In my opinion calling the code garbage is much nicer than "The author of that post has a common misconception", which sounds like a passive-aggressive way to call someone dumb. Everyone writes bad/'garbage' code once in awhile.
>"The author of that post has a common misconception", which sounds like a passive-aggressive way to call someone dumb
Not at all. It's a polite way to say they're ignorant of a particular thing. It would be rather insecure of them to read into it and think they're being called dumb across the board.
When you say "the code is bad/wrong/garbage", that's a statement about the code. It gives the person who wrote it an out: they can say "Oh, right, I totally knew that, just slipped my mind for a second", or "This is why I shouldn't write blog posts about mutexes at 3 AM" or something. I've certainly written garbage code at times, and you probably have too -- it doesn't mean you're dumb or you don't know things.
When you say "the person who wrote this code has a common misconception", that's a statement about the person. You've jumped to a conclusion about the reason the person wrote the bad code. You're telling the person to accept that they don't know as much about mutexes as you, that they're ignorant, that they're a worse programmer (albeit in a fairly narrow category).
This is why I think GP's wording comes off worse even though it's superficially more polite.
I get where you're going with that, but I would much rather someone tell me I hold a common misconception instead of saying my code is garbage. As much as the ideal is to remember that you are not your work, I still feel that my work reflects on me and my intelligence.
Giving someone an out is a great thing to do, especially for people for whom saving face is important. But I don't think "this code is garbage" does that. Something like, "that code is measuring timing incorrectly because X", conveys the same information without being inflammatory. "Garbage" is a value judgment, while just pointing out that it's doing something incorrectly is merely stating a fact.
I'd appreciate if "this code is garbage" was at the end, so it would be (and feel more like) a conclusion.
Saying that stuff at the beginning only clutters the reasoning, as one should not "just believe" that that code was "indeed garbage", just because he said so.
That's a fair point, and moving it to the end would likely make the whole thing read better overall, but really... it's just not necessary to include it at all. It doesn't add anything to the discussion or critique, and can only serve to detract, so why bother?
On the other hand, I wouldn't get offended if someone said a piece of my code indicated I was ignorant of something. If I was ignorant, I'd fess up to it no problem. Or if I had reasons for intentionally doing it a different way, I'd share and let someone school me if they had a point on why I was wrong. Ego sensitivity only causes problems. It never solves them.
Additionally, _sometimes_ offering someone an out to save their ego actually does them a disservice.
You all are involved in like a 100 comment thread about his tone rather than the content, so that should maybe suggest that he didn’t get his point across well.
In my opinion calling the code garbage is much nicer than "The author of that post has a common misconception", which sounds like a passive-aggressive way to call someone dumb. Everyone writes bad/'garbage' code once in awhile.