I am really happy when people are quite strict in code reviews, it makes me feel safer and I get to learn more.
Nothing worse than some silent approvals with no real feedback. What if I missed something obvious… and now it’s merged.
To be fair, I also enjoy getting my grammar corrected. I’m juggling 3 languages and things can get messy.
In that spirit, I will call attention to your first sentence, specifically the comma. In my opinion, that can be improved. One of three other constructions would be more appropriate:
- I am really happy when people are quite strict in code reviews. It makes me feel safer and I get to learn more.
- I am really happy when people are quite strict in code reviews, because it makes me feel safer and I get to learn more.
- I am really happy when people are quite strict in code reviews; it makes me feel safer and I get to learn more.
The first of my suggested changes is favoured by those who follow the school of thought that argues that written sentences should be kept short and uncomplicated to make processing easier for those less fluent. To me, it sounds choppy or that you’ve omitted someone asking “Why?” after the first sentence.
Personally, I prefer the middle one, because it is the full expression of a complete state of mind. You have a feeling and a reason for that feeling. There is a sense in which they are inseparable, so not splitting them up seems like a good idea. The “because” explicitly links the feeling and reason.
The semicolon construction was favoured by my grade school teachers in the 1960s, but, as with the first suggestion, it just feels choppy. I tend to overuse semicolons, so I try to go back and either replace them with periods or restructure the sentences to eliminate them. In this particular case, I think the semicolon is preferable to both comma and period, but still inferior to the “because” construction.
I’ve clearly spent too much time hashing stuff out in writers’ groups. :)
This is what I live for. :D
I agree with most of that. In formal settings, I prefer full sentences with conjunctions; however, choppy sentences are the ones that often end up in my Lemmy comments.
That only makes sense. We are having a conversation, not creating literature.
Strange, I get a mild hostility vibe from colleagues if I review too ambitiously.
Reviews have to be balanced to circumstance. There is a big difference between putting out the sales brochure and the notice on the bulletin board. Likewise in coding a cryptographic framework for general consumption and that little script to create personal slideshows based on how you’ve tagged your photos.
As a general rule, wider distributions, public distributions, and long-lived distributions need more ambitious reviews. If the distribution is wide, public, and permanent, then everything needs very detailed scrutiny.
I have found some success in starting with and occasionally revisiting review goals. This helps create and maintain some consistency in a process that is scaled to the task at hand.
Like the other guy, I also read your comment twice looking for mistakes but found none.
You should of left something to fix!
😏Edit: I’m glad there so many people who are as passionate about the correct spelling of “should’ve” as I am. I was testing you all, and you passed!
Correcting the reviewer.
Notes: “should of” isn’t valid, should implies a verb, of isn’t a verb. I expect you meant “should have”. Please recall this in future submissions.They should of course keep that in mind, but it’s not that “should” should always be followed by a verb directly. The problem is that “of” in this context is a mishearing/spelling of “have”, so they should in this case have written it like that instead.
I love that you used “should of” in a valid sentence.
Except that it would be “they should, of course,”.
I would argue that “should of” is just a naive written rendition of the spoken contraction “should’ve”. They are homophones, so it’s a completely understandable error among those without the relevant education or background. I know only English and was in Grade 9 at a different school before someone corrected me.
Notes: “should of” isn’t valid, should implies a verb, of isn’t a verb. I expect you meant “should have”. Please recall this in future submissions.
😏
should implies a verb, of isn’t a verb
“should” and “of” should probably be in quotes here?
A question mark does not fit the sentence, which is a statement (“they should.” rather than “should they?”). While question marks are commonly used to demonstrate a rising tone at the end of a sentence, its not considered correct for formal writing.
A-ha, but this most decidedly not formal writing! UNO REVERSE CARD.
But on a more serious note, I did intend it as a sort of question because I’m not 100% sure, because the rules for quote use might well be different in English than my native language. I actually also don’t know the rule for question mark usage in English; is it generally considered a crime against orthography to plonk a question mark on something that’s a statement, or is it valid in some cases?
It’s totally valid in most cases. It’s technically only supposed to be used for a question, but language is based on how it’s most commonly used, with those “rules” only applying in extremely formal situations. With the prevalence of informal text-based communication, many people use it to indicate being unsure, like how you used it. I just wanted to continue the chain of grammar corrections (which is why I used the wrong “its”/“it’s” at one point). Also, you were right about the quotes.
It’s technically only supposed to be used for a question, but language is based on how it’s most commonly used
Ah, I see you’re also a descriptivist 😀
But yeah I know you were just continuing the joke; I’m a language nerd (well, general nerd really) and I just got curious about what the rule actually is. While English orthography rules related to punctuation usually seem to be pretty much the same as with Finnish, the rule for question marks seems to be more relaxed in Finnish because it can “officially” be used to mark any expression as a question. The rules for commas are also different, ours are closer to German and we tend to spray commas everywhere
Notably, a good code review should also bring up the good parts of the submission, and not just concentrate on the errors. Not only does it make the recipient feel better to get positive feedback among the negative, but it helps them learn about good practices too. Just concentrating on the errors doesn’t really tell them which things they’re doing well.
Many reviewers concentrate on just finding mistakes, and while it’s useful it’s sort of the bare minimum; a good code review should be educational. Especially if the submitter’s a more junior coder, in which case it’d also be a good idea to not just outright tell them how you’d fix some problem, but sort of lead them to a solution by asking them questions and pointing things out and letting them do the thinking themselves. But still, experienced coders will also benefit from well-structured feedback, it’s not like we’re “finished” and stopped learning.
Yes, I tend to do that, and thankfully some of my colleagues do too. Clever but readable solutions, following good and relevant practices, clear documentation, making a good MR description that makes it easier to review, and more.
That’s great to hear. It’s thankfully becoming more common in general, and we can all do our part in spreading these practices.
I tended to actively evangelize for it when I was managing coders or teams. Unfortunately it’s still not all that uncommon for coders to be downright offensive when giving feedback, like not necessrily quite Linus-level rants but things like “this is idiotic, this is stupid, that’s shit, why would you do that” etc etc. The usual explanation I’ve gotten is that they’re just being “honest” and saying what they think, and it’s not their problem if the reviewee (is that even a word‽ I can’t English today) gets offended. Some even get all huffy about it, like “oh we’re just supposed to coddle them and never say anything negative so their little feefees don’t get hurt?” And I mean, yeah, getting honest feedback definitely a good way to learn, but it’s not like the only way to point out errors or problems is to be a cunt about it.
Yeah, I learn so much from code reviews and they’ve saved me so much time from dumb mistakes I missed. I’ve also caught no shortage of bugs in other people’s code that saved us all a stressful headache. It’s just vastly easier to fix a bug before it merges than once it breaks a bunch of people.
I’m juggling 3 languages
We Americans like to forget that anyone might have any trouble understanding English especially in cases of polyglots.
I don’t know which is your native tongue but from this comment it looks like you’re doing a fine job.
Assuming you have competent leadership, then it wouldn’t be merged if you missed something obvious. I guess you’re saying that you want more positive reinforcement.
I will correct both + your spelling because it drives me fucking nuts when I can’t find a function or variable due to it being severely misspelled
Me omw to tell the POSiX guys it’s supposed to be “O_CREATE” instead of “O_CREAT”:
Chars are expensiv
Crs r xpnsv
That’s the Oracle way.
The Unix way: chexp.
Not gonna lie, I have no idea what chexp is supposed to mean
That never stopped a Unix programmer!
(But yeah, my comment was missing punctuation.)
Ohh! Thanks, I mean, I had already got the grammatical meaning, but I just wasn’t sure what “chexp” was, I thought you were talking about some obscure Unix command… so it was just the same phrase all along, lol
*shakes fist at the sky*
Damn you, Unix people
[Happy bronze age noises]
Th brnz age is where it’s at
I stand corrected:
Me omw tell POSiX “O_CREATE” not “O_CREAT”:
Correcting my code is helpful. The machine didn’t know what I even meant. Computers are interesting and changing rapidly.
Correcting my grammar is an unsolicited English lesson from someone who already knew what I meant. English is not interesting or changing quickly.
What if your grammar is that bad that people struggle to understand you?
I know someone who is incomprehensible most of the time. I have to ask probing questions just to vaguely understand what they’re trying to communicate. I’ve politely told them more than once about the issue but they never try; they’re not mentally challenged or anything, just an ass.
I’ve never met a native speaker like that, but yeah I think they’re the exception that proves the rule.
Then they couldn’t correct you.
English changes very quickly. New words come out every year. Some programming languages takes years for updates.
Also that person may have known what you meant, but another might not and may have any number of reasons for not asking.
Better communication skills are a worthwhile goal and there’s no good reason to not learn and grow.
I mean, there’s a difference between something being phrased in an odd or confusing way, and a pedantic comment about whether you should use a Latin plural. 90% of the time you get the latter.
90+% of the time you get common mistakes. Should ofs, they’re - there - their confusions, apostrophes for plurals.
The kind of thing that confuses ESL speakers. The decent thing would seem to be to try and stick to the way it’s taught rather than go with the “it doesn’t matter” route when it absolutely matters to some.
If you’re speaking to someone ESL,
don’tdo not even use contractions. They are perfectly valid but they are confusing to those new to the language. I also like to put all idioms in quotes when writing, as those are confusing in any new language. Misspellings are less of an issue than you might think because English spellings are dumb and arbitrary already.When someone tells me “um, it is cacti, AKCTUALLY” I do not think concern for an ESL person listening in is the main motivation, though.
Cactopodes
I think you and I have very different experiences. I rarely see that kind of correction if ever.
When you’re in a public space you never know when your words are being consumed by an ESL speaker. I think the best approach is natural yet accurate. They’re going to encounter contractions when dealing with native speakers, but the difference between it’s and its, for example, can be tricky so try to use them as taught.
Spelling mistakes can absolutely be an issue. It’s already hard enough to figure out English spelling without native speakers making it worse. Add on to that the difficulty in any added language of working out near homophones, let alone actual homophones.
I knew someone who was pretty decent with English as their third language but had trouble keeping Texas and taxes straight. I know another guy who is American and uses no in place of know. That one threw me for a while before I figured out what he was trying to say.
I will admit, I do like that “technically” the plural for octopus is “supposed to be” octopods (pronounced like oc-tip-o-dees) but that’s a fun “fact”, not a correction I’ve ever tried to make.
I really do run into issues talking aloud about plants of the family Cactaceae fairly often. It might be a hyper-local thing I guess.
I don’t remember where exactly I got the spelling thing from, so I could just be wrong about that.
Except for front-end technologies like JavaScript where there’s a new framework every week lol
Yeah, but what percentage of normal speech is made up by words under 20 years old?
Depends on how you talk and what you define as normal. How much C++ is still using C++98 and how much uses C++20? It’s pretty silly of a comparison. As someone else put it, corrections are also there for a third party.
But let’s get down to the issue. You are right, correction of English is used as an insult a lot of the time. Sometimes correction of code is also used as an insult. When correcting someone is used out of line and abused, it’s always a bad thing. Correcting someone should never be used to insult.
If you don’t mind, let’s go down a rabbit hole, if you don’t care to join feel free to stop reading here. The upshot is that you are correct because the intent behind correcting English is usually abusive.
So, I corrected you earlier but this is to create a conversation. This is something I’ve been noticing a lot in social media overall: corrections seem to create conversation where if you agree with someone it’s not typically a conversation. “Yeah, you are right…” isn’t a path to an interesting exchange of ideas. There is another way that I’d also love to encourage people to try. Asking questions and digging into why. I’ve seen this happen a few times and it feels like it’s taken more as an insult. A lot of people get defensive if you ask “Why is this something you think.” We’ve created an internet culture of correction, where correction makes conversation. I wonder if this stems from people on the internet correcting people as an insult. Anyways, thank you for reading this random tangent :D
But let’s get down to the issue. You are right, correction of English is used as an insult a lot of the time. Sometimes correction of code is also used as an insult. When correcting someone is used out of line and abused, it’s always a bad thing. Correcting someone should never be used to insult.
I like this. I don’t think that’s the intention for a lot of pedants, but rather they hold a belief in prescripitivism, and have taken it upon themselves to enforce the rules as they imagine them, for one reason or another. That being said, it’s still telling someone they’re wrong without any possibility of improving present or future discussions, and that’s why it’s annoying.
So, I corrected you earlier but this is to create a conversation. This is something I’ve been noticing a lot in social media overall: corrections seem to create conversation where if you agree with someone it’s not typically a conversation. “Yeah, you are right…” isn’t a path to an interesting exchange of ideas.
It’s true, and I think there’s some people that like that approach more than others. I wonder if that contributes to the high number of lurkers on every platform. The main other kind of space centers around venting about a common complaint as the main form of discourse, and those always end up being a little unhinged after a while.
Asking questions and digging into why. I’ve seen this happen a few times and it feels like it’s taken more as an insult. A lot of people get defensive if you ask “Why is this something you think.” We’ve created an internet culture of correction, where correction makes conversation. I wonder if this stems from people on the internet correcting people as an insult.
You know, I’ve never thought about it that way, but you’re right. Every once an a while I see someone take a truly odd position on something, and I end up just asking questions because it’s new and interesting and I don’t really have a bottled comeback. It seems like that actually makes them more defensive than if I had just called them an asshole.
Anyways, thank you for reading this random tangent :D
You’re welcome, it was a good one!
Edit: Oh yeah, and on C, I was expecting someone to mention it. It’s an outlier in being way more static than pretty much every other programming language, but it’s still faster changing than the average natural language. Maybe casual Hebrew has changed more since the 60’s, I guess.
Which is easier - read a 50-year-old letter, or run a 50-year-old program?
fr fr no cap
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I read your comment twice, looking for any tiny mistake to fix. How thoughtless of you not to include any.
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It’s actually “their’yre” dumby, learn ur words
It’s actually “their’yre” dumby, learn ur words
SOme morans should of staid inn School!!
get a brane morans
You’re* grammer
No, you’re grammerer
Oh boy
Grammar is code.
However, real grammar and prescribed textbook grammar are two different things.
Anybody who bitches about prescriptivism is just mad that their grammar sucks.
Edit: this always gets 'em crawling out of the woodwork
Prescriptivism is mostly just an unprincipled mishmash of shibboleths someone pulled out of their rear end hundreds of years ago, classism, and knee-jerk reactions against language change.
For example - why do people distinguish less vs fewer to refer to countable vs uncountable nouns? Because someone wrote in 1770 that they thought that distinction was elegant, despite not actually reflecting the way English at the time was spoken.
Why is ain’t “not a word”? Because it originated in the speech of poor people, and was used less commonly by rich people. People roll their eyes at new business-speak because it comes from rich, powerful people, but look down their nose at language innovations from poor hillbillies and other disfavored groups.
And you can find writings from old prescriptivists complaining about literally every change in the language, such as hating the new ambigious use of singular ‘you’ when ‘thou’ was perfectly good and unambiguous or hating phrases like ‘very pleased’.
Oh, so you mean the whole of the contemporary field of linguistics?
Someone Renames your objects “because they sound better that way”…
Fuck me, never touch my code, it is perfect.
Brother you don’t even remember what it does, how and why after 3 days
Of course, but because it is perfect, no one, not even myself, needs to fix/modify/extend/understand
/s
I use incorrect grammar all the time on Lemmy because I’m writing colloquially, comma splices are my biggest offense.
It should be normalized to kiss the furry femboy programmer who corrects your code as a thank you.
Excuse me, I think you meant “correct’s you’re code”
reddit
