Messages in this thread |  | | Date | 25 Jul 1996 09:02:00 +0200 | From | (Kai Henningsen) | Subject | Re: Nasty comments |
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hab@ece.engr.ucf.edu (Hubert A. Bahr) wrote on 23.07.96 in <31F52855.435C4F67@ece.engr.ucf.edu>:
> I gave up using curse words to impress somebody 30 years ago. Okay > I'm old. As a Vietnam Vet I certainly had the opurtunity to invent > and use my share.
As has been pointed out repeatedly, lots of people who use swear words _don't_ do this to impress somebody.
> My problem with curse words in published code, which is what > putting your code on an ftp site essentially does, publish it. Is > that it reflects a lack of pride in the product. I didn't know that > code for linux was being put out against a deadline and against the > authors wishes. It should be a freely given product that reflects > pride in its development.
Why do you think these things are incompatible with pride in the product? I would certainly not think so.
> I've certainly known the frustration of long debugging sessions > and been warned by my wife more than once about the salt air around > my computer, but I find time to tidy up before I publish.
Now *that* I would associate with a lack of pride in what you have done - you obviously think it's not good enough.
> As the Linux product becomes more professional it becomes more > and more tempting to use sections of it as examples for class discussion > and I would rather have the discussion on what the code does than > what the comments contain. All in all, if I see code with profanity > in it, it colors my view of its value and certainly makes me question > its use, especially for discussion.
That simply demonstrates your prejudices.
Those comments illustrate a very important real-world fact: that producing good, reliable code can sometimes be extremely frustrating work. (Or, in the case of "X wrote it, Y fucked it up", it is a reminder that this is the work of many, many people, and that merging all this stuff is a very non-trivial exercise.)
MfG Kai
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