Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 11 Jun 1999 00:48:13 +0100 (GMT) | From | Riley Williams <> | Subject | Re: Profanity in the Linux Kernel?!?!? |
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Hi Michael.
> Hm. Which would you rather have in YOUR kernel?
> "Fatal Exception 0E at address 349f930d:020a34ff"
> Or
> "Something fucked up. This shouldn't happen." > "oops 00"
> Personally, I'd rather see something say "Something fucked up" > and maybe a description of it, in HUMAN READABLE terms (e.g., > readable by non-programmers and CS majors) as opposed to "fatal > exception 0E..." which really tells a user NOTHING about what > just happened.
To be honest, you've asked the wrong question, so can I ask the correct one for you?
Q> Assuming that you are an intelligent human being working in Q> an office where you get to use computers on a daily basis as Q> part of your job, but (a) the computer is just one of many Q> tools you use as part of your job, and (b) English is not Q> your first language, but one you learned as an adult, which Q> of the above example messages would you find easiest to work Q> with?
To put that in context, a friend of mine works for a travel agent, and his first language is Gaelic (the native language of Scotland), but he has learned English in recent years. I showed him your message, and he freely admitted that the latter example message was meaningless to him. However, the former is of a form he is more than used to seeing at work as WIndows 98 regularly displays messages of that form, and he thus knows exactly what to do when he sees a message of that form.
Best wishes from Riley.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | There is something frustrating about the quality and speed of Linux | | development, ie., the quality is too high and the speed is too high, | | in other words, I can implement this XXXX feature, but I bet someone | | else has already done so and is just about to release their patch. | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ * ftp://ftp.MemAlpha.cx/pub/rhw/Linux * http://www.MemAlpha.cx/kernel.versions.html
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