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“Just remove the duck” (2013)

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#101

Post by digi_owl »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #42
mvdwoord wrote: post #8

A story from the time recounts that Piero Soderino, the head of the powerful Florentine Republic, even told the famously irascible Michelangelo that David's nose was much too large. Michelangelo then hid some marble dust in his hand, climbed back up his ladder and pretended to do some more "chiseling" on the offending proboscis. While he did so, he let some marble dust fall from his hand. The pompous Soderino was foo…

Not a huge Steve Jobs fan, but I had a professor who had worked as a designer under Steve Jobs and tried something similar. Steve insisted that a new mouse needed to be just a fraction of a millimetre slimmer so a person's palm was lower and closer to the work surface. They figured he was being an unreasonable "delicate genius" and returned a few days later with the identical mouse and claimed they had reworked it to…

Why did i read that as him getting them to make a mouse that fit his hand comfortably, but wrapped it into a more generic dictate?

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#103

Post by jonahx »

throwawayaway wrote: post #68
masklinn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's a move which works when people demand changes in order to leave their mark or to be seen as "doing something"[0], it doesn't work in the case of people demanding changes because they actually want these changes. [0] an attitude I find myself unthinkingly adopting when doing reviews.

i have the guilts reviewing work of non native english speakers and asking them to rename functions after review. hard to ask for it without it seeming completely petty, particularly when everything else is perfect. it does represent a minor improvement.

Naming is incredibly important. I don't think that's petty at all.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#104

Post by fallinghawks »

flarg wrote: post #87

I hate this story. I think it's important to differentiate between people who have the right knowledge to request a change and those that think they have the right solely because of seniority; but it's also rather disrespectful to 'cheat' and make fake changes just to make the someone happy. No-one deserves to be treated like a 'mark' for our tricks. My experience has been that being honest, polite and knowledgeable…

I would guess you've never browsed through clientsfromhell.net.

Being honest, polite, and knowledgeable doesn't change the fact that the person who hires you may be ignorant, too busy, dead set on cheating you, or needs to assert his/her sense of control by insisting on changing something you considered finished.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#105

Post by [deleted] »

madaxe_again wrote: post #66
JonnieCache wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are countless fables about record company executives dropping by the mastering studio to hear the new hit in its finished form. They'd inevitably make some ill-posed request, of the familiar "it needs to pop more!" variety. The wily engineer directs them towards a large and important looking knob, telling them that they are free to dial in as much "pop" as they think the track needs. Of course, they screw up th…

That sounds like web development. If I had a penny for every time we're asked for more zazz, pop, pow, shazam, zing, shizzle, pizazz, "something", cowbell... I'd use them to bury the meddling fuckers who ask for this shit.

[deleted]

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#106

Post by loudmax »

NickPollard wrote: post #34
mvdwoord wrote: post #8

A story from the time recounts that Piero Soderino, the head of the powerful Florentine Republic, even told the famously irascible Michelangelo that David's nose was much too large. Michelangelo then hid some marble dust in his hand, climbed back up his ladder and pretended to do some more "chiseling" on the offending proboscis. While he did so, he let some marble dust fall from his hand. The pompous Soderino was foo…

Another version I've heard of this is with film censorship - apparently when Hitchcock made Psycho , the film censor (I think in the UK - the BBFC) wouldn't give the film a certificate because it was too extreme for the era - too much nudity, too much violence - and suggested a few cuts to just trim back some of the offending shots. Hitchock said of course he would, took the film back, and sat on it for a couple of w…

There is a story that when the animators of Avatar The Last Airbender were working on the Beach episode, they knew that if they drew the outfits the way they wanted, they would be told to tone it down. So they drew everyone in outfits far too revealing for a children's program. When, as predicted, they were told to draw something more conservative they went ahead and animated the scenes the way they originally envisioned them. The censors, satisfied that they had done their job, accepted the revised scenes.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#107

Post by leviathan »

madaxe_again wrote: post #66
JonnieCache wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are countless fables about record company executives dropping by the mastering studio to hear the new hit in its finished form. They'd inevitably make some ill-posed request, of the familiar "it needs to pop more!" variety. The wily engineer directs them towards a large and important looking knob, telling them that they are free to dial in as much "pop" as they think the track needs. Of course, they screw up th…

That sounds like web development. If I had a penny for every time we're asked for more zazz, pop, pow, shazam, zing, shizzle, pizazz, "something", cowbell... I'd use them to bury the meddling fuckers who ask for this shit.

Back in the days I worked a while as a web designer, spent my days in Photoshop, learned all the shortcuts.

So I was showing the design to this client who always wanted to modify things, and he said he doesn't like the orange a lot and if we can tweak it. I had a red layer, and a yellow layer over it with opacity, so I clicked on the yellow layer, and started pressing random numbers on the numpad (pressing numbers changes the value of the layer's opacity) so the colors were jumping randomly from red to orange to yellow and the hues in between, finally I settled back on the exact value that was before, and that seemed to satisfy the client. The color was now perfect.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#109

Post by myth_buster »

ryandrake wrote: post #84

I've always thought the "just remove the duck" story was a condemnation of the artist, not the manager. If your work is so crappy that you know you have to add something even crappier to distract the reviewer, what does that say about your competence? Maybe I'm just jaded from years of reviewing awful code. But if someone put an obvious compiler error into their code in hopes that it would distract me and keep me fro…

I think you missed the spot. "Just remove the duck" is a pattern not an anti-pattern. What it addresses is the urge of some supervisors to ask for some change just to show that they have done a thorough review, while the said change are actually detrimental to the product.

> memory leaks, off-by-one errors, and mis-spelled variable names

The above don't fall into the review comments that are being avoided as these are valuable suggestions.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#110

Post by michaelmior »

a_bonobo wrote: post #15
michaelmior wrote: post #6

Battle Chess was a great game. I believe I recall the rook eating the queen as well.

Yes, only the queen, the others get boxed on the head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iS...

I believe there was some stabbing as well. I remember the queen flirting with the pawns when she captured them before knifing them.
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