Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
vidarholen.net178 points by microsoftedging 17 days ago
178 points by microsoftedging 17 days ago
I'd note that "retarded" can be a technical term which is not an insult or swear word which means "delayed" (e.g. "tardy") In an internal combustion engine you could have "advanced" or "retarded" spark timing for instance.
It's an amusing area where denotations are the same in French and English but the denotations are different. [1] All over Quebec you see convenience stores called "Couche-Tard" (Sleep Late) which can provoke a double-take like seeing a sign for a restaurant called PFK with a picture of Colonel Sanders.
[1] An ad for a breakfast sandwich, coffee and hash browns can be advertised as "L'Ensemble Quotodienne" a phrase made of everyday words in French which are $20 words in English.
Not in source code, but the word is also officially used in aviation as an automated audio warning to the pilots to, IIRC, slow down or pull back. The system screams "Retard! Retard! Retard!". I think they often hear it during normal landing procedures.
6.15.2 has 20 occurrences, of which only 2 are actual swearwords
./fs/bcachefs/bkey_cmp.h: /* we shouldn't need asm for this, but gcc is being retarded: */
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmsmac/d11.h:/* Advance Retard */
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43legacy/phy.h:#define B43legacy_OFDMTAB_ADVRETARD B43legacy_OFDMTAB(0x09, 0)
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43legacy/phy.c: for (i = 0; i < B43legacy_ILT_RETARD_SIZE; i++)
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43legacy/phy.c: b43legacy_ilt_retard[i]);
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43legacy/ilt.h:#define B43legacy_ILT_RETARD_SIZE 53
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43legacy/ilt.h:extern const u32 b43legacy_ilt_retard[B43legacy_ILT_RETARD_SIZE];
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43legacy/ilt.c:const u32 b43legacy_ilt_retard[B43legacy_ILT_RETARD_SIZE] = {
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/wa.c:static void b43_wa_art(struct b43_wldev *dev) /* ADV retard table */
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/wa.c: for (i = 0; i < B43_TAB_RETARD_SIZE; i++)
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/wa.c: b43_ofdmtab_write32(dev, B43_OFDMTAB_ADVRETARD,
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/wa.c: i, b43_tab_retard[i]);
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/tables.h:#define B43_TAB_RETARD_SIZE 53
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/tables.h:extern const u32 b43_tab_retard[];
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/tables.c:const u32 b43_tab_retard[] = {
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/tables.c: BUILD_BUG_ON(B43_TAB_RETARD_SIZE != ARRAY_SIZE(b43_tab_retard));
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/phy_n.h:#define B43_NPHY_PHYSTAT_ADVRET B43_PHY_N(0x1F3) /* PHY stats ADV retard */
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/phy_lp.h:#define B43_LPPHY_ADVANCEDRETARDROTOR_ADDR B43_PHY_OFDM(0x8B) /* AdvancedRetardRotor Address */
./drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/phy_a.h:#define B43_OFDMTAB_ADVRETARD B43_OFDMTAB(0x09, 0)
./drivers/net/dsa/sja1105/sja1105_dynamic_config.c:/* The switch is so retarded that it makes our command/entry abstractionIn music, a gradual slowing uses the internationally-understood Italian term "ritardando", which is abbreviated as "rit." or "ritard.", which often leads to chuckles by less-mature musicians and diverts precious rehearsal or recording studio time. I've learned to always say the full word "ritardando".
Huh I’ve only seen rit., not ritard.
The abbreviation you will most commonly see written is "rit." The abbreviation you will most common hear verbally is "ritard."
Once upon a time planes dropped only gravity bombs that just fell with the forward speed of the launching aircraft. These exploded directly under the aircraft (see all ww2 footage). Then were developed "retarded-fall" or delayed bombs with fins or parachutes so that the bomb's forward movment slowed and it exploded behind the aircraft (see vietnam footage of bombs with pop-out fins). Then came laser-guided "smart" bombs. So we now have "smart" bombs which are guided, "dumb" bombs which arent, and "retarded" bombs which are dumb bombs that slow down. We have accidentally fallen into pc trap where it can be difficult to use these terms.
Retarded fall "snakeye" bombs: https://youtu.be/3_RM19hOMo4
“Retard” the verb has one perfectly acceptable meaning but saying a thing is “retarded” is a non-politically-correct equivalent to “mentally challenged”.
I wouldn’t call it a swear word but it certainly is crude and insensitive.
Something like “gcc optimizes like a girl” certainly wouldn’t be any better.
However that doesn't explain all usages here: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Atorvalds%2Flinux%20retard...
Direct quotes: "we shouldn't need asm for this, but gcc is being retarded" and "The switch is so retarded that it makes our command/entry abstraction crumble apart."
Theory: the shift towards lesser swearwords is a sign of corporatization, making the linux source a soulless bland hellscape of confirmity.
> bland hellscape of conformity
I see three reasons to use swearwords sparingly, even though they don’t particularly offend me.
1 Managing my own emotions. Most swearing is negative and that drags you down which is not very productive or fun.
2 Managing others‘ emotions as they burst out, which stresses the people around the swearer.
3 Some people just can’t say a fucking sentence without gratuitous swearing which makes them sound fucking stupid.
I know someone who generally does not swear directly at people, but uses swear words profusely when angry and believes it is unreasonable for anyone to judge them or have negative feelings about this, because it's just words and they aren't swearing AT people.
A few years ago, they went to a fan event here in Japan hoping to buy multiple copies of a zine for their friends overseas, and when told they could only buy one copy, they stood in front of the stall and cursed profusely in English out of frustration. After the event, they found that the Japanese side of the fanbase had unfriended them and removed them from online communities because of their outburst. They were completely blindsided by this. (In fact, their version of the story was just, "I went to an event in person and after that everyone unfriended me, I don't know why they're like this." I only heard about the swearing incident from a mutual friend.)
Anyway, there's obviously degrees and nuance here but I think people who swear profusely-but-not-at-anyone-specifically don't realize it still sometimes comes across as hostile.
> 3 Some people just can’t say a fucking sentence without gratuitous swearing which makes them sound fucking stupid.
I think this is subjective.
It’s also incredibly cultural.
Swearing in the workplace is much more normal here in Australia. In my first job at an American company, I was shocked how prissy people were about swearing. In my head I thought “these are adults, right? Why is everyone acting like a blushing teenager?”. I’m sure I sounded rough as guts to them. It took ages to learn to scale it back depending on who I was talking to.
Swearing with someone about / at work is kinda an Australian way to say “I trust you and feel relaxed around you”. Forcing myself to not swear felt at first like I was pretending I didn’t like my coworkers. It was weird.
Similar thing in the US. I was in a company that merged with a company in Texas and several of the executives would use the F-word in every other sentence. HR asked if we were offended in California and I said that I personally don't care but would be nice if they would stop doing this on customer calls customers that pay millions of dollars per quarter and are professionals. Our new CEO showed up late to a meeting with a big customer wearing his biker outfit and he too swore a lot. In the end we lost a lot of customers from this. The CEO did not care, he was a Chicago mobster and expected everyone to kiss his butt.
I work in Texas and this is definitely a real thing. In person and within the company, sometimes swearing happens. It would certainly get you in trouble if it happened a lot on customer calls though. We may not care personally about it, but who knows what your customers opinion on it is, so it is better to be polite. It is also very easy to just try not to swear unless you are one of those people that has been swearing like a sailor in every sentence your entire life, which would probably be interpreted as you having some kind of self control problem.
I should also mention that this attitude is not just a liberal vs conservative thing. I've lived in Austin and Houston and Dallas (all three are about as liberal as any other major city in the country) and swearing in a formal setting is frowned upon in all three.
This is a great real world example of why we need cultural competency training. Here it would be an HR led class where we practice swearing while talking to the new Aussie coworker(s) in order to make them feel comfortable and improve their performance and ease onboarding.
> HR led class Ugh really? Another one?
> where we practice swearing Oh well hang on a second…that could be fun
I was thinking the opposite actually. https://www.sciencealert.com/swearing-is-a-sign-of-more-inte...
Swearing is like a pen. You can use it to draw a crude penis in a bathroom stall, or you can use it to create amazing works of art.
Especially online it's just so easy to confuse or miscommunicate "fuck that :-)" and "fuck that grrr"
I don't think swearing is necessarily negative though; it can often be fairly neutral, or funny/positive. But again: in text it can be tricky.
Hey I use fucking in every fucking possible way but I'm only slightly fucking stupid ok? Fuck man.
TIL: Politeness makes one soulless.
I don't personally care if a swear word appears in code, but I do care if I offend others with my use of swear words. So, I try to limit their use to circumstances where offense is unlikely. Work is rarely such a place, particularly with shared resources like code. I might swear in a 1-on-1 conversation at work, but I definitely don't drop swear words into documents that unknown people might see. That's just basic professionalism.
the point being that there was a time (some greybeards might remember) where contributing to the linux kernel wasn't "work" but a fun hobby
Sure, but that time was nearly 30 years ago. Linux has been "mainstream" since at least August 1999.
Why August 1999? Seems quite specific?
RedHat's IPO. Seemed like as good a date as any to anchor "when Linux went mainstream". I'm sure there are other dates that are arguably at least as good here.
Ah right, that roughly tracks. Just wasn't obvious where "August 1999" came from.
Kind of amazing timeline in hindsight by the way; Linux was "only" 8 years old at that point.
people like me contributed their freetime afterwards still
People still do. I think the point he's making is that the bulk of the kernel's source coming from people paid to do it has been a thing for probably over 20 years.
Any data for this?
Yes, here for example https://lwn.net/Articles/915435/
Appreciate it! I tried, but couldn't come up with the right search term.
So, total being between around 60%!
I have never worked on a big corporation. But I find interesting about corporations forbidding swearwords in code. I mean, the people responsible for forbidding swearwords rarely read code. And if they read code with any frequency and are somewhat proficient at it, most likely they have their own list of swearwords.
Also we should look to add more keywords to programming languages that trigger naïve filters. I'm all in for another era of broken censorship to poke fun at the people who know nothing, but always have an opinion.
I don't personally care about language choices in code, but I'll play devil's advocate and speculate as to why a business might be concerned.
1. Reputational harm in the event that code needs to be shared. Say, the code gets read in court, or an outside consultant is brought in who is given access to the code. The company likely wants to maintain the same standard of professionalism that they expect when their employees write or utter spoken language in the workplace for the same reasons.
2. Similar to #1 but nuanced enough to deserve its own mention: code is a business asset. It can be sold or licensed out. The company may fear that language that it deems unprofessional could depreciate the value of that code in the context of selling or licensing it to 3rd parties.
Personally I think that the fuss over "bad words" is deeply irrational to a religious degree. The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd. But you can't choose what planet you do business on and, on Earth, there are a lot of silly people.
>The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd.
No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning or elicit any other response.
> No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning or elicit any other response.
Disagree. The fact that voluntary communication works is somewhat miraculous, sure. But the idea that a reader could be made to experience something unpleasant against their will by mere words is far stranger. Obviously unpleasant meanings can be conveyed through words, but the idea that the words themselves can be inherently unpleasant feels like some kind of moral panic/social contagion (like if there was a satanic panic centered on the "brown note") rather than a real thing.
These words convey unpleasant/distasteful/crude meanings.
I’m not sure why you think it’s the sound itself rather than the word/meaning.
“Fag” the British slang vs “fag” the American one.
—
I should also note — I fear the pedantry is warranted — that words have not only literal meanings but equally important connotation.
For example, racial slurs refer literally to the race, but also connotate a certain emotion/perspective.
> I’m not sure why you think it’s the sound itself rather than the word/meaning.
If you're objecting to the very presence of the word then you're objecting to the word itself rather than the meaning being conveyed. There's a huge difference between e.g. describing a slur versus directing it at an individual, and just counting the number of times the slur is written obliterates that distinction.
When the problem is the induced experience, the literal glyphs or soundwaves that do this are relevant precisely because they are what currently induces the mental experiences; that the words and symbols are themselves arbitrarily mapped to the meanings they induce, does not change what they in fact currently do induce.
If I were to point to some misbehaving members of some group today and say they were "naughty", this would not induce the same experience as it would have in Shakespeare's time, where that word meant "worthless". One can object to the latter and not the former, precisely because which word pulls the metaphorical lever on which mental experience, changes between those situations.
The question "is moderating such language is a good idea or not?" is a separate one to this.
> One can object to the latter and not the former, precisely because which word pulls the metaphorical lever on which mental experience, changes between those situations.
One can - but not by just grepping for the character string and plotting a graph of the counts.
Indeed. As others in the replies have pointed out, the word "retard" in particular here is suffering from… I was going to say the Scunthorpe effect, but it's a different problem even though it is still automated.
Dictionaries must include the words of course -- there is no conceivable substitute given their purpose.
Citing that as a counterexample is weak.
If a comedian elicits a laugh from a person - who is at fault if the person laughs, the comedian or the person?
I would argue that the person is at fault. Unless you are suggesting one does not have a choice whether to laugh or not.
If that were true, then all comedians would either be funny, or not funny, for all people. That is simply not the case.
Nonsense. You are making the assumption that laughing is always voluntary, and only to communicate that you find something amusing. Both parts of that are false - for example many people will laugh instinctively as part of a fight flight response when the perceive danger from others to communicate "hey im with you and not scared, don't hurt me more". People who hate veing tickled because they feel defenseless will still laugh when tickled, for one concrete specific.
Imagine being so humorless as to purport that laughing at a joke is somehow equivalent to a form of torture.
You must be one of those people who have decided they're charming and funny, without realizing that people only chuckle at your "jokes" because they are worried about what you'll do when they tell you to stop making them uncomfortable.
Fault doesn't really have anything to do with the original assertion. In any case, that's a pretty weird take on comedy. When you hear a joke, do you ponder it, decide to interpret it as funny, and then deliberately choose to laugh?
People take offense, whether the other person intentionally gave it or not.
I choose not to be offended by anything what soever. Humor on the other hand is a lot harder to deal with.
I don’t think you understand why things are funny.
Almost everything that gets a laugh in a comedy show isn’t funny because it’s clever. What happens is the comedian says something “obvious”. They say something that you were kinda already thinking - even if you weren’t consciously aware of it. We laugh because we’re acknowledged and feel seen for what we were already thinking, and when lots of people laugh it feels good because we feel connected to the group. Our laughter is a release of tension connected to feeling part of the group.
If you don’t believe me, do the experiment for yourself. Watch a comedy show. When people laugh, ask yourself why they laughed then.
My favorite example is this clip of Billy Connolly from back when he would play the banjo on stage. Just as he goes to play the first note, the string on his banjo snaps. There’s this awkward pause, and tension in the audience. Then he looks up at the crowd and says “Well that’s just gone and F-ed it, hasn’t it?” And everyone laughs. My take is this: We were all holding tension. He said the obvious thing. We laugh because suddenly everyone realises we aren’t alone in our tension - suddenly we’re all (including the comedian) in this experience together.
“Offensive” humour is even more subversive than people think because it makes it common knowledge that we were all thinking some thought. It’s an opportunity to collectively acknowledge of our humanity. And that’s something some people (perversely) want us to deny.
I don't think this is true. Comedy is often times leading you down a somewhat obvious train of thought and then surprisingly diverting in a completely unexpected direction.
It's not that everyone in the audience knew exactly what the comedian was going to say, it's that the comedian made them think something and then surprised them with something funny or offensive that's completely different.
> No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning of elicit any other response.
I completely disagree. It is a lot more absurd. Language is not a priori. It must be learned. It requires both a speaker and a listener. Both must understand the meaning of the spoken word as well as other factors of communication, including tone and body language, in order to interpret and understand the communicated meaning.
The idea behind a "bad word" is that the word is offensive no matter what. It doesn't matter what the dictionary definition of the word is, or the intended meaning of the word or the subject of the sentence that employed the word. The word is intrinsically "just bad" according to this religious belief.
Objectively, sometimes there are polite ways to use a "four letter" word such as "fuck." The preceding sentence is one such example. But ... if you hold the irrational view that I am describing, there is no such thing. It is ALWAYS "bad." This is a faith based belief system. There is no grounding for such a position. Under such a position, even an academic discussion of the word would require it be censored for fear of offending someone.
You describe it as a religious belief. Surely you are aware that there are actually people with religious beliefs? The rationality of religion aside, belief that there are people with religious beliefs is anything but irrational.
> Surely you are aware that there are actually people with religious beliefs?
Yes. What's your point? It doesn't make those beliefs rational. Faith is belief in something despite the absence of evidence. I am using the term "religious belief" interchangeably with "faith based belief system."
> belief that there are people with religious beliefs is anything but irrational.
I have no idea what you are trying to say in this sentence.
- I don't "believe" that there are people with religious beliefs. I observe that to be the case.
- I never described "belief that there are people with religious beliefs" as irrational.
I think your point might be that, because there are people with irrational beliefs out there we must appease them? Or something?
I really don't know what you're trying to say here. There are people out there who believe in crazy things. We agree on that. How we should treat those people, or react to their existence, is entirely outside of the scope of conversation. It is perfectly acceptable to call an irrational belief irrational.
We were talking about language and communication and the absurdity that there is a such thing as an arbitrary sequence of phones or characters that would cause anyone exposed to that to be offended. All I was saying is that such a belief is unfounded. I honestly don't know what you are trying to say.
>There are people out there who believe in crazy things. We agree on that. How we should treat those people, or react to their existence, is entirely outside of the scope of conversation. It is perfectly acceptable to call an irrational belief irrational.
But in this context, the purportedly irrational belief is that some phrases are offensive. If you accept that there are people who would, rationally or not, be offended by some phrases, then I don't understand why you would even make the claim that it's absurd to believe that some people would be offended by some phrases.
> But in this context, the purportedly irrational belief is that some phrases are offensive. If you accept that there are people who would, rationally or not, be offended by some phrases, then I don't understand why you would even make the claim that it's absurd to believe that some people would be offended by some phrases.
Now I understand why we are talking passed each other. Thank you for the clarification.
You are reframing my premise and, in doing so, changing it to something I never said.
Although before I explain the source of our misunderstanding, I want to point out the irony that you are coming from a philosophically "subjectivist" position and are defending a philosophical "intrinsicist" position. Usually they are two opposite extremes and tend to be at odds with each other.
Subjectivism is the idea that perception creates reality. We often will hear people use language like "my truth" vs "your truth." Your position is subjectivist in the sense that you are clinging to a premise (that I never refuted or discussed) which states that "SOME people are offended by certain words, therefore 'bad words' exist."
Again, that's not the premise I stated or was discussing. But after your clarification, this is the premise that you thought we were discussing.
The intrinscist position states: "Certain words are bad by their nature. They will automatically cause ANYONE who hears them to be offended."
it is the "intrinsicist" position that I was calling absurd. I never said that there aren't people who hold this belief. And I never said that there was no such thing as PEOPLE who get offended by words.
I was saying that the idea that a word unto itself can be "bad by nature" is absurd. And I stand by that.
I have made no claim of any kind about the inherent badness of words. I'm just saying that your claim that
>The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd
is completely ridiculous. There plainly do exist words that offend people. Maybe you meant 'everyone' rather than 'anyone'? But that's pretty much a straw man anyways.
> Maybe you meant 'everyone' rather than 'anyone'?
Maybe. IMO the sentence works to convey the meaning I had intended either way.
It is not a strawman to suggest that there are people, a lot of them, who believe that certain words are bad by nature. That any given person (the fully qualified way of expressing "that anyone") who hears them will be offended, or have their soul diminished, or other bad things will happen as a result of hearing them. It's not a strawman, because I grew up around such people. They exist. And that's what I was talking about.
And while I was not talking prescription - what we should do as a result of such people existing - I would ask a rhetorical question. WHY do people get offended by certain words? Is their offence rational? And how should rational people regard such offence?
> It doesn't make those beliefs rational.
Humans are irrational. This shouldn't be news to anyone who is a human. I think it is reasonable to say that literally every single non-infant human in existence has done at least one irrational thing in their lifetimes, including you and me. Certainly there are humans who do more or fewer irrational things than others, but that doesn't matter all that much.
> I think your point might be that, because there are people with irrational beliefs out there we must appease them?
Sometimes, yes. Often, I'd say. People's feelings actually do matter. Sometimes the level of irrationality can be high enough that one might not care too much about hurting someone else's feelings in calling our or ignoring that irrationality. But very very often, we humans take into account others' irrationality when dealing with them, in order to make interactions more pleasant for both parties.
(Anyway, I don't disagree with the sidetracked point: that it's not absurd for a sequence of phones or characters might cause offense. It seems disingenuous to deny the reality of "bad words". I do think that this side discussion on irrationality and how to deal with it is potentially interesting, though.)
Yeah I had a coworker who put salty MessageBox.Show debug messages in the code, and one day while demoing the software a pop up appeared that said “BITCH!!!”
Needless to say the customer was not amused. So the simple solution is just ban the bad words from the source code.
I wrote something similar in another comment. This is where I have seen curse words bite teams too. It is always the needless "joke" when debugging that surfaces. Just go boring. No one gets offended by "check 001."
Well, I do get offended by "check 001" - please just put some words there about what was checked. The worst offender of course is "unexpected error occurred" - my PTSD is so triggered by that one. Just freaking give me some error details!
> the same standard of professionalism that they expect when their employees write or utter spoken language in the workplace for the same reasons.
Depends a lot on the culture. In the countries I've worked in, anyone trying to forbid profanity in the workplace would be laughed out of the room. The laughter would likely turn to anger if it turned out to be Americans trying to impose puritanism on another country's project
3. Some of your coworkers may be among that group who finds it offensive or jarring. Maybe this is irrational, but we all are. I bet there's a sequence of ASCII bytes (say, art of certain infamous images from the early internet) that you wouldn't like to stumble across either.
And that’s what drives this ever increasing PC culture strangulating the world: fear.
You have to fear that everyone will react like the most sensitive that exist (as incredible rare as they are). And, you have to fear those who are offended for others even more so, since those are the only ones you’ll have a nonzero chance of interacting with.
I don't like to look at it as fear, but I think fear is what explains a lot of the backlash toward PC culture (people don't like to be afraid; it's common to lash out at things that cause fear).
I avoid offending people not because I'm afraid of being yelled at or cancelled; I do it because I know what it feels like to be offended, and I don't enjoy it, so I don't want to make someone else feel that way.
Certainly I don't always succeed; sometimes I accidentally say something offensive, but we're all human and don't do what we intend all the time. And sometimes I do find it to be a chore, as the set of offensive things changes frequently enough, and it's hard to keep up, or even always agree why something is offensive.
People who get offended on behalf of others are incredibly annoying. I can understand and respect someone calmly saying to me, "hey, you really shouldn't say $WORD because that's really rude and offensive toward people who are a part of $SOME_GROUP", but far too many people get actively angry and try to shame you, often publicly, if you say something bad. And then those same people claim that they would prefer to live in a world where people don't offend each other... while reacting to offensive words in ways that aren't likely to improve things.
Nah, it’s not fear, it’s indignation.
You can see it on full display in the comments here. It’s not, “we shouldn’t have to live in fear of saying the wrong thing.” It’s, “how DARE they try to dictate what I can say.”
It’s obvious when people get so upset over an idea as simple as “don’t curse in your work.” Not even “don’t curse out loud, just “don’t put it in your code.” It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. It’s not like misgendering someone who presents ambiguously. If you’re about to type “fuck” into your editor, don’t. If that’s where you make your stand, it’s not fear.
I think it's, clearly, both. The fear is what prevents people from putting ascii sequences in their code, even though they want to (as this comment section shows).
Fear might be what keeps them from swearing in their comments at work, but it’s not what drives them to come here and declare that writing “fuck” in their work code is actually very important.
You call it fear, I call it respect. I know that some of my coworkers may not appreciate seeing that kind of language, so I don't expose them to it. Simple as that.
I can swear a lot while talking. I have never written a curse word in my code, especially professionally. Just seems odd and not useful? I wouldn't be offended if I came across one, but it seems weird to use in a professional setting? A lot of the times I have seen inappropriate words used were not in any context and were used as a "joke" when logging/debugging. So "dicks 01" or "fuck me 01" instead of a bland "check 01" or whatever. For some reason, that seems much more unprofessional than a comment like "this code is shitty but works, need to clean up."
The contextless swearing seems so unnecessary and adds nothing to the code, whereas a comment with a curse word in it reads way more human.
> So "dicks 01" or "fuck me 01" instead of a bland "check 01" or whatever. For some reason, that seems much more unprofessional than a comment like "this code is shitty but works, need to clean up."
Agreed.
Context matters a lot. People say "shitty code" all the time. I don't see that as unprofessional. But "dicks01" I would probably change if I came across it in code. Not because I would find it offensive, but because it serves no purpose other than to be juvenile... and that can easily be counter-productive if the goal is easy to read and maintain code.
With respects to "shitty code", I'm not even sure that I would personally even consider the word "shit" to be a swear word in 2025. I'm reminded of the TV show on Showtime called Bullshit (by Penn & Teller). They wanted to name the show "Humbug", which was considered profane in the early 20th century when Houdini was alive and famous. But Showtime didn't like it because they figured it wouldn't land with a modern audience. "Bullshit" it was.
That said, the article even includes the word "crap" (though perhaps they are making the point that it is replacing other, "more profane" words). That one strikes me as odd. If that is considered rude and offensive, then surely "humbug" ought to be as well. Probably very culture-specific.
When I was a child in the 80s (US east coast), my parents considered "crap" to be a bad word, and my sister and I got in trouble if we used it.
It's funny to think of that today; I can't imagine any of my peers who are parents forbidding their child from saying "crap" (though I wouldn't be surprised if that was still a thing in some places).
But yes, time and culture matter. "Crap" has fallen off the list just has "humbug" has (and "humbug" has fallen out of use nearly entirely; I imagine the only reason people are familiar with it at all today is because of the fictional Ebenezer Scrooge), and new words have been added as "bad" that weren't a problem in my childhood, or back when "humbug" was a big deal.
I have a very clear memory of offending someone with the use of the word “crap” years ago.
As a kid I worked in a restaurant that sold Cincinnati-style chili - noodles with sweet chili and cheese on top. We were encouraged to offer customers who ordered a plain bowl of chili this noodle concoction instead.
Late one night, I had a customer order a bowl of plain chili. I gave her the spiel I was supposed to, suggesting that she try the noodle dish. She said, “so you won’t sell me a bowl of chili?”. I replied, “sorry for the confusion ma’am, I am happy to sell you chili. We are asked to say this crap because management is worried customers don’t know what they want”. She replied, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to use the word ‘crap’ with me”. I apologized again, gave her her order, then was removed from my position 3 days later when she emailed management to complain. I had “refused to sell her chili”, and “used vulgar language”.
That sounds more like someone who was looking to be offended, not necessarily someone who finds "crap" offensive specifically.
I try to be silly rather than explicitly vulgar for my own sanity. Having a comment about a hack that "stinks worse than expired chicken nuggets" or seems to have been "composed by a series of dartboard throws at random character sheets" is way more fun to me.
That said, I don't take issue with cursing in code that remains private to the development staff. As others have said more eloquently than I can, the issue is when it is exposed to customers who might take issue and churn. Not a good look, so for better or worse, there are professions where professionalism cozies up to sterile language.
> I can swear a lot while talking. I have never written a curse word in my code, especially professionally.
I can swear a lot while talking. I have, once or twice, written curses in my code, sometimes including curse words, especially professionally. "Within this function lie buried the bones of those intrepid explorers who came before you. It is hallowed ground, and cursed be thy soul if you re-order anything without a +2 from a priest. You have been warned."
> The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd.
I find your assertion to be absurd. Do you really believe that no one should ever be upset by something someone else has said? If so, you have a huge misunderstanding of nearly-universal human behavior.
Also 3, fear of reputational harm if the code leaks. Microsoft got a lot of PR for curse words in code that leaked, and then they locked it down.
3) in case the code is open sourced or leaks, the company might get cancelled, especially if it's the n or r word.
> the people responsible for forbidding swearwords rarely read code.
In a previous workplace, the people in charge prohibited swearing in our code after they had the pleasure of reading those swearwords in a stack trace within a log generated by our software, which we received attached to a complaint email from a major customer.
As a simple fellow programmer, I don't want swear words in code I'm working on either? If it's in the code itself, you should be using better names. If it's in comments, I want information without extraneous modifiers. Not to mention, what one person thinks is an innocent swear might be considered very harsh by others.
There's just no good reason for swear words to be committed. You want to swear about the code, do it in a chat room or something.
What if you're writing swear word censoring/detecting software? Or maybe something less draconian, like your space game that has a Zork like parser, and needs to know that if the user says, "set the f'ing warp drive to f'ing max", that it should set the warp drive to max and not worry about the swear words.
> But I find interesting about corporations forbidding swearwords in code.
How common is this? I work in a big corporation and we have no such policy.
When we contribute to open source, there's a good chance they'll make us remove any. Internal code, though? Up to each team to decide.
We're not even allowed to say master branch or blacklist in corporations anymore lol
Nobody at a large corporation is going to jeopardize their paychecks for some petty nonconformism.
> I mean, the people responsible for forbidding swearwords rarely read code.
Just plain not true.
Hopefully in a few decades the last of the people who think that using respectful discourse means no fun can be had will be gone and we can stop rehashing these threads.
You're contributing to something that runs on billions of devices across the world and is maintained by people around the world of all types. If you can't describe your code, your reasons, and your notes politely, do better.
I contend that you are slipping in the words "respectful" and "professional" and assuming the benefit of their positive connotations without an argument that simply omitting the occasional well-placed curse is indeed "professional".
I think so-called "professional" speech - which I'd call bland and often ineffective speech - is professional in the same way that a suit and tie is professional. It's a uniform to ensure nobody stands out, and the corporation can absorb everybody's personality, like flour incorporated into bread dough. White bread, no seeds.
Cursing adds nothing to the code. "// Stupid fucking hack" is worse than "stupid hack" (more characters while conveying no extra information) and much worse than "work around Lotus 123 leap year calculation bug"
//hack = I have found a way around the problem that was probably necessary to use and could even be arguably clever under the circumstances where a hack is required Example: When I suggested using data uri as source of iframe to get around domain security restrictions in FF and still allow you to click on links and scroll in iframe which using about: uri scheme did not (long story involving national security and identity platforms)
//stupid hack = somewhat ugly thing I am doing to somewhat solve problem because I am perhaps not clever enough to think my way to solution at this time. Example - when I set the center of the map to be a couple decimal points of latitude off from where the address actually was because the designer wanted the address to be not in the center of the map, because then it would be covered by the search box, but slightly above the search box. Stupid because I bet there was another way to do it, also stupid because it was not exact and so we did not know exactly where the address was going to be drawn in relation to the search box, but we knew pretty closely where and that was good enough.
//stupid fucking hack = ugly thing I am doing that must be done to get around problems even though as well as being ugly it is also less than optimal in multiple ways, requirement for this hack caused by third party who have screwed us over by their very existence which makes me incredibly angry Example: put span around any text node inside of an element rendered by React using a Ref to get around the Google translate bug and similar problems.
Your definitions are entirely arbitrary and certainly not even remotely universally understood.
I'd much rather a comment that succinctly but thoroughly describes what is going on and why a hack is necessary.
they are contextual expressions often emphasizing an abstract though equally shared reality -- emotional states. sorta like how "doch" functions in german sometimes. and i definitely will debate it being universally understood semantics, esp for native english speakers.
do you know many people who interpret the emotional weight of "that's fucking stupid" versus "that's stupid" as the same?
anecdotally everyone in my worldview would react differently to both, and further reactions will depend largely on how it is said -- not because of some ambiguous meaning collectively (mis)understood.
i have always found people who want to wipe clean the slate of language and all its slang and "offensive" words in favor of established definitions and order -- contextually or otherwise -- often lack a lot of emotional expression in their correspondence.
people emote. physically and verbally. and we have all kinds of mechanics to capture the nuances in contextual languages -- slang is one of the best features, and the nuances can run super deep, nuances a lot of formal writing or correspondence can lose in its rigor and strictness. especially not withstanding cadence and emotion.
youre going to have vastly different experience reading stevenson and then say twain, for example. even speaking it aloud -- but i encourage you to spot a common denominator.
their dialogue often reflects the character, the context, and the emotional state, and largely not formal. and there's a heft amount of literature that utilizes formal writing in its dialogue, and one of the first things lost in the narrative is cohesion, and therefore immersion, bc that's not how most people speak -- only a distinct subset talks like that culturally and even then it is still not totally real life.
humans are very rarely strictly formal in correspondence in practice -- we only established professional dialogue as a norm to separate the haves from the have-nots, and then made it a moral high-ground to keep the "peasants" in line.
express yourselves. say what you mean. stop letting people convince you that you should be scared of saying something like "that's fucking stupid" bc it means more for you to say "that's stupid" for the sake of arbitrary professional standards.
you're right, nobody that has ever written "stupid fucking hack" has ever followed that preamble with a description of why it was necessary.
There's degrees of hackyness. Tone and emphasis are important parst of clear and effective communication.
Something that's a mere "hack" might be something I don't mind, but worth being aware of and revisiting if and when the code becomes more complicated and has to do more things.
A "stupid fucking hack" indicates something that could have only come about by a whole chain of stupidity and mistakes, inflicting brain damage that we're now stuck with, to great anguish and misery.
Those things are important to highlight, if only as lessons in what not to do.
I don't agree. If I saw "stupid fucking hack" in a comment, I don't think I'd necessarily view that as a worse hack than if it just said "stupid hack". My main assumption would be that the author was in a bad mood or was feeling cheeky or something like that.
In fact, if I was reviewing a code change with "stupid fucking hack" or "stupid hack" in it, I'd ask the author to remove it and actually explain what was going on. Comments should detail the "why", not the "what". "Stupid hack" is the "what", but I want to know why the hack is necessary.
Similarly, "stupid hack" adds nothing that just "hack" doesn't say. And in that case, why have a comment at all? The code is likely obviously hacky.
At least I can have a laugh while looking at the hack someone came up with...
I contend there is a significant difference between a stupid hack, and a better one. The negative adjective is meaningful in the comment.
Meaningful, perhaps, but not at all precise enough to be understood by everyone who might read your code in the future. Many people will understand the difference between "hack" (or even "clever hack") and "stupid hack" in a variety of different ways, many of them not in the way you intended.
When I was in my 20s I would write comments like that, but now what I'm in my 40s I see them as entirely useless, aside from a way for the author to blow off steam. Code that others have to read is not the place for that.
> is professional in the same way that a suit and tie is professional. It's a uniform to ensure nobody stands out, and the corporation can absorb everybody's personality, like flour incorporated into bread dough. White bread, no seeds.
I take you also strongly believe then that when I waltz up to work in some random hoodie, sweatpants and running shoes, that's actually some bespoke eloquent expression of self, full of meaning?
Reminds me to all those "he/she is wearing this/that kind of glasses/shoes, that means <extremely specific personality trait>" scenes from older movies and shows. Holy hyperbole.
Why would you take it that I "strongly believe" that? I said nothing of the sort, and jumping to that conclusion is a reflection of your own biases, not mine.
> Why would you take it that
Because you believe the quoted part according to your own admission.
> jumping to that conclusion is a reflection of your own biases, not mine.
Could you kindly clarify what that bias is? I'm too biased to see it apparently, so I'll not know until you put it into words.
Vulgarity is a crutch used by those without the ability to communicate effectively.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-swearing-a-sig...
You should really read the literature you try to post. From the abstract of the study the article cites (~and the article itself implies agreement with~):
"Overall the findings suggest that, with the exception of female-sex-related slurs, taboo expressives and general pejoratives comprise the core of the category of taboo words while slurs tend to occupy the periphery, *and the ability to generate taboo language is not an index of overall language poverty.*" [* Emphasis mine]
Edit: realized the article does make the distinction between the ability to generate profanity and the willingness to do so, which while interesting is mere conjecture propped up by an anecdote within the article. I contend there are times for profanity and times for avoiding it, but suggesting that because someone chooses profanity they must be less intelligent is perhaps a comfortable idea, but it may also be an elitist one.
It's actually a mid-elite idea, I'd say - that novice/mid/elite programmer meme springs to mind. For sure profanity is used a ton by those some would consider the rabble. Then there's medi-elite who are very pure in their language.
And then there's the academics, surgeons, and nuclear physicists who use quite a bit of profanity (especially the surgeons!) and teach their kids that profanity is a linguistic tool that is often super effective.
I think that's totally plausible! Especially because the fact is that "intelligence" is an incredibly fuzzy concept, such that one could be extremely intelligent in the STEM fields, as you mention, but then be simply average in linguistic ability.
Accordingly, even IF the willingness and ability to use profanity indicated a lesser linguistic intelligence, one would be mistaken to then assume that a person with that willingness is any less of a capable professional in non-linguistic fields
Swearing linked to more intelligence, not less [1]
[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/swearing-is-a-sign-of-more-inte...
It happens to run on billions of devices, after corporations realized they can profit from "a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)".
> and is maintained by people around the world of all types.
You seem to think that the whole world shares your definition of "polite". After living in a few quite different countries, I have to disagree. The diversity out there is huge. There's no point trying to solve this "problem", it's an impossible task.
There's huge diversity out there in coding styles as well, but I'd be rightfully derided or ignored if I suggested that meant that Linux shouldn't have a style guide.
For some reason, "tabs are banned" and "curly braces must be on their own line" are acceptable rules, but "no curse words" is Oppressive Corporate Soullessness.
> You seem to think that the whole world shares your definition of "polite"
Doesn't the opposite hold true? That is, assuming the whole word feels the same way about swear words?
> It happens to run on billions of devices, after corporations realized they can profit from "a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)"
While hordes of people peddle that everyone should be using it like gospel.
> After living in a few quite different countries, I have to disagree.
Yeah dude, tell us about all the countries where cursing isn't impolite and unprofessional.
While in formal professional settings it is rarer (and swearing at each other vs about a thing is generally always impolite) Russia, Australia, Iceland, Scandinavian countries generally have fewer issues inherently treating swearing as impolite vs a strong expression of emotion.
There’s even a comic about how common swearing is in a professional coding environment: https://www.osnews.com/story/19266/wtfsm/
> While hordes of people peddle that everyone should be using it like gospel.
You don't get that kind of widespread usage by mere faddism and preaching. A lot of people had to find it to be genuinely better than the alternatives.
Maybe the unprofessional hackers knew what they were doing after all.
Not consistently mutually exclusive. I consider Linux awful, but that doesn't mean I'd advise us to migrate to Windows Server.
So... you badmouth Linux, in a thread about politeness, and you don't even have anything positive to say about anything? That's some delicious irony.
Maybe you thinking that false positive remarks are a necessary part to politeness is your real issue with it? Ironic in its own way, although at this point I'm just consumed by the despair.
No, but I do think that generic badmouthing adds nothing to the discussion.
Saying that you think Linux is awful without saying why is just... vacuous. It's pointless complaining.
So it has nothing to do with politeness then?
> awful without saying why
Why would I need to elaborate? You expressed that a lot of people hold it in high regard, I expressed I don't. That was exactly the extent I wanted to address it and I think it's a perfectly reasonable stopping point. I don't need to explain myself about my own impressions. To the extent it was relevant, I played along and that's it.
Hello from Spain, you cultural colonialist. Here it is pretty typical to curse in professional environments.
Just typical? There are places where writing down passwords to post-it notes is typical too, doesn't make it very professional, not without a great deal of sarcasm at the very least, or some good old bikeshedding about semantics.
> you cultural colonialist
Well at least you got that part of your insult quota completed for the day. People throw around terms like "colonialist" way too easy these days. One would think if colonialism of any kind, geopolitical or cultural, was so important to you, you wouldn't so casually dispense it. Or is this part of your professionalism too and I'm just being given a taste?
Gotta say, pretty weird though, the Spaniards I work with are normal people who can distinguish just fine when it is appropriate to use foul language (like in informal discussions between colleagues or even to clients) and when it is not appropriate (like in codebases or in formal business communications). Maybe you just work somewhere where the standards are low? I know that a lot of our own small / medium sized companies usually have such poor standards too, frequently accompanied by e.g. using native language identifiers instead of English ones. Product quality usually correlates, though not always and not consistently. Doesn't make me want to call the practice any more professional here, everyone understands that this is subpar lowbrow behavior.
I'm assuming you're not Spanish, and work with some Spaniards in the context of a company that's not Spanish, or is multi-national, or something like that.
Perhaps the difference you see is that the Spaniards you work with censor themselves because they believe you or others will be offended. But perhaps when it's just those Spaniards together, or when, say, they are working for a Spanish company where everyone else is Spanish, they let loose and are quite vulgar, because that's socially and professional acceptable in those contexts.
I'm not Spanish either. I'm American and am very aware of the polite sensibilities you're talking about in professional settings. But even that can differ. I joined a previous company when it was around 50 people in total, and stayed with that company as it grew to around 10,000. When we were 50 people there was lots of in-person swearing and poor-taste jokes, because we were small enough to know what most/all people would be comfortable with. But as the company grew, that happened less and less, because people could never be sure of the audience for what they were saying. (I had a similar, if less drastic, experience at another company that grew even just from 15 people to 200.)
This phenomenon seems entirely normal, in pretty much any place, though the details of what is and isn't offensive can be different depending on region or culture.
I'm indeed not Spanish, and I'm not particularly close with any of my Spanish colleagues either. This means we do not chat informally, and as such, I do not expect foul language - and indeed, they do not engage in any towards me. This very strongly indicates to me that they're perfectly aware what is the standard, where the lines lie, and what manner of conduct they should hold themselves to in a formal, professional setting. So we're culturally on the same page. They did not need any special training that I'm aware of to not push up foul language comments or commits either.
This is not about informal conduct. If they cuss among themselves or towards other colleagues who they are close to, that's completely of no interest to me, and as you say, is just plain normal. I do it with my closer peers as well all the time. This is about the work delivered and the formal communications. And I can understand if this informal speech seeps into work stuff at smaller scales, but that doesn't mean it's right. As you say, it's about everyone being on the same page and cutting themselves slack - but that does mean they are cutting slack, and so that there's a shared understanding of it not being proper, just being okay. According to the GP above though, this is not how it goes in Spain specifically, and it's an alternate reality there where commit histories and code comments will be full of cheap innuendo and cursing, and that that is somehow still completely professional there supposedly.
Well I'll be damned and be the ""cultural colonialist"" then, but I just do not buy that for one second. These standards were not invented yesterday, are not even specific to our industry, and are not nearly geo-localized enough for that to happen.
> Just typical? There are places where writing down passwords to post-it notes is typical too, doesn't make it very professional...
Nice, now with extra patronizing, just the flavor we inferior cultures apparently crave.
> Gotta say, pretty weird though, the Spaniards I work with are normal people who can distinguish just fine...
Ah yes, the Spaniards you work with. Let me guess, you can count them on one hand, right?
> Maybe you just work somewhere where the standards are low?
And there's the second scoop of condescension. Maybe I just work in real places with real Spaniards, not in whatever sanitized fantasy you’ve constructed.
Let’s be clear: I've been working in Spain for nearly 25 years. Cursing is common here. It’s a cultural norm, not some "unprofessional lapse" waiting to be corrected by the wisdom of outside standards. If you'd ever had an honest, open conversation with one of your Spanish coworkers (the kind where people don't filter themselves for fear of offending delicate American sensibilities) you might have figured that out.
> Nice, now with extra patronizing, just the flavor we inferior cultures apparently crave.
Oh no! Sounds like somebody just figured out that insults work both ways!
> Let me guess, you can count them on one hand, right?
If I needed two, would that help? Three? Four? [0] Would it? Really?
> Let’s be clear: I've been working in Spain for nearly 25 years. Cursing is common here.
Let's be extra clear then! That's not what's being discussed!!!
Are you deliberately missing the point somehow? Do you see parentheses and skip right on?
> waiting to be corrected by the wisdom of outside standards
And this is especially not what's being discussed. What's being discussed is if it's waiting to be corrected by the wisdom of inside standards. If people there think they're being unprofessional when using foul language in codebases or formal corporate communications, and if that even happens. An event of mere (albeit severe) disbelief. Although if I were to believe you, an event of "cultural colonialism". Because apparently having an assumption or a negative impression is somehow inherently oppressive (???), and like how do I even dare to think that way? Sensitivities, huh?
Except you keep not talking about that for whatever reason. You keep going off about how people curse all the time. Of course they do. That was never the question! Do you include foul language when sending out advisories or quotes or other formal documents, to clients or internally? Do you include foul language and rants in the work you deliver, be it in commit messages, tickets, ticket comments, release notes, checklists, or code comments? That's what I want you to tell me, with every single one of those amazing, one of a kind, definitely maximally representative of everyone and everywhere else in the country 25 years of experience.
Because supposedly, according to you, all of these will be chock full of cursing!
> the kind where people don't filter themselves for fear of offending delicate American sensibilities
The delicate American sensibilities of a Central-Eastern European. Of not including foul language in code comments and such. Are you actually taking a piss? This is a fever dream, it has to be. You're acting as if I could drive for a few days and enter a foreign planet. You guys are not nearly that special and different, I'm sorry. Maybe except for turrón, no idea how to enjoy that with or without having my dentist on speed dial, I'll admit to that much.
[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/oh-you-love-x-name-every-y
There are two types of people: the ones that write the code, find the bugs (including hardware ones), find the bad design decisions (including the ones they wrote themselves)... and the ones that complain that they found a swearword in the source code they never see because compilation step.
Or as they say in the army: do, lead, or get out of the way.
Total non-sequitur - it's entirely possible to be highly productive and also moderate your written language for a wider audience. What a ridiculous distinction to make.
In a world where code is written more and more by LLMs, these random human generated comments might hold anthropological value in some future.
Think of it akin to us studying cave paintings, wondering what whoever left their handprint on the cave wall was thinking when they did it. So these ancient lines of code might be studied in some future by our descendants, or whatever form we'll take. Interesting to perceive the author's frustration with said bit of code.
By comparison LLM generated code is neat and tidy with clean and clear comments. Plenty of that to go around for the future. No need to suck the soul out of every bit of code we currently have.
There are far more than two types; all of the most effective programmers I've ever worked with can do everything you mentioned and write professionally.
If we have to boil it down to two types, however, I'd split it as "people who think they can do everything themselves and only the code matters" and "people who build effective teams capable of far more than themselves solo", and it's the second group that does the most impressive things. Being professional and respectful is quite beneficial for that group.
It's great that you can do/lead and write professionally. But, in any case, writing professionally shouldn't take priority over doing/leading.
Otherwise we wouldn't have the Linux kernel; and I bet the swearing guy behind it got more stuff done and made a bigger difference than the combination of the most effective programmers you have ever met.
Yeah, if only Linux could be built by one swearing guy with no external contributors like Linux instead of being a bland swear-free corporate hellscape like Linux then it could be successful like Linux.
False dichotomy. "Writing professionally" is also known as "communicating effectively" and it is part of doing/leading.
Linus made an enormous impact, certainly. He'd have had an even bigger impact if he was less of a caustic dick.
And before you say that there's a tradeoff involved and that genius technical people are just that way, look up Berkson's paradox.
Linus is a great example actually, because people pointed out he was being too much of an asshole, and he eventually agreed, and he reduced the toxicity of his rhetoric, but you can bet if the situation called for it, he would still use vulgarity to get his point across.
If you totally ban profanity or vulgarity, all you do is force other words to take up the slack of what people use those words for, and therefore increase ambiguity.
Don't lazily add profanity to the code base because you are a child (ie no, don't use "fuck1" as a variable name FFS) but if there is something truly insane going on, I'm going to write "This is fucking magic" in the code, and my coworkers will know to give that code the respect it deserves.
Consider the fast inverse square root code. Most people only know it because "what the fuck" in a comment. Intensifiers are useful in communication.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PrecisionFStrike
Your code SHOULD have few swears because few situations deserve an intensifier like that, but some situations absolutely call for it.
Funny, I think Linus is a great example for the opposite reason. He shows that if you stop tolerating bad behavior, people will often change how they behave.
The idea that removing vulgarity will increase ambiguity in this context is very strange. In terms of communication, the only use for vulgarity is to convey emotion. That's not relevant here. If we ban it, maybe people will explain why something is shit, instead of just saying it's shit. Forcing other words to take up the slack is a feature, not a bug.
I know about the fast inverse square root code. I could probably give a decent if somewhat vague overview of how it works from memory. I don't recall the WTF comment, and that certainly isn't why I heard about it.
This is a great example of what I'm saying. Commenting 0x5f3759df "what the fuck?" isn't useful. It tells me the author was confused or amazed or something. Imagine if instead they had commented, "Compute an initial guess by negating and halving the exponent. 0x5f3759df was found by experimenting and seems to give a good guess in the mantissa bits."
I'm going to write "This is fucking magic" in the code, and my coworkers will know to give that code the respect it deserves.
This is so weird to me. You won't find blueprints (at least not the copies that will be handed around across teams and companies) marked up with "this is fucking magic" when an architect or structural engineer design something amazing. In a DM/email/SMS? Sure, that's the correct place to put that message.
I'm sure many of us have worked with that type of person who is very good at what they do, but also a massive asshole, and then people put up with it, because, well, that's just part of being a genius (as an aside: this sentiment is often applied to other disciplines too; see, Max Verstappen in F1 or Magnus Carlson in chess.)
I learned long ago that no matter how good they are, it's not worth it.
Agreed. And one thing people seem to miss in this argument is that people can change, and generally will if they're in an environment that facilitates it. If a skilled programmer gets constant pushback because they act like a jerk, they'll probably figure out how to behave.
I would say that a swearword where a swearword is due is actually effective and professional. Dancing around an issue and trying to be polite wastes time and effort, a well-placed swearword directs eyes, ears and effort to where they need to be.
It doesn't. There are words explicitly to draw attention. There's TODO and IMPORTANT and WARNING. A swear is inferior to any of these.
Personally, I think the nicest thing I can do, for my users, and for the engineers who come after me, is to write code that works, and write it in such a way that other people can figure out what it does without wanting to gouge their own eyes out.
Clearly, we do not have the same goals.
It is not mutually exclusive tho
It's about priorities. I value clear and direct communication, and getting the job done, way more than mere politeness.
Politeness is not the end goal. It is a means to that goal, if and when it enables people to communicate more effectively and with less friction.
> do better
I find that expression far more offensive than ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’. Similarly (and non-exhaustively): ‘bad take’; ‘not a good look’; ‘this ain't it’; ‘… not the … you think it is’; ‘…, actually’. They're all personal insults. “This code is crap” is fine; “You're crap” is not.
As I see it, there's nothing offensive about "do better" - it's just asking the person to not repeat the same (ostensibly misguided) thing they did before.
On the other hand, there's Kratos's “Don't be sorry, be better”, which did hit me hard when I reached that part in God of War 2018. That one hit me on a very personal level.
"Do better" when used in an online debate forecloses discussion. It implies that the one saying "do better" is the authority on what "better" is. What if I disagree?
Then you reply with "Because of the following reasons, doing better must entail the following actions...", rather than argue against the need to do better
It's annoying in the same way gish gallopping is annoying: you're giving me nothing except resistance in a way you've formulated to appear as though it's in good faith, even though it's not.
Yeah, you tell 'em! Anyone who doesn't conform to Corporate Culture and treat the dress code and code of conduct as their own personal Bible, upheld even on their time off, they're all terrible engineers and should go work on some script kiddie project.
Forget "fun". Profanity is a signal of honesty. Which I much prefer to hiding behind patronizing, obfuscatory euphemisms like "verifying the security of your connection" and processes that diffuse responsibility out of existence.
>people who think that using respectful discourse means no fun can be had will be gone
It's not zero fun, but everyone understands it's a sign the vibes will be up-right, right?
edit: that's not to say you don't want that, but that's what it is
> Hopefully in a few decades the last of the people who think that using respectful discourse means no fun can be had will be gone and we can stop rehashing these threads.
More likely, in a few decades what you consider today to be "respectful discourse" will be seen as extremely offensive and the latest generation of fearful moralistic pearl-clutchers will be hoping that in the near future it's people like you who will be soon be gone. As long as people keep looking for new ways to be offended and continue wanting to police the language of others these kinds of topics will continue.
> do better
No.
This condescending tone is what really needs to go away. It reminds me of the 90s right-wing, religious puritanism about swears in music and movies just repurposed for a secular audience.
At a previous company, legend had it that swear words in code were banned because of an incident. A vendor was called in to debug a platform error which led to a code review. In the code reviewed, there were many expletives cussing out the vendor for undocumented behavior in their platform.
In the infamous Windows source code leak, a shitload of the swears and profanity in comments are about "Those idiots in the Office team"
I feel as though it also represents the fact that contributors are less invested in the project. There was a small study done a few years back hypothesizing that the number of swear words related somewhat to code quality [0] due to emotional involvement of the codebase authors. I can imagine this to be somewhat true. I would love to see this study redone now that LLMs are widespread on pre chatgpt repos (as I suspect that repos created using LLMs are going to be very sanitised).
I show my investment in projects through means other than swearing, for example through extensive testing.
theory: the amount of crap is increasing. the number of fucks given are decreasing.
"Wtf" are increasing though, an effective indicator of code quality. https://imgur.com/only-valid-measurement-of-code-quality-J1s...
Strange to make such a point based on what you expect to happen when clicking on the link would immediately show the opposite to be the case. But I guess you didn’t need to do that bc you already “knew” the swear words would fall?
It seems like absolute count of occurrences, not normalized to codebase size.
Even more informative would be to plot the occurance rate within new code.
OKR for H2: Increase edginess of Linux for a less corporate feel
Key result: Boost occurrence of swearwords by 20%
Key result: Create a new metric that tracks relative swearword use per line YoY
Key result: Attract at least 100 comments on HN or Reddit about the new code
They went up, actually. "crap" skyrocketed in the last years, and the rest were more or less stable.
> They went up, actually. "crap" skyrocketed in the last years, and the rest were more or less stable.
To their point, I would consider "crap" a lesser swear. More "fuck" or "shit" would counter-intuitively imply... certain qualities [by not being so conformist]
> a soulless bland hellscape of confirmity.
I'll never understand this mentality. It's code, not some """self-expressionist""" art project.
I think it indicates stronger internalization of the "theory" (using phrasing from "Programming as Theory Building.")
There's a kind of "nesting" thing 10x/100x programmers do with code and it tends to manifest this way. The opposite extreme is the 0.1x programmer dequeing agile tickets they don't really understand and issuing broken PRs overworked senior dev "maintainers" LGTM merge. I think everyone exposed to corporate software (on both sides) is really tired of that.
Or a proxy for how many Americans work on the code. Maybe search the mailing list for occurrences of “inappropriate”.
Not that this not-Yankee has much of a need to swear in public to feel Free.
> , but I definitely don't drop swear words into documents that unknown people might see. That's just basic professionalism.
If you look at he numbers then the kernel was never all that swear-heavy.
68 instances of "fuck" at the peak in 2005, in how many million lines of code? And turns out 24 of those were in repeated instances of "IOC3 is fucking fucked" in the MIPS driver, so at least some of it is fairly "clustered" too.
The constant use of the same two swear words shows a boring lack of imagination.
They just use fewer, but still write disparaging things about their peers if that's what you want.
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Are you implying that the ban has something to do with blandness and conformity?
edmin is a newly created account with one comment.
Their comment is typical of a Russian troll starting a new account. ('Poor Russian victims' etc.).
You can waste time ridiculing them, though I just ignore.
Let's set Linus' personal opinion aside [1] - the fact is, the Linux kernel team hasn't had much of a say in that matter. Both the European Union and the US have sanctioned a lot of things related to Russia ever since the invasion of Ukraine, and if there is one thing where "better ask for forgiveness than for approval" is a very, very bad idea it is straying too close to the edge of sanctions laws.
These things don't just have teeth, they have fangs - existentially threatening fangs, to add. If you are not a nation-state entity or backed by one with a sufficiently powerful military or economy (such as India and Turkey, who openly deal in Russian oil), it is not a good idea to cross any line.
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=whNGNVnYHHSXUAsWds_MoZ-iEg...
Retard may not be in there as a swear word. It could be a comment regarding a "delay". [1]
[1] :to delay or impede the development or progress of : to slow up especially by preventing or hindering advance or accomplishment
Indeed. Most of the matches for "retard" have the meaning of "delay":
$ git grep -i retard v6.15
v6.15:drivers/net/dsa/sja1105/sja1105_dynamic_config.c:/* The switch is so retarded that it makes our command/entry abstraction
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/phy_a.h:#define B43_OFDMTAB_ADVRETARD B43_OFDMTAB(0x09, 0)
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/phy_lp.h:#define B43_LPPHY_ADVANCEDRETARDROTOR_ADDR B43_PHY_OFDM(0x8B) /* AdvancedRetardRotor Address */
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/phy_n.h:#define B43_NPHY_PHYSTAT_ADVRET B43_PHY_N(0x1F3) /* PHY stats ADV retard */
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/tables.c:const u32 b43_tab_retard[] = {
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/tables.c: BUILD_BUG_ON(B43_TAB_RETARD_SIZE != ARRAY_SIZE(b43_tab_retard));
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/tables.h:#define B43_TAB_RETARD_SIZE 53
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/tables.h:extern const u32 b43_tab_retard[];
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/wa.c:static void b43_wa_art(struct b43_wldev *dev) /* ADV retard table */
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/wa.c: for (i = 0; i < B43_TAB_RETARD_SIZE; i++)
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/wa.c: b43_ofdmtab_write32(dev, B43_OFDMTAB_ADVRETARD,
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43/wa.c: i, b43_tab_retard[i]);
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43legacy/ilt.c:const u32 b43legacy_ilt_retard[B43legacy_ILT_RETARD_SIZE] = {
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43legacy/ilt.h:#define B43legacy_ILT_RETARD_SIZE 53
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43legacy/ilt.h:extern const u32 b43legacy_ilt_retard[B43legacy_ILT_RETARD_SIZE];
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43legacy/phy.c: for (i = 0; i < B43legacy_ILT_RETARD_SIZE; i++)
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43legacy/phy.c: b43legacy_ilt_retard[i]);
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/b43legacy/phy.h:#define B43legacy_OFDMTAB_ADVRETARD B43legacy_OFDMTAB(0x09, 0)
v6.15:drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmsmac/d11.h:/* Advance Retard */
v6.15:fs/bcachefs/bkey_cmp.h: /* we shouldn't need asm for this, but gcc is being retarded: */In Germany we have "Retard-Tabletten" (Tabletten = pills), which are not intended to stop (or accelerate) cognitive decline, but release the active ingredients with a delay.
We have those too. I wonder how many people actually know that's what that means, cause it's not an everyday word by far here in this meaning.
If you work with engines or planes you should be familiar with it's non-slur meaning. You retard ignition timing (you also "pull back" ignition timing) and you retard the throttles. Airbus planes tell you specifically to "retard".
It's baffling anybody would think otherwise. Reddit auto-censorship (and such auto censorship elsewhere) has a lot to answer for.
I don't think it's auto-censorship as much as language changing. For me, 'retard' is 99% associated with my friends dissing each other as kids, and 1% associated with 'delay'.
For me, it's mostly associated with being bullied as an autistic child, which might be the actual reason it's come to be seen as a "slur"
Meh. Probably more likely is those damn automod settings on reddit (which aren't, you know, configured by moderators according to what their community wants or anything)
Every "scientific" name for mental disability eventually becomes a slur or name. Idiot and moron were considered proper terms at one point in time. "Retard" was never proper but is easily derived from "mental retardation", which was. In the 80s/90s there was a push to use "special" as a euphemism and it was immediately picked up as a slur, I think both usages have been long-since abandoned as a result.
Autistic is also being used this way but its long-term fate is not so clear to me.
In general euphemisms cannot keep up with bigotry, I rather consider it a lost cause.
> In general euphemisms cannot keep up with bigotry, I rather consider it a lost cause.
I don't. It doesn't seem to be that difficult to be aware of these things, and if I can save others from feeling the twinge of pain from being reminded of their childhood, or other abusive memories, simply by not using a few words... why wouldn't I?
Yes, I should have added 'bullying' to the 'dissing' explanation. It was certainly that too.
See the other comment where the guy mentions it's overwhelmingly used in a non-cursing manner, then the first hit is it being used as cursing.
You can check company names too ! It's interesting to see that by default, the graph shows google,apple. But adding meta, and IBM really changes the plot.
Meta went from 2K to 10K+ from 2018 to 2025. While IBM seems to have stopped contributing in 2008. Since they the merging with RedHat, I would have expected to see them increase again but none of RedHat / IBM seems to have increase. https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/#redhat,oracle... Not sure if their name appearing means that they are contributing tho.
Really cool project,
Meta is not just a company name. Look at how it's used:
https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Atorvalds%2Flinux%20meta&t...
I wonder if there's anything not referring to IBM that matches that search. Add them and you'll see that they soar over all others.
All the mentions of "IBM PC"? "HP" seems to follow closely behind too (Dell is nowhere close though but comparable to "redhat").
Add "arm" in and it's a different ballgame: they are more than 2x anybody else, Meta and IBM included.
Mostly goes to say that this doesn't really show much :)
LWN publish better stats for every kernel release - the most recent (for 6.15) can be found at https://lwn.net/Articles/1022414/
So RedHat were the third largest employer by number of changesets (after Intel and Google), IBM were 15th - but, by number of lines changed, they were 5th and 4th respectively.
It's talking about occurrences of the word, not contributions. That's a really lousy way to measure corporate contributions.
IBM is contributing a lot. LWN publishes development statistics after each kernel release: https://lwn.net/Articles/1022414/. IBM was 5th in terms of lines changed, 17th in terms of changesets, 20th in terms of signed-of-by counts. That's alongside the contributions by Red Hat which was higher in all but lines-changed terms.
> Meta went from 2K to 10K+ from 2018 to 2025
Facebook rebranded to Meta in October 2021
But why have Apple contributions skyrocketed? I have never heard of Apple using Linux in anything.
This is mentions of Apple in the source code, not contributions, and non-Apple people have added lots of support for Apple hardware over the years.
Apple is Berkeley Unix-based, while not actually Linux it's possible their contributions to open source have made it's way into Linux (me guessing, no real experience of either Linux or Mac).
Could also be that there's been work done to communicate with Apple specific products, again wild guesses but based on my perception of people working with Apple products is that there might be above average number of "edge cases" that needs addressing when communicating with those.
It's pretty simple. More swearing implies better code because you know someone made it with passion instead of making it for resume-padding or soulless corpo stuff;)
If the stupid HR doesn't like it, you are doing something right.
It also conveniently filters out the permanently triggered people, doesn't matter which variety it is.
In one of my internships we once started searching the source code tree for swear words. It ultimately demonstrated who was professional, and who wasn't.
One thing that was funny was when we searched for moron. There was a file that basically said "[this workaround exists] because [name of someone] is a make-moron."
Pretty sure 99% of these are gonna be in the drivers and direct hardware interaction bits.
What's the story behind the Great Unfuckening that took place between v4.18-rc8 and v5.6?
i like to think it’s solely down to linus.
4.18 was the second half of 2018, around the time linus took some time away and went off doing therapy to work on his “communication issues”.
It's not.
I can't reproduce the exact datapoints from the site using `git grep`, but most of it seems to be down to a single commit that removed repeated usage of fuck from one file: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/a44d924c81d43ddffc9...
I'm getting the feeling someone has strong feelings about IOC3. From a quick bit of googling that appears to be a Silicon Graphics ASIC
why did you have to ruin my hopes and dreams with facts and research? /s
(that was actually interesting to scan through, dunno why but i found the `[it] is fucking fucked` -> `[it] is broken` lines hilarious)
My take on this is diametrically opposite to the “swearing is never okay” crowd here — if you’re not swearing about your work at least occasionally under your breath, you don’t care enough for me to enjoy collaborating with you.
People will immediately start arguing against this stance while simultaneously enjoying the fruits of Linus Torvalds caring enough about Linux kernel quality to use colourful language to encourage others to take critical issues as seriously as he does.
Interesting but I worry documenting things like this will just cause further politicisation and vitrol. See also: renaming "master" branch to "main", etc.
> most of the apple/meta mentions are likely hardware support strings or vendor-specific quirks, not actual dev contributions. it reflects who linux has to accommodate, not who’s writing upstream patches
> what abt the context density. how many files per vendor mention? how many touched subsystems? and are these strings from comments, error messages, or code logic? raw grep graphs don't show structural influence
Trying adding "ass", it explodes [1]. Not sure if that's because of keywords such as 'class' or something else? "dumb" is really on the uptake [2].
[1] https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/#fuck*,shit*,d...*
[2] https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/#fuck*,shit*,d...*
Assembly, assign, assert, assume, associate... I think most of what you're picking up is not actually naughty.
Report: Adding ass makes stuff explode. Dumb is on the uptake.
Resolution: Behaving as expected. Won't fix.
I am particularly interested in the rapid and steady growth of "garbage", among rubbish, trash and junk. What does this indicate? An evolution of English?
AFAICT the consensus is to say that an uninitialized variable (eg. int i;) has "garbage value". I'd say it's rather a technical term than profanity.
A mindless grep. It's probably picking up the massive amount of effort that has gone into link-time garbage collection, and socket inflight garbage, and so many, many others.
Given that it started appearing in 1995, I will assume it is because of the influence of the movie Hackers in the developers of the kernel source.
The GPU access ring buffer aka GARB is expired after a set duration i.e. when garb_age exceeds the garb_age_dump value.
The band Garbage became popular around 1995. Would be interesting to look for any correlation.
As an Australian I’m disappointed in the lack of the key word ‘cunt’ in the graph. Unless perhaps it’s zero.
In the US, that is an unthinkably bad swearword for some reason.
That's heavily dependent on regional/cultural factors. Among a younger and (mostly) gayer demographic, the once-feared "C-word" is very commonly used, especially in its adjective form.
How do you use it as an adjective? The bad thing was always labelling someone with the word, but there isn't really any other way to use it.
We Aussies have many ways to use it as a compliment
Sick cunt, Mad cunt, Good cunt Etc
Reminds me of:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/vbvxiv/10_years_ago_...
(warning, contains footage of frustrated programmer making offensive gesture)
OP's link is the website's swearing preset added with "crap*". Clearly the website didn't consider it a swear word, nor do I. "Crap" is to "shit" as "drat" is to "fuck". I wonder why it was added?
of these i'd take "idiot" as the most harmful, working against positive collaboration
<https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/#fuck*,shit*,d...>
linus says gay rights, I guess
Interesting jump in "crap" right after the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps being cooped up inside the house hacking on the kernel is less fun when that's your only choice.
It's actually because someone with "crap" as a substring of their e-mail address made a bunch of contributions with their e-mail address in it (e.g. in maintainer records and copyright notices) around that time. Nothing to do with COVID-19.
See the graph with the entire domain for comparison: https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/#crapouillou
incredible!
I guess the lesson here is to never take a chart at face value. :)
I like the fact that some words are there from the very beginning.
Missed the opportunity to include "garbage" in the list of default words for that graph... 5 times as frequent as the next runner up, "crap".
Idk who decided what words to include by default. The graphs for "bitch" and "gay" are interesting.
The first derivative would have been a better plot. Perhaps overlaid with dates of cultural shifts.
Peak kludge was first reached at 2002-05-18 with a total number of 118 kludges.
The "Blooeans" for misspelled true/false is pretty funny.
At least they left the one swear word that isn't a swear word for us.
Microsoft is catching up with Linus.
Is this in contrast to "Jokes and Humour in the Public Android API" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44285781 ) posted 6 hours earlier?
The decline in serious profanity is especially disappointing given that Linus is a Finn. I have Finnish friends and they have explained to me that at least half the core vocabulary is swearing.
I miss year numbers on the axis, so very roughly:
1992 0.x
1994 1.x
1996 2.x
2004 2.6.x
2011 3.x
2015 4.x
2019 5.x
2023 6.x
Now can we correlate the same timeline the number LOCs Linus contributed personally?
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