in reply to How clean is your code

Overuse of certian words, be they "thing", or "fuck", dulls your vocubaulary. Cutting certian words out of your vocabulary does the same, in a far more obvious way. That's beside the point, in a way, just an intersting asside.

Wether or not you should consider profanity in your code important is up, mostly, to how professional you want your code to look. If it's open source hobby programming, it's not that important -- you aren't trying to be professional. If it's closed source, it's not that important -- only your coworkers will know, and I'd like to think that if a little prophane language will get you booted or looked down upon, then it's not a very stable social situation, and it's probably best to polish up the old CV anyway. Now open code in an compony situation is the only place left, and how often does that really happen.

(It's worth noting, BTW, that I'm unemployed, though I've never been fired for swearing on the job -- though I did once get warned about it, at Staples.)

Warning: Unless otherwise stated, code is untested. Do not use without understanding. Code is posted in the hopes it is useful, but without warranty. All copyrights are relinquished into the public domain unless otherwise stated. I am not an angel. I am capable of error, and err on a fairly regular basis. If I made a mistake, please let me know (such as by replying to this node).

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Re: Re: How clean is your code
by MidLifeXis (Monsignor) on Feb 18, 2004 at 18:28 UTC

    It is quite difficult to try to sell something opensource to management when there is profanity (or other "unprofessional" wording) in the documentation. Personnally, I do not have a problem with them (my wetware filters work pretty well), but the old "be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" axiom is appropriate here. If I am recommending something, I feel it should also reflect on how I would code as well.

    A few examples of what I have taken into consideration when recommending OS / Free software:

    • Emacs comes with a few man pages that I would be "professionally embarrased" to have my management find.
    • NSIS has some minor stuff in its documentation that I would not want to release to our customers ("installer that doesn't suck"), and IIRC, some stuff that raised my filters.

    I guess I would agree with one of the previous posts that states "not to put anything in your code you wouldn't want the customer to find."

    My $0.02.

    --MidLifeXis

[reply]

      The question here is if the writers of emacs and NSIS care.

      For NSIS, that's easy to answer. Considering it came from NullSoft, whose flagship product's slogan is "it really kicks the llama's ass", I think the answer is a resounding no. They wanted, primarally, to give the community making plugins for winamp to have an "installer that doesn't suck". They could care less if your management likes the style in which the documentation is written. In fact, style does sell, and the style with a decent bit of profanity is what sells to their target audiance.

      Of course, as with many things emacs, their intent is largely "fuck if I know". However, promoting informality and usabilty is important to them, I think, and not frowning overly much at prophanity is part of that culture.

      Warning: Unless otherwise stated, code is untested. Do not use without understanding. Code is posted in the hopes it is useful, but without warranty. All copyrights are relinquished into the public domain unless otherwise stated. I am not an angel. I am capable of error, and err on a fairly regular basis. If I made a mistake, please let me know (such as by replying to this node).

[reply]

        Oh, no doubt (on either one). I just am noting that I found a technically viable (and actually, quite good) solution to a problem, and thought twice about using it because I might have to defend some of the non-technical parts. :)

        --MidLifeXis

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