Eight hour cleansing to get all the 'faggots' and 'bitches' OUT of Github A small army of politically correct nerds will gather in London this weekend to launch a mission to "clean up" source code hosted by GitHub. A group calling itself Ethical Code claimed the platform has become a hub for, er, gits who insist on peppering their work with nasty words that have the potential to shock and offend. …
Really? That's just mental.
I used to have a boss who liked to call any messed up situation or really bad code a whore's abortion. After working with him for 8 years I had to make a concerted effort to stop using the term myself because some people find it offensive.
As for this whiney little bitch and his code cleanup campaign, I'm tempted to spend the weekend peppering code with profanities on GitHub just to annoy him. Well I would be but I have a life.
> If you actually search github for "faggot" you get precisely 7 hits back.
https://github.com/search?p=2&q=faggot&ref=searchresults&type=Code
Having said that, many of them are in word blacklists (twatter and IRC clients and the like), others seem to act as sentinels by using a word which is easy to remember and stands out yet unlikely to be found elsewhere in the code. The last group, quite a significant one, seem to be test commits of nonsense files, perhaps by people who no longer monitor their Github account--in those cases, it would be up to Github to monitor for and remove unmaintained stuff that is taking up space unnecessarily.
Having browsed through a couple of pages of hits, I haven't really found one which I would consider insulting towards another person or group of persons. Of course, just the mere appearance of an expletive or vulgar language does not count as offensive to me, although I am aware that Teutonic and Low Countries' sensibilities are different in this respect.
I do hope this group are not trying to ride on the wave of publicity generated by the case of the female developer who quit GitHub (the company, not the code repository) last week-ish, as that would risk adding--in the eyes of the public--frivolous undertones to a very serious matter.
"because we are an enlightened group of super-smart people who see through people’s exterior characteristics and judge them solely on the quality of their mind. "
Oh. Come. On. If he actually believes that, he probably believes that removing the word "faggot" from a code comment will make its original author less homophobic. Personally, I don't believe that any word is in itself offensive, and I have a strong opposition to such blunt "thought police" tactics as a result. But: you lose nuance and tone when you write, so you have to know your reader very, very well before you can confidently use words that are considered to be insults.
Unfortunately, for "enligtened groups of super-smart people", being unable to place oneself mentally in the mindset of another person is a classic failing of such people, no matter how good they might be at writing code.
But, as observed above, lazy insulting language in code comments is a bad code smell in the first place. If this guy has a problem with "bad" language in code, he should remind the coders that if they put projects on github, potential hiring managers can see that code very easily. Something peppered with non-descriptive and (to some) offensive words like "bitch" or "faggot" isn't really going to make you look like a good hire.
... unless you're going for a job in Github, of course.
"In the spirit of positive action....</snip>"
Aaaaand.... that's quite enough to get me running for the hills.
It's in the same league as positive discrimination (race / gender / whatever-is-current) in job recruitment. Just hire on merit and be done with it.
This whole thing reads like some Daily Mail piece - OMG someone said something I find offensive, we should so introduce a new law to make that a criminal offence, no-one should ever be allowed to say anything that might possibly offend anyone else ever. The end game there of course is that no-one can ever say or express anything other than the societal norm. Is that really what we want?
> Is this gonna be like feminists storming Wikipedia to purge it of masculine bias?
Ah yes. It's unfortunate that those groups somehow seem more interested on banging their own drums and generating self-publicity at any price than in actually advancing their causes or, for that matter, listening to the difference between marked and unmarked genders in Indo-European languages.
I'm not going to say that I think this is a waste of time. But isn't there something more societally worthwhile that these people could be doing? Like rebuilding a community space, or planting some allotments, or doing a bake sale for charity?
This exercise seems like a self-righteous back-slapping party.
This really pisses me off...
I may hate people who are sexist, homophobic, racist, feminist, religious zealots, and anyone who tried to preach to me without invitation.
But I accept their freedom to be arses...
I judge people on who they are and what they do, not just because of genetic traits or because you happen to believe in a specific deity.
Aren't they a cesspool of female exploitation or something? I'm sure I read that recently.
As for comments in code, we sweep ours for swearies and remove them (corporate standards) but some do remain as they are "in context". Mostly these are mini-rants about the design of C#, Java or whatever and a warning that the code which follows is as ugly as an ugly thing from planet Ugly; but that's the way it has to be.
Some are also just plain funny. Once you get down to a few well-known cases, it's easy to filter them out.
I thought it was meant to be a Go Go Bar.
I have come across code at work that referred to the overseeing analyst by the nickname 'winkle', though never given offical sanction, it was allowed to be kept in as it was 'funny'.
This all sounds like a 'cub scout' attempt to claw back some P.C. credentials after the recent news. Honestly, there's a difference between cleaning house and sanitizing it until it has all the warmth and humanity of an operating theatre.
"A group calling itself Ethical Code claimed the platform has become a hub for, er, gits who insist on peppering their work with nasty words that have the potential to shock and offend."
Trolls and 'tards have no ability to shock offend.
Kids hid behind a screen being themselves is not shocking and you can't be offended by retards. You have to pity them and diss their mothers, like they do, for dragging them up and not raising them properly to function as part of a society.
Daft kids need a good smacking.
This isn't political correctness. It just people trying to be kind. The article makes it sound like a joke and the majority of responses make me disappointed in the lack of thought or care for others here.
If the words were antisemitic or against black people would that be ok? I'm pretty sure that if it code was found saying "n**ger" and the code was by Apple or Microsoft then there would be major storm and lots of apologies..and rightly so.
I'm white, male and heterosexual. There are pretty much no offensive words for any of those groupings that mean anything because I've never been and probably never will be stigmatized, harassed, miss opportunities because of my skin, gender or sexual orientation. I will never truly understand how it feels to be nervous of people and their reactions because of my DNA (rather than because of who I am as an individual). In fact I can believe that it's 2014 and people still don't get that this is just fuc*ing offensive shit. Bo ho. I can't just call people whatever I want cause I don't think they should be offended by it. Grow the fu*k up.
In a world where people get killed for being gay in some countries or just insulted (and occasionally beaten up) in more civilized lands I'm well chuffed that some people are putting the effort in to show that they give a shit. Whilst people have the right to be arseholes and say offensive things other people have the right to kick against the pricks.
If this is the biggest issue that freedom of speech has in the west then we are screwed.
Not sure if you are aware of this or not but being a white male, at least in 'merica, means you have been discriminated against based on your race and gender. Assuming you've ever applied for a job. It's federally mandated and called "Equal Opportunity". You might want to look that up.
I have, university work. Writing a 2d platformer, the day before it was due my project got corrupted. Had to pull another all nighter (pulled an all nighter finishing it the day before). Got to the end of it, and I'd gotten everything working again, gravity, jumping, blocks that crumbled, variable frame rate, but for some reason I couldn't die in it. I wound up leaving a comment in there around my "death" code along the lines of
// oh dear god why the fuck aren't I dying. I have a fucking if statement checking my fucking lives against fucking 0 and the piece of shit character still keeps coming back for more the stupid bastage WHY WONT YOU DIE!!!
I was so tired I forgot to remove said comment. Turns out in my sleep deprived state I'd gone
if ( lives <= 0 );
that semi-colon lost me marks, but the comment apparently gave my lecturer a chuckle.
Had someone is sales get all bent about male/female cable connectors. Said I made it up even after I said it was industry standard from before I was born. Showed her a catalog, web sites, then sent her across the street to Best Buy. She got kicked out of Best Buy.
Good thing I didn't show her a gender changer.
I hate fags. Fags are an annoying, unsightly blight upon the world. They just lie there, ruining an otherwise quaint city street view with their hideous appearance. I would approve of ridding the world of fags, but the huge amount of fags would require incinerators running day and night, to rid the world of all of them. Yes - fags ( the unused end of a cigarette or cigar) are disgusting.
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See - I could not have wrote this completely inoffensive paragraph with groups line "Ethical Conduct" running the grammar police. My policy is - "If anything I say or do offends you, please don't hesitate - be offended. Just don't unload your emotional baggage on me".
And what is "being offended"? It means you get to try to dictate the speech or actions of another person, based on your emotional sensitivities. Look, if I get the facts wrong, like spelling a certain metal used in soda cans as "alumimen", I will apologize. As for matters of my opinion, it's MY opinion, and my opinion doesn't change because your itty-bitty hurt feelings were hurt. That's YOUR problem. not mine. Have a nice day.
I think the core issue is the way these things are handled. Isn't abuse a criminal offence in the UK and elsewhere in Europe? whereas it usually leads to civil suits in the USA?
When abuse is illegal then it's a cut and dried affair and you don't need code of conducts and workshops to enforce it; of course, you'll still have to work hard in general to get it accepted. When it's only a civil matter it leads to them and people treading on egg shells trying not to offend anyone and still likely to be sued for harassment. As usual, only the lawyers win.
PyCon has had a fairly meaningless (no legal relevance) code of conduct the last few years. Of possibly greater import will be the decision to have approximately 50 % of the talks being given by women in Montreal next month and the chairman is woman. In general, I'm not a fan of positive discrimination but it will be interesting to see how it works out: they'll ructions if the quality suffers but otherwise I expect it to be welcomed. From admittedly limited experience I'd say that women worry more about things like childcare and being able to combine family and work than the amount of swearing. Not sure how much "ethical code" is going to help there.
Truly, the shoreditch fashionistas have outdone themselves this time! Ethical code? Christ, comments are ignored by compilers and interpreters for a reason! Comments are just that - subjective annotation.
I won't defend genuine discrimination - ever. Julie Ann Horvath's treatment at GitHub, from what has been reported, sounds atrocious and only serves to reinforce the 'bro-grammer' stereotype that cheapens those of us who are professional.
However... This group in London sounds like another bunch of bored silicon roundabout types crying out for attention. Perhaps these guys should stop drinking over-priced coffee and spend their time working on business plans instead of bothering those of us who actually ship software...
Just wow.
The real world is a mean spirited and sometimes hateful place. Full of people with nothing better to do than tell others what they can think and say.
Fuck the censors. If you have a problem with something someone else wrote then move on. Don't like how git allows such comments, then tell them and stop using it. If enough people think the same way then git will change. If not, then you just need to git over your lame ass.
If you are posting code to a public repository, it strikes me as plain common sense to present it as professionally as possible.
If someone is looking for evidence to make a case for harassment in the workplace, anything in print is far game.
Comments that read as black flags to employers or prospective employers are going to come back to haunt you.
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