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In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#111

Post by utopiah »

tomhow wrote: post #107
utopiah wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't sneer like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hmmm guidelines do exist and I don't think toxicity is a good thing so thanks for pointing that out. Still here I'm not attacking an individual but a large corporation that's been punished multiple time for terrible behavior and now with a founder and former CEO entangled in terrible affairs so I admit I'm not sure how wrong a bit of sarcasm truly is. I do genuinely believe Microsoft is a terrible company which entire business model is going against open source, locking IP down and thus truly claiming that they did "invent" more than they did. Is it more justified with this background than random sneering?

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#112

Post by tomhow »

utopiah wrote: post #111
tomhow wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't sneer like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hmmm guidelines do exist and I don't think toxicity is a good thing so thanks for pointing that out. Still here I'm not attacking an individual but a large corporation that's been punished multiple time for terrible behavior and now with a founder and former CEO entangled in terrible affairs so I admit I'm not sure how wrong a bit of sarcasm truly is. I do genuinely believe Microsoft is a terrible company which entir…

It’s not really about who the target is, it’s about the kind of conversations we want to have here. The guidelines ask us to converse curiously, avoid fulmination, and to avoid internet tropes. When we depart from that to vent at a megacorp, it has no effect on the corporation but does have the effect of making this place more miserable.

There are plenty of opportunities to critique the megacorps when the topic is something they’ve actually done wrong, and we have many discussions about those cases.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#113

Post by vintagedave »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #103
joshuat wrote: post #101

I find it odd that many of both the blog comments and the HN thread comments are focused on debating the merits of the feature itself rather than the broader point of the article, that a small isolated change made by one person can have a massive, long-lasting impact on software and on how billions of people interact with it for decades after it was implemented. It’s like no one ever took a humanities class

This isn't necessarily true. The fact that we're still using squiggles decades later means that nobody else has come up with a better idea. If there are no better ideas, if this is the best UI design for spellchecking there is, then it's simple enough that, if not for him, someone else would've came up with it. How many ways are there to highlight a word in a sentence, really, especially when your constraint is that…

> it's simple enough that, if not for him, someone else would've came up with it

The thing is, no-one else did. It's very easy to point to something being simple and obvious decades after it has become omnipresent.

Plus, someone has to be first. And he was first.

The core part of this is not the underline, or possibly even doing it asynchronously though on desktop software at the time that was more rare, but the squiggly underline. I strongly doubt squiggles are a choice anyone else may have made. A solid underline, school-teacher-style, maybe.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#114

Post by vintagedave »

coldpie wrote: post #99
Lendal wrote: post #74

If you continue in this industry of software creation in a corporate setting, and you put your name into the source code, eventually you will become known for products/features that you never expected to become known for. And the things you had actually worked the hardest on and hoped to become known for will be lost and forgotten to time. The process of creating things is completely within your control but the proce…

I have often felt that software should have a "Credits screen", like movies and video games do. For developers, QA staff, support staff, etc. I opened a bug to create one for our end-user facing software at my last job, but we never actually did it.

Delphi has that. Help > About, hold down Alt, and type T E A M.

I wish this was a clearly exposed feature, not a hidden one. But at least it's there. (Disclosure: this includes my name, something I am proud of.)

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#115

Post by utopiah »

tomhow wrote: post #112
utopiah wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm guidelines do exist and I don't think toxicity is a good thing so thanks for pointing that out. Still here I'm not attacking an individual but a large corporation that's been punished multiple time for terrible behavior and now with a founder and former CEO entangled in terrible affairs so I admit I'm not sure how wrong a bit of sarcasm truly is. I do genuinely believe Microsoft is a terrible company which entir…

It’s not really about who the target is, it’s about the kind of conversations we want to have here. The guidelines ask us to converse curiously, avoid fulmination, and to avoid internet tropes. When we depart from that to vent at a megacorp, it has no effect on the corporation but does have the effect of making this place more miserable. There are plenty of opportunities to critique the megacorps when the topic is so…

My phrasing might be off putting and even against guidelines but, even through jest, the idea itself still remains : Microsoft does have a history of claiming a lot more than they did. It's a brilliant, albeit illegal, series of business decisions but it has not invented as much as it claims it had.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#116

Post by tomhow »

utopiah wrote: post #115
tomhow wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not really about who the target is, it’s about the kind of conversations we want to have here. The guidelines ask us to converse curiously, avoid fulmination, and to avoid internet tropes. When we depart from that to vent at a megacorp, it has no effect on the corporation but does have the effect of making this place more miserable. There are plenty of opportunities to critique the megacorps when the topic is so…

My phrasing might be off putting and even against guidelines but, even through jest, the idea itself still remains : Microsoft does have a history of claiming a lot more than they did. It's a brilliant, albeit illegal, series of business decisions but it has not invented as much as it claims it had.

Can you please just follow the guidelines? You can make any point if it’s on-topic and expressed according to the site’s intended spirit. We can’t keep debating whether the guidelines apply to a specific topic. You can’t run a forum that way.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#117

Post by utopiah »

tomhow wrote: post #116
utopiah wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My phrasing might be off putting and even against guidelines but, even through jest, the idea itself still remains : Microsoft does have a history of claiming a lot more than they did. It's a brilliant, albeit illegal, series of business decisions but it has not invented as much as it claims it had.

Can you please just follow the guidelines? You can make any point if it’s on-topic and expressed according to the site’s intended spirit. We can’t keep debating whether the guidelines apply to a specific topic. You can’t run a forum that way.

I'm not going to blindly follow guidelines if I believe they are unjust. I'd rather be banned from a forum that has oppressive guidelines than be a "good" netizen of a bad place. If I can't openly criticize corporations then maybe HN isn't for me.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#118

Post by tomhow »

utopiah wrote: post #117
tomhow wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please just follow the guidelines? You can make any point if it’s on-topic and expressed according to the site’s intended spirit. We can’t keep debating whether the guidelines apply to a specific topic. You can’t run a forum that way.

I'm not going to blindly follow guidelines if I believe they are unjust. I'd rather be banned from a forum that has oppressive guidelines than be a "good" netizen of a bad place. If I can't openly criticize corporations then maybe HN isn't for me.

It’s fine to criticize corporations, thoughtfully. It happens all the time here. And YC exists to challenge major corporations and continues to work hard every day to help startups challenge them. My request to you has nothing to do with criticizing corporations and everything to do with posting lame comments that drag this place down and do nothing at all to diminish corporations.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#119

Post by utopiah »

tomhow wrote: post #118
utopiah wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to blindly follow guidelines if I believe they are unjust. I'd rather be banned from a forum that has oppressive guidelines than be a "good" netizen of a bad place. If I can't openly criticize corporations then maybe HN isn't for me.

It’s fine to criticize corporations, thoughtfully. It happens all the time here. And YC exists to challenge major corporations and continues to work hard every day to help startups challenge them. My request to you has nothing to do with criticizing corporations and everything to do with posting lame comments that drag this place down and do nothing at all to diminish corporations.

Honestly I think labeling the comment (which is justified and involves a pun, sure might be dad-joke level but still) as "lame" is more toxic, or bring the forum down, than mine but OK, maybe I have a bias.

Strike through all this and see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48673613 instead

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#120

Post by utopiah »

tomhow wrote: post #118
utopiah wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to blindly follow guidelines if I believe they are unjust. I'd rather be banned from a forum that has oppressive guidelines than be a "good" netizen of a bad place. If I can't openly criticize corporations then maybe HN isn't for me.

It’s fine to criticize corporations, thoughtfully. It happens all the time here. And YC exists to challenge major corporations and continues to work hard every day to help startups challenge them. My request to you has nothing to do with criticizing corporations and everything to do with posting lame comments that drag this place down and do nothing at all to diminish corporations.

Anyway, apologies for the whole thread, I'll be more mindful both of the guidelines and how to provide a better avenue for meaningful conversations, thank you for trying to make this a better place.
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