On 30-01-2023 20:56, Aleix Conchillo Flaqué wrote:
> [...] Maxime found the time to review a quite big PR and added a
> bunch of useful comments. Reviewing that PR took a lot of effort and I
> just felt better after fixing all the comments made. I was even
> surprised he (I'm assuming this pronoun) did.
Unfortunately you are assuming incorrectly; s/he/she/. (*)
For future reference, 'they' is usually a safe ‘default’ (except when
they hate that, eergh). At least, for some values of 'usual' that might
not be representative.
Oh, well. I confess I did a quick Google search but I clearly assumed incorrectly based on the results, my bad. I don't hate using they at all.
> [...] And my feeling is she just wants things to
> be as correct as possible, which is quite important, especially in a
> programming language.
That's it, yes.
> Exchanging messages in a written form has its own challenges (your mood
> on that day, maybe you phrase things in a way that can be misunderstood,
> ...). So I will stop writing and just leave you all with a smiley face. :-)
>
> Best,
Something I would like to add here, is that these kind of emotional
challenges often appear self-inflicted to me. I mean, the mailing list
is a rather technical medium for technical talk about technical things.
There is no emotional stuff there unless you add it or you assume it.
Instead of analysing technical messages on the ML for whether there's
some emotional hidden message behind it, can't we just assume that any
technical messages are just technical, meaning literally what's written
in them?
That's how I see it too and that would be ideal.
I'm not saying that the emotional stuff should be completely forbidden,
but like, with a little care you can separate the technical from the
emotional, e.g.:
‘[Oh, I wanted that feature for a long time!]
This won't work at all because it assumes frobs are never barzed,
yet they are when [...]. I'm thinking you'll need a completely
different approach, though I don't have a clue what this approach
would be.
[Keep up the good work!]’
(The [...] lines are nice, but optional. Also the brackets are
optional.). Like, the second paragraph just says it won't work at all
because $reasons. While very unfortunate, there is no malice anywhere;
it's just technical stuff. Likewise, the first [...] and last [...],
while emotionally positive, are irrelevant for the evaluation of the
technical middle part.
Again, that's how I try to approach it as well. And actually I believe I tend to be emotional by adding positive messages as the ones you just mentioned. Even though they are irrelevant I like to think people like to read nice things after all (at least, I do).
> Aleix
>
(*) There are people who apologise after making such mistaken
assumptions, which I suppose is a quite reasonable course of action to
take in general, but please don't in this case? It just seems
embarrassing to me.
Since you made it optional with ?... I apologize. I don't mind embarrassing myself (and I hope I don't embarrass you).
Best and keep up the good work!
Aleix