You may think you’re being cute. You may even think you’re being relevant. The
fact is, you come across like someone that’s out of touch and trying too damn
hard.
I know you don’t mean it that way, and I think I may actually empathize with
you a small bit. The thing is, I consider you offensive and you’re doing
nothing but pushing me away. That may actually be a good thing, perhaps you
don’t even want me around 😉
This rant is brought to you in part by the FirstWaVE Venture Center
located in my least favorite place in the world, Tampa, FL (more on that
later). The supposed tech accelerator / co-working space recently moved and
launched a new website. At the top of the site, a mangled pseudo-code
snippet that does nothing more than make me want to drink away the pain.
The snippet in question is this:
If (self.location="wave"){ self.coffee += 100 increase_developer_friends }
I know it’s petty for me to feel the way I do, but that’s just how I am
(because Pisces). Personally, I don’t think it’s petty to think that places
should do their best to seem professional or at the very least, especially in
technology, sound like they are relevant. This is the same reason I berate
recruiters that send me bullshit emails about jobs that no one wants.
So this code snippet, all it tells me is that the location in question
(FirstWaVE Venture Center) is completely out of touch with programmers. At the
most topical aspect, the code is inconsistently formatted. Why is the if
capitalized and why isn’t there a space before the opening parenthesis?
To dig deeper into it, the fucking conditional in absolutely wrong. Last I
checked, most (if not all) languages that use = and == have clear rules for
assignment versus comparison. Not just that, but self.coffee is just going to
keep being incremented by 100 every time self.location is set to be wave?
Don’t even get me started on the undefined function that’s referenced.
“So Josh, since you’re so damn opinionated, what would you change the code
snippet to?”. I wouldn’t change it to anything, because it’s all just too
subjective. I would simply delete it and take all of the guess work out of it.
I get it, you’re trying to speak to people that are in technology. Turns out,
we actually communicate in plain English (or whatever your native tongue is),
not in code or science fiction references or whatever the hell other stereotype
you can throw our way. You wouldn’t try to talk to a plumber in a series of
drain and pipe references, would you? I seriously hope not. So why try to talk
to me in code?
It all comes off condescending, to me at least. It’s like you think we’re
fucking cave dwelling sub-humans or something. I’m sure you didn’t mean it that
way, but that’s how you make me feel. Thanks a lot, time for another drink I
suppose.
