Maybe this story about suggesting the murder of a colleague is supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek joke, but I want to push back heavily against it. And I’m sorry that this is devolving significantly from the original topic, but I don’t think this should slide by.
Though my professional experience is limited to “just” a bit under 20 years, this story embodies a culture I want to see change in both professional and open source environments. This is a culture that makes neophyte programmers — indeed even some with experience — live in a constant state of fear. I think back to a job I had about a decade ago where I was so bent on outperforming all my colleagues, I missed an opportunity to help a junior developer improve. This person was doing terribly by all measurable metrics (at least compared to the other colleagues), but nobody intervened to help them improve. I remember that person saying to several people — and this was said in their exit interview — that a big reason they quit was that they lived in a constant state of fear about being fired. That’s neither healthy nor ok for the work culture to have supported. Eventually, I decided to try to help this person after they left. This was through comments left on their blog. In retrospect these comments read more as attacks or attempts to boost my own image over theirs. This person blocked me on Twitter many years ago and disabled comments on their blog. I regret this in its entirety. I can’t imagine looking back at a time I suggested shooting someone, thinking it was funny, and sharing that globally on an open source list with a CoC to be inviting and welcoming to neophytes. Having since successfully mentored individuals into systems programming teams, I can’t imagine working in an environment that would tolerate such a comment. If I heard such a thing today, I would make it clear that such commentary is unacceptable, if not file a complaint with HR. Having also worked with people who seem immune to learning, I understand that helping folks can be a drain, especially when it’s not successful. But suggesting shooting a person is just not ok, and to be frank, it doesn’t make the story funny and you owe that person an apology. There are plenty of other more constructive ways to handle such a situation. Kind regards, —dho On Thu, May 30, 2019 at 16:33 David Skinner <skinner.da...@gmail.com> wrote: > I only rarely use generics in Go. When I do so, it is implemented using > the +generate. The repos with my generics stuff is not public. If they > were, they might be incomprehensible. While I rather like Fo, the thought > of C++ style generics makes me cringe. Code must compile but it needs to be > readable. > > I am very old school, I started programming with 8008 machine code. If > something does not meet my needs, I may complain, but I may just write what > I need. Go does not have generics but it is very easy for any user to > implement generics in a variety of ways on an as needed basis. The thing > is, I am not committed to Go, I am willing to use whatever works best for > me, and right now that is Go, and I believe that that is the result of the > experience of the Go team residing at Google in working as a team. > > I remember doing a code review at Sierra Online, it was a metrics project > to evaluate employee performance, one programmer was so bad, I asked the > head of the programming department to have him shot. He said, you want him > fired? No, I want him shot, if you fire him, he will go and write bad code > somewhere else. For some reason I do not understand, the company had a > policy against shooting programmers that violated the style guidelines. > > When this is your life and your livelihood, it is easy to get emotional. > Right now, I am still saying Thank you Google, and Thank you to the Go Dev > Team. Well Done! Hope you do better next year. :) > > > > On Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 8:18:25 AM UTC-5, lgo...@gmail.com wrote: >> >> https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/programming/GoIsGooglesLanguage >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "golang-nuts" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to golang-nuts+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/golang-nuts/3e72df2e-e27d-4dbe-9545-8527bdce1e35%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/golang-nuts/3e72df2e-e27d-4dbe-9545-8527bdce1e35%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "golang-nuts" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to golang-nuts+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/golang-nuts/CAFgOgC9Gwoq%3Di5565X%2BOMwms%2BzB1gFnZLnw%3DFXsSj-y5_Ga1_g%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
