming technique... that and listening.

And research has shown that it's counterproductive. Culling bad ideas quickly makes for better results.

That's fascinating ... can you provide references for that research? We've found the careful controlling of criticism to be invaluable in getting ideas up front quickly so they can then be dissected, mutated, co-evolved, and their best points combined.

Iterating quickly and ejecting bad ideas quickly has its place, yes, but not always. I'd be interested to see the underlying context for your statement here.

Thanks.

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#47

Post by madmax96 »

What the author is really railing against is thoughtless critiques. Declaring software garbage is a usually useless contribution because it only identifies that software can be improved, which is almost always true. However, it fails to provide any concrete advise for improvement that could be debated. There's the saying "it's not science if people can't disagree with you." Seeing how engineering involves the application of science, it's not engineering either. Therefore, these kinds of comments have no place in a professional community.

Being fast to critique _is_ good, provided the critiques are thoughtful. A thoughtful critique takes a clear stance, meaning it can be debated and (in an engineering or scientific setting) experimentally measured to verify it produces the intended effects. A thoughtful critique also poses questions not answered by the original body of work.

In the example described here, fixing the software would have been ideal. However, we can imagine scenarios where this isn't possible (e.g. you have a binary from a now-defunct entity that you must continue using.) The original story should have explained this. If it didn't, the critique "fix the garbage software" isn't unreasonable, albeit badly phrased (instead, "why didn't they fix the software?")

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#48

Post by taffer »

grey-area wrote: post #27
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the same thing is going on with the commentary on economy currently. Whenever I browse around Reddit for example the comments that get upvoted are the cynical ones, "markets are irrational", "feds are pumping up the stocks" etc, but they do not put any real thought into what is happening with the markets and why.

Nobel prize winners in economics think the markets are irrational in important ways, this is not a fringe view, nor is it particularly cynical. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691173122/ir... I don't think starting from the EMH is correct either, I suspect nobody really knows why the US stock market doesn't reflect the deepest recession since the 1930s, though of course everyone has opinions. The mark…

What does 'irrational in important ways' even mean? What Shiller has shown is simply that the idea of a perfectly effecient market is self-contradictory. Efficiency is just a very good approximation in practice.

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#49

Post by taffer »

grey-area wrote: post #34
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think market is predicting the recession to last? There's predictions expecting 30% unemployment since March for Q2, and also predictions expecting 50% GDP drop for Q2. So current market should have these predictions priced in. I think one major thing that people fail to consider is that this recession is not like other recessions - namely, it's not failing of economics, or a bubble popping, it's a te…

If it lasts long enough, a temporary natural disaster becomes an economic disaster. I think the rough market consensus at the moment is as you state it - this is a natural disaster which will be over soon. That is a possible outcome at this point, but a second wave in the US for example would have significant impacts and cause entire industries to fall into bankruptcy - wiping out shareholders and leading to signific…

I haven't read the book, but do you know where the expected returns (the straight line you mention) come from?

Re: Being Slow to Criticise

#50

Post by grey-area »

taffer wrote: post #48
grey-area wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobel prize winners in economics think the markets are irrational in important ways, this is not a fringe view, nor is it particularly cynical. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691173122/ir... I don't think starting from the EMH is correct either, I suspect nobody really knows why the US stock market doesn't reflect the deepest recession since the 1930s, though of course everyone has opinions. The mark…

What does 'irrational in important ways' even mean? What Shiller has shown is simply that the idea of a perfectly effecient market is self-contradictory. Efficiency is just a very good approximation in practice.

I believe he shows in that book it's not a very good approximation - the market oscillates from overshooting to undershooting actual returns, and I don't think he believes market movements are always based on rational decisions, hence the title of the book.
Post reply on HN