Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
Search - "english comment"
-
--- Linux wants some hugs, and everyone gives a hug about it! ---
After the CoC controversy revolving around the Linux Kernel project, a change introduced by the CoC is being put into practice:
Jarkko Sakkinen, from Intel, started replacing words comments containing "fuck" with their "hug" variant. This means comments such as
/* master list of VME vectors -- don't fuck with this */
might look a bit different in the future:
/* master list of VME vectors -- don't hug with this */
People that oppose this change criticize that the comments will make much less sense to people that aren't fluent in English yet. They also do not like the redundant censoring - the actual meaning is still implied, just no longer included as clear text. It might also cause misunderstandings to people working with the code.
Those supporting this change, aside from jokingly mentioning that this change will save one character per f-word comment, note that this can give the Linux Kernel project a more positive feeling with anyone who works with the code, with "fuck" mostly associated with bad feelings, while "hug" is indeed mostly going to call positive feelings in our subconscious minds.
Who doesn't like a good hug? :)
What is your opinion on this rather controversial topic? Feel free to let us know in the comments, as we are very interested in your stances and arguments on this!
Sources:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/12/1/105
Several comment sections, IRC chats, and other places for people to express their opinions. Too many to list them all.51 -
My team is quite international and although we speak English among ourselves, most people still comment their code in their mother tongue.
I have learn a lot from reading my colleagues code. Mainly curse words from all over the world. It's great.14 -
Your favourite comment?
My team was working on a legacy system, one part of it is an assistant, sadly required as global variables.
Being a non-english-first-language company, some dev years ago thought shortening said assistant to "ass" would be a wise idea - less to type, right?
When we redid the application 2016 part-by-part, our code needed to define 3-4 global variables starting with the "ass" prefix for the legacy parts to work. The colleague who was tasked with this is a fine gentleman from England.
Later as I read through the commit, I found 5 lines of code following 20 lines of comments explaining and deeply apologizing for "ass", "ass_open", etc.
The same dev also had a "HACK OF THE YEAR" comment he moved around when time constraints made a less-than-optimal fix necessary which was worse than the last "highscore".1 -
University, Italy
We have sent our code to the professor for correction.
Professor : Who wrote the code with comments in english?
Proud student : me !
Professor : you failed to write the algorithms, and also made mistakes with a lot of English words.3 -
I have a guy sitting next to me in class. We were working on the same project. It's about rewriting a functioning mergesort algorithm in C and doing a presentation about that topic.
Now... the thing is that I was ill on that specific day when we got that project assigned. And he didn't tell me it either. I asked the whole class.
They just said that there was nothing special about that day. These fuckers.
Anyway...
Thé following week we had the same lesson again. Actually there were more than both of us. We were a group of 5 dudes.
3 of them barely have anything to do with programming at all. They just learn for the exams and have bad grades in programming.
Luckily, they already wrote the functioning sorting algorithm.
Since that is the case, I chose to review it to get deeper into that topic.
There were comments in English (we live in Germany) and these comments were written in a different style. My classmates would never comment in such a way.
It was a modified version copied from the internet. The whole source code.
The variables had names like j,k,b,u and so on. It was perfectly obfuscated.
Yesterday, I wasn't at college either.
I had to show up to a given time at a government bureau. They have been working on that project that day. So, I decided to ask them via a messenger, if they can give me the newest presentation files after 1 pm.
They said that they barely have anything to present. They would like to improvise they said.
"Fuck you all" I thought.
I'm done with these fucking illiterate humans.
I hope they all die in hell with satan having a ride on them. Stabbing them from behind right into their assholes and eating their ball sacks (if they have any).
Today is the presentation.
That's when I decided not to drive there during these specific lessons.1 -
HOW. IN THE WORLD. COULD IT BE SO DIFFICULT TO COMMENT THE CODE I WRITE MYSELF ?
After my first project (you know, the "Working project I made for fun long ago" code everyone did once, but when you look at it again it looks like sorcery and there's no way to understand it ?), I decided that I'd comment almost everything I'd do... But...
When I begin a project, it's fiiiine and I do my comments the way they should be... AND THEN, WHEN DIFFICULTIES ARRIVES AND I START TO BE TIRED (ie : always) THEY START TO INCLUDE INSULTS OR WEIRD JOKES ABOUT THE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE, MOVIES REFERENCES, AND SOMETIMES THEIR LANGUAGE VARIES. (Like, that project you're doing in English and suddenly there's a comment written in French in the middle of that)
Soo, yeah, even if I do comment my shit now, it isn't more helpful, lol. Maybe I should listen to relaxing music when I code err.
Oh, comments. Damn comments. Someday I'll do those correctly. Maybe.8 -
Github 101 (many of these things pertain to other places, but Github is what I'll focus on)
- Even the best still get their shit closed - PRs, issues, whatever. It's a part of the process; learn from it and move on.
- Not every maintainer is nice. Not every maintainer wants X feature. Not every maintainer will give you the time of day. You will never change this, so don't take it personally.
- Asking questions is okay. The trackers aren't just for bug reports/feature requests/PRs. Some maintainers will point you toward StackOverflow but that's usually code for "I don't have time to help you", not "you did something wrong".
- If you open an issue (or ask a question) and it receives a response and then it's closed, don't be upset - that's just how that works. An open issue means something actionable can still happen. If your question has been answered or issue has been resolved, the issue being closed helps maintainers keep things un-cluttered. It's not a middle finger to the face.
- Further, on especially noisy or popular repositories, locking the issue might happen when it's closed. Again, while it might feel like it, it's not a middle finger. It just prevents certain types of wrongdoing from the less... courteous or common-sense-having users.
- Never assume anything about who you're talking to, ever. Even recently, I made this mistake when correcting someone about calling what I thought was "powerpc" just "power". I told them "hey, it's called powerpc by the way" and they (kindly) let me know it's "power" and why, and also that they're on the Power team. Needless to say, they had the authority in that situation. Some people aren't as nice, but the best way to avoid heated discussion is....
- ... don't assume malice. Often I've come across what I perceived to be a rude or pushy comment. Sometimes, it feels as though the person is demanding something. As a native English speaker, I naturally tried to read between the lines as English speakers love to tuck away hidden meanings and emotions into finely crafted sentences. However, in many cases, it turns out that the other person didn't speak English well enough at all and that the easiest and most accurate way for them to convey something was bluntly and directly in English (since, of course, that's the easiest way). Cultures differ, priorities differ, patience tolerances differ. We're all people after all - so don't assume someone is being mean or is trying to start a fight. Insinuating such might actually make things worse.
- Please, PLEASE, search issues first before you open a new one. Explaining why one of my packages will not be re-written as an ESM module is almost muscle memory at this point.
- If you put in the effort, so will I (as a maintainer). Oftentimes, when you're opening an issue on a repository, the owner hasn't looked at the code in a while. If you give them a lot of hints as to how to solve a problem or answer your question, you're going to make them super, duper happy. Provide stack traces, reproduction cases, links to the source code - even open a PR if you can. I can respond to issues and approve PRs from anywhere, but can't always investigate an issue on a computer as readily. This is especially true when filing bugs - if you don't help me solve it, it simply won't be solved.
- [warning: controversial] Emojis dillute your content. It's not often I see it, but sometimes I see someone use emojis every few words to "accent" the word before it. It's annoying, counterproductive, and makes you look like an idiot. It also makes me want to help you way less.
- Github's code search is awful. If you're really looking for something, clone (--depth=1) the repository into /tmp or something and [rip]grep it yourself. Believe me, it will save you time looking for things that clearly exist but don't show up in the search results (or is buried behind an ocean of test files).
- Thanking a maintainer goes a very long way in making connections, especially when you're interacting somewhat heavily with a repository. It almost never happens and having talked with several very famous OSSers about this in the past it really makes our week when it happens. If you ever feel as though you're being noisy or anxious about interacting with a repository, remember that ending your comment with a quick "btw thanks for a cool repo, it's really helpful" always sets things off on a Good Note.
- If you open an issue or a PR, don't close it if it doesn't receive attention. It's really annoying, causes ambiguity in licensing, and doesn't solve anything. It also makes you look overdramatic. OSS is by and large supported by peoples' free time. Life gets in the way a LOT, especially right now, so it's not unusual for an issue (or even a PR) to go untouched for a few weeks, months, or (in some cases) a year or so. If it's urgent, fork :)
I'll leave it at that. I hear about a lot of people too anxious to contribute or interact on Github, but it really isn't so bad!4 -
You want to know what shit is?
Go use Alibaba cloud service!
Trying out the service and luckily for me i only paid a few bucks.
-- Poor documentation which seems like it was written by the team from sales.
-- Poor github code samples... If i had written similar code while in college, it would be far better than their code samples... no exaggeration, It literally has 0.1% comment.
See for yourself
https://github.com/aliyun/...
-- Its Object Storage (OSS) C# APIs are all synchronous (Who fucking wrote this piece of shit deserves 10,000 punch in the face). You just killed the whole essence of netcore with oss.
-- Error logs are in Chinese (This was expected but seriously Ali you sold your product in English. WTF you got no English dev)
Coming from an Azure world, i would say Alibaba cloud is still in its infant stage (Cheap to use and Expensive to manage).
Make use of it at your own risk!3 -
All Chinese who write github codes in English and comment on code in Chinese. Please please stop. Use one language.3
-
Use that Tab button. It's there for a reason. If you are too lazy to use it then use an IDE that formats the code.
Also learn to comment your code wherever needed and in English. If you don't know where it's needed, Google is your friend if not your senior. -
Today I woke up from this craziest dream.
We were in France and there was a younger Mike Patton (who was french) speaking and apparently teaching french to an African girl.
The next scene he's in the back seat of what's apparently a taxi, and brags about how perfectly he can speak English. Besides that I see him playing the guitar.
In the last moments of the dream, however - and confusingly - the song Rusty Cage by SoundGarden starts playing loudly in the background. And that's when I found Patton is also a hacker.
Thinking about this part of the dream minutes aftger waking up, I found it to be the funniest, though not the craziest thing I ever dreamed.
Whereas I tried for hours to edit the configuration files of a tractor demolition game (some sort of Vigilante 8, but with tractors), he gets angry on a lady for an reason unknown to me, and in his moment of rage, manages to jump her houses' fence, surprisingly to edit her /etc/resolv.conf file - as if it was the most evil deed in the world.
In this final part, with Rusty Cage still playing very loudly, I find out me and my sister where watching this scene on TV (apparently patton was also an actor). After that, I comment to my sister in a grave tone: "Well, this guy is dangerous, maybe she should build a higher fence".
Then I wake up.
Although a crazy dream, it clearly addresses the fact I sometimes try to be a lot of things at the same time, and how this overwhelms me...1 -
I had an a assignment to submit in the same week i had an infi exam. I wrote this comment and submitted. I submitted it a bit late so I lose points for it, but except that I got all the points.
FYI I know infi is written as "Infinity" in English, but learned that later. -
Nothing like trying to understand a single 1500-line source file that implements the API usage in the frontend. Without a single comment.
No, wait. There are comments! But it's only commented-out code. Or explicit shit (like "gets the version" before a getAssetVersion function).
Functions with unused parameters? ✅
Weird var names (like "tmpX")? ✅
`console.log(var)` everywhere? ✅
Long-ass lines with 150+ chars? ✅
Duplicate code? ✅✅
Not a single interface was used so everything is var: any? ✅
Random unreadable RegEx? ✅
If-chains of 6+ more levels? ✅
Many `else if` towers instead of a switch? ✅
And did I mention it was written by a fucker who can't speak proper English so shit like visiable, cataloge and isExist is everywhere? Yeah.
Fun day at the office reading spaghetti code 🙃 -
Oh Jase, you're gonna do that regular account deletion stuff all over again? You know that you can just delete a rant right? I'm reasoning like a LLM and then I comment in bad English because my temperature is set too high. I hope that the kangaroo comment didn't piss you off. I just assume that every Australian has one to use instead of public transport. Camels with autism. Sad, all that effort for nothing.1
-
Time for an actual rant.
3rd year of CS.
We have Mobile Systems course - Android & iOS development.
Lectures - 1hr of interview with Steve Jobs about greatness of iOS.
Practice - So far we had to write 2 android apps.
Seems wrong? No, it's perfectly fine for "Course Leader" (idk how the guy is called properly in English)
First app - 3 screens (it was forced to do it with Activities), data passing between activities, lifecycles
Second app - 2 screens - one with ListView (well, I asked about RecyclerView, luckily I was allowed), another one adds elements to that List plus Snackbars, Notifications, list item selection and removing them (I ended up adding retrolambda and streams to write it anyhow). We were asked to do it on Activities, I thought it was an overkill, in the end did it on Fragments.
What pisses me off - we were asked to do those two apps after watching one hour of interview, the guy who leads the practical part of course has no idea how to do things in Android (said it clearly), I was, and still am, only one who knows how to do anything.
I work as Android dev, so I want to help my colleagues. Decided to make tutorial streams where I explain how to do everything.
Troll colleagues come and dislike it on youtube, post lulzy comments into chat. Not that it bothers me much, but still, people who I'm trying to help are mixing my help with shit, great :)
If Polish devranters want to check out those streams (you can write a decent app after watching those 4 hours) I can post them in comment.2 -
i am feeling angry and frustrated. not sure if it's a person ,or codebase or this bloody job. i have been into the company for 8 months and i feel like someone taking a lot of load while not getting enough team support to do it or any appreciation if i do it right.
i am not a senior by designation, but i do think my manager and my seniors have got their work easy when they see my work . like for eg, if on first release, they told me that i have to update unit tests and documentation, then on every subsequent release i did them by default and mentioning that with a small tick .
but they sure as hell don't make my work easy for me. their codebase is shitty and they don't give me KT, rather expect me to read everything on my own, understand on my own and then do everything on my own, then raise a pr , then merge that pr (once reviewed) , then create a release, then update the docs and finally publish the release and send the notification to the team
well fine, as a beginner dev, i think that's a good exercise, but if not in the coding step, their intervention would be needed in other steps like reviewing merging and releasing. but for those steps they again cause unnecessary delay. my senior is so shitty guy, he will just reply to any of my message after 2-3 hours
and his pr review process is also frustrating. he will keep me on call while reviewing each and every file of my pr and then suggest changes. that's good i guess, but why tf do you need to suggest something every fucking time? if i am doing such a shitty coding that you want me to redo some approach that i thought was correct , why don't you intervene beforehand? when i was messaging you for advice and when you ignored me for 3 hours? another eg : check my comment on root's rant https://devrant.com/rants/5845126/ (am talking about my tl there but he's also similar)
the tasks they give are also very frustrating. i am an android dev by profession, my previous company was a b2c edtech app that used kotlin, java11, a proper hierarchy and other latest Android advancements.
this company's main Android product is a java sdk that other android apps uses. the java code is verbose , repetitive and with a messed up architecture. for one api, the client is able to attach a listener to some service that is 4 layers down the hierarchy , while got other api, the client provides a listener which is kept as a weak reference while internal listeners come back with the values and update this weak reference . neither my team lead nor my seniors have been able to answer about logic for seperation among various files/classes/internal classes and unnecessary division of code makes me puke.
so by now you might have an idea of my situation: ugly codebase, unavailable/ignorant codeowners (my sr and TL) and tight deadlines.
but i haven't told you about the tasks, coz they get even more shittier
- in addition to adding features/ maintaining this horrible codebase , i would sometimes get task to fix queries by client . note that we have tons of customer representatives that would easily get those stupid queries resolced if they did their job correctly
- we also have hybrid and 3rd party sdks like react, flutter etc in total 7 hybrid sdks which uses this Android library as a dependency and have a wrapper written on its public facing apis in an equally horrible code style. that i have to maintain. i did not got much time/kt to learn these techs, but once my sr. half heartedly explained the code and now every thing about those awful sdls is my responsibility. thank god they don't give me the ios and web SDK too
- the worst is the shitty user side docs. I don't know what shit is going there, but we got like 4 people in the docs team and they are supposed to maintain the documentation of sdk, client side. however they have rasied 20 tickets about 20 pages for me to add more stuff there. like what are you guys supposed to do? we create the changelog, release notes , comments in pr , comments in codebase , test cases, test scenarios, fucking working sample apps and their code bases... then why tf are we supposed to do the documentation on an html based website too?? can't you just have a basic knowledge of running the sample, reading the docs and understand what is going around? do i need to be a master of english too in addition to being a frustrated coder?
just.... fml