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.
It's a reminder that Google is not a friend, but an ad-versary, and that you aren't given a free browser to happily navigate the internet, but to be milked by the ad industry.
I can imagine also a government agency asking OpenAI to have ChatGPT very subtly align people to the official discourse, whatever it would be. With its access to previous conversations and memories, it's a child's game to slowly nudge people's opinions in the "right" direction. Because something that LLMs excel at is being convincing.
You read at the same speed line-by-line your code when you are in your git client?
You are doing something wrong. I go line-by-line through my code like 7x faster than I would do it for someone's else code, because I know what I wrote, my own intentions, my flow of coding and all of those details. I can just look at it en passant, while with AI code I need to carefully review every single detail and the connection between them to approve it.
Yes, but you know the kind of code you write. When you re-check it, you are looking for minor typos, no major logic flaws affecting half the committed code.
Just send him an email. Or politely ask him about his schedule and don't make assumptions about it, because I, for instance, can be awake at 5am a weekend and asleep at 9pm on a workday.
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