Seriously, America is going to drown in shoulder-patting and hooray cheering. This taboo on negative opinions is ridiculous. We're teaching entire generations that we cannot fail as long as we try hard enough, and that it's the attempt that counts. Seriously, screw that.
It is a vital skill to be able to filter through feedback, take the useful parts to heart, and shrug about low, nasty, useless comments. To learn from mistakes and do better next time. Why is that bad?
Sure, we should attempt to stop the low/nasty/useless feedback, but that's not so clear cut as we'd like it to be. Until we figure out a clear line, I'd prefer honest (and sometimes nasty) feedback over a culture of non-stop shoulder patting.
This isn't the sort of thing author is talking about.
We're talking about the nasty, mean-spirited, no-holds-barred evisceration of each other by hiding behind the guise of criticism.
Take a few days ago:
"GitHub Gracious Helps Female Programmers Cower in Fear"[1]
Nobody is saying you have to agree with everything GitHub does re: sexism, or that they are above criticism. Nobody is saying you should be patting everyone on the back and giving gold stars for effort.
But what is that, really? You couldn't just say "this is wrong and doesn't help" or "your solution makes the problem worse"? No, author in this case had to go with the most needlessly inflammatory, mean-spirited, and downright asshole-ish comment possible.
Presentation matters. Criticism wrapped in vitriol becomes just vitriol, and vitriol wrapped in criticism still doesn't become good criticism.
Disagree away, but the way the geek community behaves it's clear many members take a perverse glee in eviscerating each other via "criticism". We revel in others being wrong, and we positively wet ourselves at the opportunity to point out this wrongness with gusto and vitriol. This perversity is what the author was railing against, not your ability to disagree in general.
> I'd prefer honest (and sometimes nasty) feedback over a culture of non-stop shoulder patting.
No one is suggesting a never ending hug fest of positive comments. But criticism should be constructive. You might not care that all feedback is on the level of idiotic YouTube comments, but that's a toxic environment and it's causing harm to the Internet. A bunch of projects would have more volunteers if they weren't such hateful environments.
I think this is a false dichotomy. You can refuse to accept sub-par performance without being an asshole. You can help a person get better at something without making sure they know how much better/smarter/awesomer you are than they are. You can be critical while still having empathy.
And that, IMO, is the problem. Whatever it is that draws us to computers seems to select very well for poor empathy. I've spent 20 years actively trying to be more empathetic, and I still suck at it. For people who don't care, you wind up with the kind of behavior TFA talks about (and that I see echoed in your response).
Every excuse I've ever seen comes down to "I didn't care enough about the other person's feelings to put any extra effort into my communication." We aren't robots. Feelings matter.
"....it's the attempt that counts. Seriously, screw that."
"To learn from mistakes and do better next time. Why is that bad?"
You said both things. Attempting does not mean you will always succeed. You could still fail but it does matter that you tried. And sure, you learn from mistakes and do better. So I would say that don't screw the attempting part. Also, you are probably being a little hard on this post by saying "shoulder patting".
I come to HN precisely because the comments are incisive and questioning. It's a breath of fresh air and trains me to analyze ideas more effectively. If that makes me an "anti-social curmudgeon" by society's capricious standards, then so be it.
The worst thing that can happen to a Show HN post is people totally ignoring it. When I post something of my own here, I expect a certain amount of honesty and criticism, as long as it is constructive.
Being "constructive" does not mean being congratulatory, shoulder-patting, praising, or anything like that. It means that the feedback itself should provide some kind of value, preferably for the benefit of the project creator.
"What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
I think using the slightly formulaic "What I liked: X; What could be improved: Y" has a high chance of being constructive feedback.
Meta discussions can also be OK.
The infamous "does the world really need another X", almost invariably deserves the answer "yes, why not?".
Letting people know you are unlikely to use the code/product/gizmo is also constructive, especially if you can manage to tell why.
As the article stated, comments in the form of "Y U MD5 STOOPID" is never OK and generally don't do anything to raise the level of the discourse. As a general guideline, comments designed to make the commenter look good or smart or superior do not usually improve the quality of the discussion, even though mods sometimes tend to reward this behavior for some reason. They shouldn't.
> "What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
> Letting people know you are unlikely to use the code/product/gizmo is also constructive, especially if you can manage to tell why.
By my reading, these two statements contradict each other. The quote you claim is not constructive seems to me to be saying the author sees no value in the hypothetical contribution, as it offers no additional power and less convenience than what he already uses, and therefore he won't be using it. Isn't that exactly what say is constructive in the second statement I quoted? If I'm misunderstanding you here, can you explain what I'm missing?
> "What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
> I think using the slightly formulaic "What I liked: X; What could be improved: Y" has a high chance of being constructive feedback.
I think you're confusing critique with mentorship. What you're expecting is something wise to be said, or at least something useful to you. Critique is not necessarily like that. Critique is encompassing pretty much everything that others answer you freely, like it or not.
I agree. I think the worst of HN comes out whenever anyone submits a personal blog post.
If you read the comments for ANY blog post submitted, you will see how it has become a giant game to discredit everything the author says. I think it's good to be skeptical, and as nerds we have plenty of skepticism to go around, but there are ways to be do it with a little more taste and respect.
I've been looking at some of the profiles of the main cynics I see time and time again and they have like 6000 karma, but only 3 submissions in their entire lives. Crazy to think they just get all of that karma from tearing down other people's work while not creating anything themselves.
I'm glad the OP brought this up and I think its an important topic for the HN 'community'. Innovation loves support. When innovation is supported, you get more innovation.
On several occasions, I've seen a poor soul post a project on here that represents a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. There will be enthusiastic support, constructive criticism, and often too many haters. I'd love it if the haters left -- maybe all head off to hate picnic or something where they can spit pickles at each other.
Perhaps a basic issue is that people say things in online commentary that they wouldn't say face to face. I think that's fundamentally wrong and mostly accidental -- a result of people's cognitive models not catching up to what's actually happening. Thanks for listening :)
>Innovation loves support. When innovation is supported, you get more innovation.
The same thing can be said for mediocrity and outright regressions.
>people say things in online commentary that they wouldn't say face to face.
This is definitely often true, but not usually. I'm nicer online than I am in person, because in person I can smile, apologize, and make goofy faces to blunt honest criticism. Online, all I have is smileys and exclamation points, which make you read like a wide-eyed idiot, but don't always make you read like a nice wide-eyed idiot:)
It's interesting to me that the Hacker School "rules" post, that essentially boiled down to the same thing (Don't Be a Jerk), is filled with positive comments:
The appropriateness of this showing up on Hacker News, the Internet's favorite dream killer in Show HN threads and perpetual contest to see who can be most correct in comments, should be lost upon no one.
If you participate here -- myself included -- this is a message to heed.
Most of the people I work with (professionally and personally) are perpetually self-critical despite being very intelligent and more than capable. The humility comes from growth over time and being able to remember doing work they'd consider terribly flawed today. If you're working with arrogant people, they're probably not growing and it'll make it harder for you to as well.
I took it to be more about nerds online. I haven't met too many people face to face that are even a tenth as rude as 90% of the people I see online. Of course, I arbitrarily picked those numbers. I'm going to point that out before I get flamed.
I totally agree, there is always room for constructive criticism, but it should be tempered with a soft hand and helpful suggestions. As a person who was picked on most of my life, it's pretty disheartening to endure the same thing inside a group I consider my community.
The first place I worked at had this same issue of developers discrediting other people's code. It was an incredible "alpha-male" syndrome to witness. Then this same group of developers would brag about all the stuff they were working on outside of work. The ongoing pissing contest almost made me quit my job as a developer.
Don't kid yourself, Nerds and Geeks are just as competitive and nasty as jocks are.
From reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, I think it boils down to self importance. We like to put others down because it makes us feel more important. If you recognize and let go of that desire as the book tells you to do, you can use the phenomenon to your advantage instead, and you learn that making others feel important makes you win them over.
This post is extremely stupid. What is this, the first grade? If you can't take honest criticism, you suck. If you think computer technology is full of mean people, try working in finance. My peers don't hesitate to give me honest criticism and that's one of the things I like most about CS. Maybe you should start your own company called "we should be super nice to each other all the time" and have your product be an email subscription service where your clients receive affirmations like "you are a skilled person with value and you have a cute chin" along with some heart graphics and sound effects.
Can't we give honest feedback without going into an epic fit of nerd rage over it?
Besides, the worst fights I see among programmers are over trivial matters of opinion anyway. Ever seen people fight over indentation styles, or the proper way to merge upstream changes into a local git repository, or whether functional or object-oriented programming is the One True Way?
The anger in these debates isn't teaching anyone a damn thing, except that the color of someone else's bike shed is really, really important to some people.
If you think computer technology is full of mean people, try working in finance.
Finance: saying "you fucked up" means "I respect you enough to offer honest criticism, and here's what you did that I don't like."
Tech startup: saying "you're awesome" means "I'd slit your throat for a 0.05%[0] more in equity. You're awesome because I'll get promoted at your expense."
[0] A nickel. As in, Shadow from FF6 and "He'd slit his mama's throat for..."
I think the hacker community, just like any creative community, suffers from a bit too much evangelism and misdirected nerd rage. It's important that we understand our common goals and keep those in mind as we interact with each other. What are these goals?
For me...
- learning how to solve real-world problems using software
- sharing ideas and reflecting my perspective in the conversation
- understanding how others think about SW topics, more learning
- criticizing decisions in order to improve my critical thinking skills and knowledge
- getting feedback from my own ideas to see how well they stand up
I realize that some of these are somewhat redundant, but I feel they differ in nuance. In general it is about _improvement_.
Also, some people are just way too sensitive and need to realize that an attack on one's idea is not an attack on oneself. I have general respect for all people, but I might think your idea is stupid.
The best thing we can do is make sure we do our best to absorb hostility and respond with objectivity.
Nerds generally aren't any more mature than jocks. We just don't fight as well, so we (wisely) keep quiet in situations where the risk of eating a knuckle sammich is high.
I agree with the premise of not being gratuitously nasty. But I wish he hadn't made it sound like all programming is as consequence-free as skateboarding.
If you're programming as a hobby, it doesn't affect anyone but yourself. I totally support your using Arduinos until you figure out you can build one yourself in 5 minutes on a breadboard.
If you're programming professionally, the rules change. It's not all about supporting your personal learning experience. If you use simple hashing instead of bcrypt, and you have real users, you are potentially hurting people. It is literally true that if you don't know better than that, you should not programming a computer (well, programming an authentication system, anyway).
So yeah, don't be nasty. But also don't think your self-esteem is more important than doing a good job.
Nobody is saying "don't do a good job" or even "accept sub-standard work". They're saying act more like a mentor than a critic. Mentors don't tear their pupils down, because you can't teach in that environment. Help people become better; don't stroke your ego at others' expense.
I like it to a degree, the 'geek' culture (how I hate typing that) cuts through bullshit faster than others.
I don't mind being insulted if it comes with a helpful suggestion. I LOVE IRC channels where you get the answers: "You're shit for asking that question, but the answer is X".
Honestly I think this is just the impression one gets because nerds do more of everything online combined with the fact that they tend to know a lot about specific things.
Look, there are absolutely a lot of asshole nerds out there. A lot of guys who went through hell in high school and turned into comic book guy as a defense mechanism and just never grew up (a lot of people from all walks of life never grow up). Okay, but I don't think those people are representative of geek communities. I think by and large criticism is constructive and nerds are supportive of beginners. Maybe we don't sugarcoat things as much as would be to some people's taste, but that's not an asshole quality in and of itself. Rather I think the impression comes from the fact that it's hard to ignore assholes, and there are always going to be a number of them in any large community. People say HN is overly critical, but I think if you look carefully most of critical posts are actually fairly even-handed and not overtly mean; but if you have 20 of them all coming from different angles, and you sprinkle it with a few true asshole remarks, the resulting impression can be quite harsh.
[+] [-] skrebbel|13 years ago|reply
It is a vital skill to be able to filter through feedback, take the useful parts to heart, and shrug about low, nasty, useless comments. To learn from mistakes and do better next time. Why is that bad?
Sure, we should attempt to stop the low/nasty/useless feedback, but that's not so clear cut as we'd like it to be. Until we figure out a clear line, I'd prefer honest (and sometimes nasty) feedback over a culture of non-stop shoulder patting.
[+] [-] potatolicious|13 years ago|reply
We're talking about the nasty, mean-spirited, no-holds-barred evisceration of each other by hiding behind the guise of criticism.
Take a few days ago:
"GitHub Gracious Helps Female Programmers Cower in Fear"[1]
Nobody is saying you have to agree with everything GitHub does re: sexism, or that they are above criticism. Nobody is saying you should be patting everyone on the back and giving gold stars for effort.
But what is that, really? You couldn't just say "this is wrong and doesn't help" or "your solution makes the problem worse"? No, author in this case had to go with the most needlessly inflammatory, mean-spirited, and downright asshole-ish comment possible.
Presentation matters. Criticism wrapped in vitriol becomes just vitriol, and vitriol wrapped in criticism still doesn't become good criticism.
Disagree away, but the way the geek community behaves it's clear many members take a perverse glee in eviscerating each other via "criticism". We revel in others being wrong, and we positively wet ourselves at the opportunity to point out this wrongness with gusto and vitriol. This perversity is what the author was railing against, not your ability to disagree in general.
[1] http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/github-graciously-helps-...
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
No one is suggesting a never ending hug fest of positive comments. But criticism should be constructive. You might not care that all feedback is on the level of idiotic YouTube comments, but that's a toxic environment and it's causing harm to the Internet. A bunch of projects would have more volunteers if they weren't such hateful environments.
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|13 years ago|reply
And that, IMO, is the problem. Whatever it is that draws us to computers seems to select very well for poor empathy. I've spent 20 years actively trying to be more empathetic, and I still suck at it. For people who don't care, you wind up with the kind of behavior TFA talks about (and that I see echoed in your response).
Every excuse I've ever seen comes down to "I didn't care enough about the other person's feelings to put any extra effort into my communication." We aren't robots. Feelings matter.
[+] [-] codegeek|13 years ago|reply
"To learn from mistakes and do better next time. Why is that bad?"
You said both things. Attempting does not mean you will always succeed. You could still fail but it does matter that you tried. And sure, you learn from mistakes and do better. So I would say that don't screw the attempting part. Also, you are probably being a little hard on this post by saying "shoulder patting".
[+] [-] amykhar|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jquery|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimizer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Udo|13 years ago|reply
Being "constructive" does not mean being congratulatory, shoulder-patting, praising, or anything like that. It means that the feedback itself should provide some kind of value, preferably for the benefit of the project creator.
"What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
I think using the slightly formulaic "What I liked: X; What could be improved: Y" has a high chance of being constructive feedback.
Meta discussions can also be OK.
The infamous "does the world really need another X", almost invariably deserves the answer "yes, why not?".
Letting people know you are unlikely to use the code/product/gizmo is also constructive, especially if you can manage to tell why.
As the article stated, comments in the form of "Y U MD5 STOOPID" is never OK and generally don't do anything to raise the level of the discourse. As a general guideline, comments designed to make the commenter look good or smart or superior do not usually improve the quality of the discussion, even though mods sometimes tend to reward this behavior for some reason. They shouldn't.
[+] [-] tene|13 years ago|reply
> Letting people know you are unlikely to use the code/product/gizmo is also constructive, especially if you can manage to tell why.
By my reading, these two statements contradict each other. The quote you claim is not constructive seems to me to be saying the author sees no value in the hypothetical contribution, as it offers no additional power and less convenience than what he already uses, and therefore he won't be using it. Isn't that exactly what say is constructive in the second statement I quoted? If I'm misunderstanding you here, can you explain what I'm missing?
[+] [-] userulluipeste|13 years ago|reply
> I think using the slightly formulaic "What I liked: X; What could be improved: Y" has a high chance of being constructive feedback.
I think you're confusing critique with mentorship. What you're expecting is something wise to be said, or at least something useful to you. Critique is not necessarily like that. Critique is encompassing pretty much everything that others answer you freely, like it or not.
[+] [-] dsowers|13 years ago|reply
If you read the comments for ANY blog post submitted, you will see how it has become a giant game to discredit everything the author says. I think it's good to be skeptical, and as nerds we have plenty of skepticism to go around, but there are ways to be do it with a little more taste and respect.
I've been looking at some of the profiles of the main cynics I see time and time again and they have like 6000 karma, but only 3 submissions in their entire lives. Crazy to think they just get all of that karma from tearing down other people's work while not creating anything themselves.
[+] [-] dacilselig|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] methehack|13 years ago|reply
On several occasions, I've seen a poor soul post a project on here that represents a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. There will be enthusiastic support, constructive criticism, and often too many haters. I'd love it if the haters left -- maybe all head off to hate picnic or something where they can spit pickles at each other.
Perhaps a basic issue is that people say things in online commentary that they wouldn't say face to face. I think that's fundamentally wrong and mostly accidental -- a result of people's cognitive models not catching up to what's actually happening. Thanks for listening :)
[+] [-] pessimizer|13 years ago|reply
The same thing can be said for mediocrity and outright regressions.
>people say things in online commentary that they wouldn't say face to face.
This is definitely often true, but not usually. I'm nicer online than I am in person, because in person I can smile, apologize, and make goofy faces to blunt honest criticism. Online, all I have is smileys and exclamation points, which make you read like a wide-eyed idiot, but don't always make you read like a nice wide-eyed idiot:)
[+] [-] ktf|13 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5639430
While this one is full of people attacking the guy, basically proving his point.
[+] [-] tiredofcareer|13 years ago|reply
If you participate here -- myself included -- this is a message to heed.
[+] [-] shinykitten|13 years ago|reply
Most of the people I work with (professionally and personally) are perpetually self-critical despite being very intelligent and more than capable. The humility comes from growth over time and being able to remember doing work they'd consider terribly flawed today. If you're working with arrogant people, they're probably not growing and it'll make it harder for you to as well.
[+] [-] jradakov|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tenpoundhammer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] at-fates-hands|13 years ago|reply
Don't kid yourself, Nerds and Geeks are just as competitive and nasty as jocks are.
[+] [-] minamea|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtp0101|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LnxPrgr3|13 years ago|reply
Besides, the worst fights I see among programmers are over trivial matters of opinion anyway. Ever seen people fight over indentation styles, or the proper way to merge upstream changes into a local git repository, or whether functional or object-oriented programming is the One True Way?
The anger in these debates isn't teaching anyone a damn thing, except that the color of someone else's bike shed is really, really important to some people.
[+] [-] michaelochurch|13 years ago|reply
Finance: saying "you fucked up" means "I respect you enough to offer honest criticism, and here's what you did that I don't like."
Tech startup: saying "you're awesome" means "I'd slit your throat for a 0.05%[0] more in equity. You're awesome because I'll get promoted at your expense."
[0] A nickel. As in, Shadow from FF6 and "He'd slit his mama's throat for..."
[+] [-] shaddyz|13 years ago|reply
For me... - learning how to solve real-world problems using software - sharing ideas and reflecting my perspective in the conversation - understanding how others think about SW topics, more learning - criticizing decisions in order to improve my critical thinking skills and knowledge - getting feedback from my own ideas to see how well they stand up
I realize that some of these are somewhat redundant, but I feel they differ in nuance. In general it is about _improvement_.
Also, some people are just way too sensitive and need to realize that an attack on one's idea is not an attack on oneself. I have general respect for all people, but I might think your idea is stupid.
The best thing we can do is make sure we do our best to absorb hostility and respond with objectivity.
[+] [-] bzink|13 years ago|reply
On purpose? :)
[+] [-] jcoder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris_mahan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squozzer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wrs|13 years ago|reply
If you're programming as a hobby, it doesn't affect anyone but yourself. I totally support your using Arduinos until you figure out you can build one yourself in 5 minutes on a breadboard.
If you're programming professionally, the rules change. It's not all about supporting your personal learning experience. If you use simple hashing instead of bcrypt, and you have real users, you are potentially hurting people. It is literally true that if you don't know better than that, you should not programming a computer (well, programming an authentication system, anyway).
So yeah, don't be nasty. But also don't think your self-esteem is more important than doing a good job.
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daurnimator|13 years ago|reply
I don't mind being insulted if it comes with a helpful suggestion. I LOVE IRC channels where you get the answers: "You're shit for asking that question, but the answer is X".
[+] [-] methehack|13 years ago|reply
In other words, IME, you can 'cut through the bullshit' w/o being a dick and you'll achieve better outcomes. Plus, you won't be a dick.
[+] [-] graeme|13 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322696
(I feel older now to realize I've been on here for two years, long enough to remember the previous submission)
[+] [-] mtowle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kstenerud|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdowney|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AznHisoka|13 years ago|reply
Protip: just because you realize the irony of your post doesn't excuse you from being part of the problem as well.
[+] [-] dasil003|13 years ago|reply
Look, there are absolutely a lot of asshole nerds out there. A lot of guys who went through hell in high school and turned into comic book guy as a defense mechanism and just never grew up (a lot of people from all walks of life never grow up). Okay, but I don't think those people are representative of geek communities. I think by and large criticism is constructive and nerds are supportive of beginners. Maybe we don't sugarcoat things as much as would be to some people's taste, but that's not an asshole quality in and of itself. Rather I think the impression comes from the fact that it's hard to ignore assholes, and there are always going to be a number of them in any large community. People say HN is overly critical, but I think if you look carefully most of critical posts are actually fairly even-handed and not overtly mean; but if you have 20 of them all coming from different angles, and you sprinkle it with a few true asshole remarks, the resulting impression can be quite harsh.