Developers Vs English
What do developers from all over the world have against the poor English language? What has it ever done to them that they repay it with such cruelty and malice?
Of course, one can understand and even chuckle at that old ‘HELLOW I HAVE A DOUBT YES VERY THANKS PLEASE TO BE HELPFUL’ type situation, second language and all that. However, the problem doesn’t stop there. In fact the biggest culprits are often people who only know the one language.
How can someone speak just the one language and STILL manage to fuck it up? It’d be understandable if said person were of dubious mental competence, but said person in this field is more likely than not to be a reasonably well paid professional, who somehow has trouble constructing a coherent sentence.
Of course, it’s all fun and games when it’s nothing more serious than the odd freshmeat announcement with a changelog saying that the app has been ‘deuglified’, but the curse of the miswritten word strikes far and wide, and dons many troubling guises.
Witness the writing ability of one James Strachan, for example. A jolly chap by any measure, yet amazingly incapable of writing coherent documentation (see activesoap). To his credit, he does seem to have mastered the mindboggling ability of writing strongly coupled documentation/implementation. The end result of course being that you can’t figure out what the docs mean unless you already understand the product, but can’t understand the product without the docs.
Picocontainer is another fine example of hijacking English in the name of religion. In this case we have a truly impressive example of how one can string numerous words together yet somehow fail to ever communicate anything of worth. Another impressive trick considering that the words themselves will often make sense and be quite accessible; a delightful spit in the eye of synergy.
Somewhat perpendicular to these two approaches is the ‘try to make friends with the reader by sounding retarded’ approach. This can be seen in many books, where the author takes on an obscenely friendly tone that is guaranteed to fall somewhere between obsequious and patronising, rife with cultural references that have a curious countrybumpkin-ness feel to them (Geronimo developer notes book draft is a lovely example).
Finally, we have the old ‘ohmygodthisissofuckingclever’ tactic. The author here sounds perpetually amazed and delighted by every little thing that happens in the world around them. They are that embarrassing retarded child that none of us asked for yet were cursed with anyway, happily reaching into its feces laden diapers and smearing fistful of the good stuff onto itself while grinning inanely and hoping for approval (see the ‘open source java’ book for a stellar example).
What’s really odd about all these pieces of writing is how little regard they have, at the end of the day, for the poor recipient. So here’s a tip to all you bloggers, hopeful book authors, random article monkeys, and opensource documentation fucktards. Think of your despised and hated end users, and for once, do something for their benefit, instead of trying to spite them and shit in their coffee.
December 1st, 2004 at 2:05 am
its sadfull haw poeple abuze our butifull langwage. haf of my time i spent reeding books and riting esays. thx mister hani for this bile blog. pls what is ‘ohmygodthisissofuckingclever’?
thx…
December 1st, 2004 at 2:14 am
second post
December 1st, 2004 at 3:08 am
three post on honey’s craptacular blug
December 1st, 2004 at 5:08 am
“All Your Base Are Belong To Us!”
:))
December 1st, 2004 at 5:50 am
But the “Newkiller” guy is our president.
December 1st, 2004 at 6:07 am
Funny, the guys who deeply care about english are the arabs and french :)
December 1st, 2004 at 6:07 am
Hani… I really love your part on the old ‘ohmygodthisissofuckingclever’ tactic. I can see it in many different documents that I see floating here in my (new) organization. Usually when I study the docs I have to strike out the ‘ohmygodthisissofuckingclever’ parts from the informative one.
Luckily there is actually some info in there, otherwise it would be all matter to go and bring the obese developers of the frameworks I need to use out to the coffee machine and bribe them to talk with coffee, chocolate, candies… I don’t think my wallet can substain this later tactic :D
December 1st, 2004 at 7:37 am
HELLOW?!?! Please bi wont some fidback!
December 1st, 2004 at 12:44 pm
I thought it was a well known fact that the majority of people doing software are socially backward recluses. Thus it is no surprise that their (our) written communication skills suck as well.
This is why any decent software company has one or more technical writers on staff. The problem with open source products is that there aren’t many technical writers getting jollies off of making fine documentation for products who’s authors don’t consider it a priority to put the effort into assisting the writing of fine docs.
Yes, my english sucks. And knowing that fact may be half of the battle, but I haven’t yet cared enough to complete attack the other half.
December 1st, 2004 at 1:26 pm
I find the longer I write software the worst I become at expressing myself in anything but software.
December 1st, 2004 at 3:18 pm
Sir,
I respectfully request a project title for my java exam thanks please.
December 1st, 2004 at 3:31 pm
hellow mister hani!!!
pls provide all yur java projects..
thx…
December 1st, 2004 at 4:22 pm
sometimes code clearer than documentation
@P=split//,”.URRUU\c8R”;@d=split//,”\nrekcah xinU / lreP rehtona tsuJ”;sub p{
@p{”r$p”,”u$p”}=(P,P);pipe”r$p”,”u$p”;++$p;($q*=2)+=$f=!fork;map{$P=$P[$f^ord
($p{$_})&6];$p{$_}=/ ^$P/ix?$P:close$_}keys%p}p;p;p;p;p;map{$p{$_}=~/^[P.]/&&
close$_}%p;wait until$?;map{/^r/&&< $_>}%p;$_=$d[$q];sleep rand(2)if/\S/;print
what could be clearer than that?
December 1st, 2004 at 4:49 pm
Dear sir,
I want some java project titles for doing my final project.send it to me
Thank u.
December 1st, 2004 at 6:08 pm
Mister De cameron! You here ? Abu still wait for titles from you. Professor getting heebie-jeebies like say in shakespeare english. you please move ur ass tank you.
December 1st, 2004 at 6:54 pm
And then there is documentation which does not make one ounce of fucking sense:
Perfect example is the JSF taglibs
http://java.sun.com/j2ee/javaserverfaces/1.1/docs/tlddocs/h/message.html
Click on it and enjoy it for yourself.
December 2nd, 2004 at 5:54 am
Wasn’t JSF made by the same Struts people who Hani loved so much?
December 2nd, 2004 at 11:48 am
Love the latest blog entry, so do you think james strachan is an idiot ?
December 2nd, 2004 at 12:28 pm
This was a fairly mild Bile(TM) blog ;) Are you getting ready for a holiday vacation?
December 3rd, 2004 at 6:32 am
Hani, can I request an offtopic bile on the subject “Lycos is a fucking spammer company”?
December 3rd, 2004 at 6:54 am
And you scored: eight out of ten Sybils
December 4th, 2004 at 10:41 am
I think that at least part of this is down to some of the truely amazing habits that some people hone on commercial projects. I’ve personally witnessed design documents which bascially consist of 2 out of date visio class disgrams and half a broken spreadsheet, all cut and pasted into a word document with the laughable intention that someone else can then use that to code off. Or people who think that documenting that each of the getters and setters store properties with the same names is the same as documenting how their code works. And then they do in some kind of pigeon spastic, miss out half the words kind of way, probably because they’re scared that they might miss their chance to send a fuckwitted reply to slashdot article before anyone.
The problem is it tends to be very much a ‘tick in the box’ type excersise on commercial projects and therefore few people are forced to develop their skills further then this. Now, bare in mind, these are people who are actually paid for their skills, you imagine what someone would think that good documentation is if they’re getting no cash from it at all.
Oh, and what all this Hani hero worship on here. “Hani, please please please give me a title for my project. I’m far to stupid to think of an original one, or just rip one off from somewhere else”. Don’t you people understand? Hani can’t actually code. He’s to busy finding other peoples to slag off…
December 4th, 2004 at 3:16 pm
Dear Changar Alikaswaranablan,
I see you are searching for a title for your Java project exam. I thought of an original title that I don’t think any student has used yet:
How to Make a Java Programmer of a Fuckwit in 21 Days.
Hope that helps.
Best.
December 4th, 2004 at 8:27 pm
it is “failS” not “fail” in “…yet somehow fail to ever …” :p
December 4th, 2004 at 11:54 pm
Dear Mentor,
I am a student of humor. Can you send me project title like for Alikaswaranablan funny as hell, please sir?
Best
Wel Hung
December 6th, 2004 at 10:50 am
You spelt faeces wrong, as feces.
December 6th, 2004 at 4:30 pm
Except your mother tongue, which other language do you speak, little fucktard?
December 8th, 2004 at 2:15 am
No - it *is* “fail”, not “failS”.
*Read* the sentence: “… how one can string numerous words together yet somehow fail …”
Compare:
“How one can fail to”
to
“How one can fails to”
The first is obviously correct.
December 9th, 2004 at 2:08 pm
If Hani lived in the UK, and understood phucking English he might have seen the popular “Trigger Happy TV” featured the gem comedian, Dom Jolly.
The phrase, where Dom is imitating an native Austrian / German tourist visiting London Tower, who is obviously lost, is very amusing.
“Excuse me sir, when do arrive?”
Peter P
December 9th, 2004 at 2:10 pm
Typing error Thats was wrong
(Austrian stops an innocent passenger)
“Excuse me sir.”
(Austrian make vague gesture to map of the underground)
“When do I arrive?”