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The Cancers In The Ruby Community

blog.txustice.me

11–20 of 68 posts

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#14
post #11

Interesting article, though the point could have been carried across just as well without all this motherflippin' swearing.

As I say to everyone who complains about swearing: Go fuck yourself.

I'm no spring chicken, mind you, I wasn't offended by the swearing - it was just mildly annoying and distracting from the (pretty well thought-out) message. :)

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#15

Interesting article, though the point could have been carried across just as well without all this motherflippin' swearing.

Well, he is a part of the Ruby community, and they do often seem to often favor emotional arguments conveyed through harsh language.

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#16
post #11

Interesting article, though the point could have been carried across just as well without all this motherflippin' swearing.

As I say to everyone who complains about swearing: Go fuck yourself.

I'm sure you're very tough and edgy but that doesn't change the fact that incessant swearing is childish and annoying. It also makes choice words too common, further reducing their punch.

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#17

All three of those things are merely symptoms of the real problem: a lack of professionalism.

Please.

Professionalism is what is killing great languages like C# and decent languages like Java.

It is just an excuse for those in suits to look down on the rest of who create software because we fucking like it, in a way we like, rather than in a way that doesn't threaten them.

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#18
Some incidental writerly advice: Avoid using the word cancer metaphorically, unless you're deliberately trying to parody the writing style of, say, Adolf Hitler. Otherwise it's like trying to use a howitzer to dig postholes in your yard.

I first began to notice the dangerous power of this word when I was working in cancer research. To a cancer researcher, cancer is a thing one deals with all day long, but at a very safe emotional distance. You're used to cancer cells; you study them all the time. You spend quite a lot of time carefully raising them in dishes. You give excited talks about how they work. Still, it's hard not to notice that when you tell a stranger on the street what your research is about, there's this little intake of breath.

And then I grew a bit older, and some friends and I lost relatives to cancer, so we got the chance to actually experience the process from the patient's point of view. (An opportunity which, fortunately, many young people don't get.) And I gradually realized, at a gut level, what all the fuss was about: Cancer is really awful. Dying of it is awful, and not dying of it is also pretty damned awful, because the treatments are painful, often damaging, often disfiguring, and dreadfully uncertain.

Don't use the word unless you mean it. And you probably don't mean it.

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#19
post #17

All three of those things are merely symptoms of the real problem: a lack of professionalism.

Please. Professionalism is what is killing great languages like C# and decent languages like Java. It is just an excuse for those in suits to look down on the rest of who create software because we fucking like it, in a way we like, rather than in a way that doesn't threaten them.

Professionalism has very little to do with the "suits". In fact, I have seen that programmers are made to do our least professional work when some out-of-touch manager makes their decisions.
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