If this were a comment on HN, I would give it one of my rare downvotes. It's dismissive and negative without any compensating value or positivity. Maybe suggestions of terms to use?
I always find the position of telling people to never point out problems, only suggestions or solutions odd.
From something as basic as a management philosophy of "don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions" to this "Don't suggest terms not to use, suggest terms to use"
A person can identify a problem without having a solution, or identify something is wrong without knowing the full solution.
So in this context a person can believe people using "DevOps" or "Agile" or "Tech Debt" in various ways to be a problem without having to suggest a solution to the problem
If we just ignore problems we have no personal knowledge of the solution then I think that would end in every bad results over all, take for example a basic concept I think everyone would understand, my car is making an odd noise, I know that is a problem, but I have no idea what the solution is. I don't think anyone would say you should just ignore it, or have to present the auto mechanic with a fully fleshed out solution to the problem before taking it in for service.
It's not that you can't do it, its just low effort noise without a solution. Often times the downsides are apparent and the complaints don't add much without some discussion of alternatives.
> I always find the position of telling people to never point out problems, only suggestions or solutions odd.
The article went lower than pointing out problems. It veered into toxicity, its claim to "irreverence" notwithstanding. From the first:
> Object-Oriented Programming: Luckily the industry doesn’t really use this term any more so we can ignore the changed meaning. The small club of people who still care can use it correctly, everybody else can carry on not using it. Just be aware when diving through the history books that it might mean “extreme late binding of all things” or it might mean “modules, but using the word class” depending on the age of the text.
The reference to the "small club of people who still care can use it correctly" is elitist, and he does not bother to define the term (other than in a meaningless call-out to his fellow club members). The casual readers who are not members of his self-described club are not left with helpful information to decide for themselves when and and what use of the term may or may not be wrong. It's just "If you know, then you know" phrasing.
The tone does not improve through the rest of the article. I'm not sure this fellow should be teaching beginners how to program.
A button for 'disagree strongly' should upvote a comment.
When Einstein and Niels Bohr 'strongly disagree' on quantum physics in 1927, they start a debate that makes both of them more enlightened.
When a bullshit artist, who couldn't care less about the truth, hijack a discussion to make it all about Him (it's almost always a dude), everyone become dumber.
"Moving along" is not enough because the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it.
I have seen 25 years of internet trolling and this kind of attitude is gendered yes. Not in a binary way but in a bimodal one. I could have avoided the point because it's obvious though. I don't hate men because as you found out I'm one myself.
I can't do that in general.
Certain attitudes OTOH are heavily gendered, like the psychology behind internet trolls who at the simplest level is that they want everyone's attention to orbit around them.
For women online in particular I'm pretty sure lots of them would rather enjoy less attention on them personally. Too much it not pleasant for _them_. I'm thinking in particular about friends who are content creators, minding her own business and receive comments on her look, insults, sexist comments, unsolicited dick pics, rape and death threats,... I'm sure sexism has nothing to do with that.
OK I'm done on this topic. Maybe there are a lots of women behind internet trolls and then I'm wrong, that's an empirical question. My comment was on "strongly disagree" vs "bullshitting"
So men are the only people who comment without revealing their gender? What about trans individuals? Does that mean I can reliably mask my gender by deciding whether or not I mention it in my comments and posts?
And this still doesn't answer what rules you or the men's talk expert you asked use. Anybody can claim they have "a lifetime of experience" in anything they want, but without either an empirical success rate or a set of explicit testable rules, it's all bullshit out of their ass.
>We have a lifetime of experience listening to a man's point of view.
I and a lot of other men have a lifetime of experience listening to women's point of view too, and yet I can find no sane man who claims they can identify gender from text, unless in very special cases.
From the standpoint of someone discovering Hackernews, it's renowned for accepting (or at least upvoting to the top) only quality contributions, while this article is literally a shitpost.
I've added Twitter to my blocksite and redirect to Hackernews homepage, so that I get smarter everytime I am tempted to read social networks during my productive time. An article like this makes me feel like I should redirect Hackernews to Twitter instead.
