I don't personally care about language choices in code, but I'll play devil's advocate and speculate as to why a business might be concerned.
1. Reputational harm in the event that code needs to be shared. Say, the code gets read in court, or an outside consultant is brought in who is given access to the code. The company likely wants to maintain the same standard of professionalism that they expect when their employees write or utter spoken language in the workplace for the same reasons.
2. Similar to #1 but nuanced enough to deserve its own mention: code is a business asset. It can be sold or licensed out. The company may fear that language that it deems unprofessional could depreciate the value of that code in the context of selling or licensing it to 3rd parties.
Personally I think that the fuss over "bad words" is deeply irrational to a religious degree. The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd. But you can't choose what planet you do business on and, on Earth, there are a lot of silly people.
>The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd.
No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning or elicit any other response.
> No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning or elicit any other response.
Disagree. The fact that voluntary communication works is somewhat miraculous, sure. But the idea that a reader could be made to experience something unpleasant against their will by mere words is far stranger. Obviously unpleasant meanings can be conveyed through words, but the idea that the words themselves can be inherently unpleasant feels like some kind of moral panic/social contagion (like if there was a satanic panic centered on the "brown note") rather than a real thing.
These words convey unpleasant/distasteful/crude meanings.
I’m not sure why you think it’s the sound itself rather than the word/meaning.
“Fag” the British slang vs “fag” the American one.
—
I should also note — I fear the pedantry is warranted — that words have not only literal meanings but equally important connotation.
For example, racial slurs refer literally to the race, but also connotate a certain emotion/perspective.
> I’m not sure why you think it’s the sound itself rather than the word/meaning.
If you're objecting to the very presence of the word then you're objecting to the word itself rather than the meaning being conveyed. There's a huge difference between e.g. describing a slur versus directing it at an individual, and just counting the number of times the slur is written obliterates that distinction.
When the problem is the induced experience, the literal glyphs or soundwaves that do this are relevant precisely because they are what currently induces the mental experiences; that the words and symbols are themselves arbitrarily mapped to the meanings they induce, does not change what they in fact currently do induce.
If I were to point to some misbehaving members of some group today and say they were "naughty", this would not induce the same experience as it would have in Shakespeare's time, where that word meant "worthless". One can object to the latter and not the former, precisely because which word pulls the metaphorical lever on which mental experience, changes between those situations.
The question "is moderating such language is a good idea or not?" is a separate one to this.
> One can object to the latter and not the former, precisely because which word pulls the metaphorical lever on which mental experience, changes between those situations.
One can - but not by just grepping for the character string and plotting a graph of the counts.
Indeed. As others in the replies have pointed out, the word "retard" in particular here is suffering from… I was going to say the Scunthorpe effect, but it's a different problem even though it is still automated.
Dictionaries must include the words of course -- there is no conceivable substitute given their purpose.
Citing that as a counterexample is weak.
If a comedian elicits a laugh from a person - who is at fault if the person laughs, the comedian or the person?
I would argue that the person is at fault. Unless you are suggesting one does not have a choice whether to laugh or not.
If that were true, then all comedians would either be funny, or not funny, for all people. That is simply not the case.
Nonsense. You are making the assumption that laughing is always voluntary, and only to communicate that you find something amusing. Both parts of that are false - for example many people will laugh instinctively as part of a fight flight response when the perceive danger from others to communicate "hey im with you and not scared, don't hurt me more". People who hate veing tickled because they feel defenseless will still laugh when tickled, for one concrete specific.
Imagine being so humorless as to purport that laughing at a joke is somehow equivalent to a form of torture.
You must be one of those people who have decided they're charming and funny, without realizing that people only chuckle at your "jokes" because they are worried about what you'll do when they tell you to stop making them uncomfortable.
Imagine imagining things.
Fault doesn't really have anything to do with the original assertion. In any case, that's a pretty weird take on comedy. When you hear a joke, do you ponder it, decide to interpret it as funny, and then deliberately choose to laugh?
People take offense, whether the other person intentionally gave it or not.
I choose not to be offended by anything what soever. Humor on the other hand is a lot harder to deal with.
I don’t think you understand why things are funny.
Almost everything that gets a laugh in a comedy show isn’t funny because it’s clever. What happens is the comedian says something “obvious”. They say something that you were kinda already thinking - even if you weren’t consciously aware of it. We laugh because we’re acknowledged and feel seen for what we were already thinking, and when lots of people laugh it feels good because we feel connected to the group. Our laughter is a release of tension connected to feeling part of the group.
If you don’t believe me, do the experiment for yourself. Watch a comedy show. When people laugh, ask yourself why they laughed then.
My favorite example is this clip of Billy Connolly from back when he would play the banjo on stage. Just as he goes to play the first note, the string on his banjo snaps. There’s this awkward pause, and tension in the audience. Then he looks up at the crowd and says “Well that’s just gone and F-ed it, hasn’t it?” And everyone laughs. My take is this: We were all holding tension. He said the obvious thing. We laugh because suddenly everyone realises we aren’t alone in our tension - suddenly we’re all (including the comedian) in this experience together.
“Offensive” humour is even more subversive than people think because it makes it common knowledge that we were all thinking some thought. It’s an opportunity to collectively acknowledge of our humanity. And that’s something some people (perversely) want us to deny.
I don't think this is true. Comedy is often times leading you down a somewhat obvious train of thought and then surprisingly diverting in a completely unexpected direction.
It's not that everyone in the audience knew exactly what the comedian was going to say, it's that the comedian made them think something and then surprised them with something funny or offensive that's completely different.
Imagine even entertaining the idea that laughter is a bad thing.
> No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning of elicit any other response.
I completely disagree. It is a lot more absurd. Language is not a priori. It must be learned. It requires both a speaker and a listener. Both must understand the meaning of the spoken word as well as other factors of communication, including tone and body language, in order to interpret and understand the communicated meaning.
The idea behind a "bad word" is that the word is offensive no matter what. It doesn't matter what the dictionary definition of the word is, or the intended meaning of the word or the subject of the sentence that employed the word. The word is intrinsically "just bad" according to this religious belief.
Objectively, sometimes there are polite ways to use a "four letter" word such as "fuck." The preceding sentence is one such example. But ... if you hold the irrational view that I am describing, there is no such thing. It is ALWAYS "bad." This is a faith based belief system. There is no grounding for such a position. Under such a position, even an academic discussion of the word would require it be censored for fear of offending someone.
You describe it as a religious belief. Surely you are aware that there are actually people with religious beliefs? The rationality of religion aside, belief that there are people with religious beliefs is anything but irrational.
> Surely you are aware that there are actually people with religious beliefs?
Yes. What's your point? It doesn't make those beliefs rational. Faith is belief in something despite the absence of evidence. I am using the term "religious belief" interchangeably with "faith based belief system."
> belief that there are people with religious beliefs is anything but irrational.
I have no idea what you are trying to say in this sentence.
- I don't "believe" that there are people with religious beliefs. I observe that to be the case.
- I never described "belief that there are people with religious beliefs" as irrational.
I think your point might be that, because there are people with irrational beliefs out there we must appease them? Or something?
I really don't know what you're trying to say here. There are people out there who believe in crazy things. We agree on that. How we should treat those people, or react to their existence, is entirely outside of the scope of conversation. It is perfectly acceptable to call an irrational belief irrational.
We were talking about language and communication and the absurdity that there is a such thing as an arbitrary sequence of phones or characters that would cause anyone exposed to that to be offended. All I was saying is that such a belief is unfounded. I honestly don't know what you are trying to say.
>There are people out there who believe in crazy things. We agree on that. How we should treat those people, or react to their existence, is entirely outside of the scope of conversation. It is perfectly acceptable to call an irrational belief irrational.
But in this context, the purportedly irrational belief is that some phrases are offensive. If you accept that there are people who would, rationally or not, be offended by some phrases, then I don't understand why you would even make the claim that it's absurd to believe that some people would be offended by some phrases.
> But in this context, the purportedly irrational belief is that some phrases are offensive. If you accept that there are people who would, rationally or not, be offended by some phrases, then I don't understand why you would even make the claim that it's absurd to believe that some people would be offended by some phrases.
Now I understand why we are talking passed each other. Thank you for the clarification.
You are reframing my premise and, in doing so, changing it to something I never said.
Although before I explain the source of our misunderstanding, I want to point out the irony that you are coming from a philosophically "subjectivist" position and are defending a philosophical "intrinsicist" position. Usually they are two opposite extremes and tend to be at odds with each other.
Subjectivism is the idea that perception creates reality. We often will hear people use language like "my truth" vs "your truth." Your position is subjectivist in the sense that you are clinging to a premise (that I never refuted or discussed) which states that "SOME people are offended by certain words, therefore 'bad words' exist."
Again, that's not the premise I stated or was discussing. But after your clarification, this is the premise that you thought we were discussing.
The intrinscist position states: "Certain words are bad by their nature. They will automatically cause ANYONE who hears them to be offended."
it is the "intrinsicist" position that I was calling absurd. I never said that there aren't people who hold this belief. And I never said that there was no such thing as PEOPLE who get offended by words.
I was saying that the idea that a word unto itself can be "bad by nature" is absurd. And I stand by that.
I have made no claim of any kind about the inherent badness of words. I'm just saying that your claim that
>The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd
is completely ridiculous. There plainly do exist words that offend people. Maybe you meant 'everyone' rather than 'anyone'? But that's pretty much a straw man anyways.
> Maybe you meant 'everyone' rather than 'anyone'?
Maybe. IMO the sentence works to convey the meaning I had intended either way.
It is not a strawman to suggest that there are people, a lot of them, who believe that certain words are bad by nature. That any given person (the fully qualified way of expressing "that anyone") who hears them will be offended, or have their soul diminished, or other bad things will happen as a result of hearing them. It's not a strawman, because I grew up around such people. They exist. And that's what I was talking about.
And while I was not talking prescription - what we should do as a result of such people existing - I would ask a rhetorical question. WHY do people get offended by certain words? Is their offence rational? And how should rational people regard such offence?
> It doesn't make those beliefs rational.
Humans are irrational. This shouldn't be news to anyone who is a human. I think it is reasonable to say that literally every single non-infant human in existence has done at least one irrational thing in their lifetimes, including you and me. Certainly there are humans who do more or fewer irrational things than others, but that doesn't matter all that much.
> I think your point might be that, because there are people with irrational beliefs out there we must appease them?
Sometimes, yes. Often, I'd say. People's feelings actually do matter. Sometimes the level of irrationality can be high enough that one might not care too much about hurting someone else's feelings in calling our or ignoring that irrationality. But very very often, we humans take into account others' irrationality when dealing with them, in order to make interactions more pleasant for both parties.
(Anyway, I don't disagree with the sidetracked point: that it's not absurd for a sequence of phones or characters might cause offense. It seems disingenuous to deny the reality of "bad words". I do think that this side discussion on irrationality and how to deal with it is potentially interesting, though.)
Yeah I had a coworker who put salty MessageBox.Show debug messages in the code, and one day while demoing the software a pop up appeared that said “BITCH!!!”
Needless to say the customer was not amused. So the simple solution is just ban the bad words from the source code.
I wrote something similar in another comment. This is where I have seen curse words bite teams too. It is always the needless "joke" when debugging that surfaces. Just go boring. No one gets offended by "check 001."
Well, I do get offended by "check 001" - please just put some words there about what was checked. The worst offender of course is "unexpected error occurred" - my PTSD is so triggered by that one. Just freaking give me some error details!
Swears are fine and good, slurs not so much.
> the same standard of professionalism that they expect when their employees write or utter spoken language in the workplace for the same reasons.
Depends a lot on the culture. In the countries I've worked in, anyone trying to forbid profanity in the workplace would be laughed out of the room. The laughter would likely turn to anger if it turned out to be Americans trying to impose puritanism on another country's project
3. Some of your coworkers may be among that group who finds it offensive or jarring. Maybe this is irrational, but we all are. I bet there's a sequence of ASCII bytes (say, art of certain infamous images from the early internet) that you wouldn't like to stumble across either.
And that’s what drives this ever increasing PC culture strangulating the world: fear.
You have to fear that everyone will react like the most sensitive that exist (as incredible rare as they are). And, you have to fear those who are offended for others even more so, since those are the only ones you’ll have a nonzero chance of interacting with.
I don't like to look at it as fear, but I think fear is what explains a lot of the backlash toward PC culture (people don't like to be afraid; it's common to lash out at things that cause fear).
I avoid offending people not because I'm afraid of being yelled at or cancelled; I do it because I know what it feels like to be offended, and I don't enjoy it, so I don't want to make someone else feel that way.
Certainly I don't always succeed; sometimes I accidentally say something offensive, but we're all human and don't do what we intend all the time. And sometimes I do find it to be a chore, as the set of offensive things changes frequently enough, and it's hard to keep up, or even always agree why something is offensive.
People who get offended on behalf of others are incredibly annoying. I can understand and respect someone calmly saying to me, "hey, you really shouldn't say $WORD because that's really rude and offensive toward people who are a part of $SOME_GROUP", but far too many people get actively angry and try to shame you, often publicly, if you say something bad. And then those same people claim that they would prefer to live in a world where people don't offend each other... while reacting to offensive words in ways that aren't likely to improve things.
Nah, it’s not fear, it’s indignation.
You can see it on full display in the comments here. It’s not, “we shouldn’t have to live in fear of saying the wrong thing.” It’s, “how DARE they try to dictate what I can say.”
It’s obvious when people get so upset over an idea as simple as “don’t curse in your work.” Not even “don’t curse out loud, just “don’t put it in your code.” It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. It’s not like misgendering someone who presents ambiguously. If you’re about to type “fuck” into your editor, don’t. If that’s where you make your stand, it’s not fear.
I think it's, clearly, both. The fear is what prevents people from putting ascii sequences in their code, even though they want to (as this comment section shows).
Fear might be what keeps them from swearing in their comments at work, but it’s not what drives them to come here and declare that writing “fuck” in their work code is actually very important.
You call it fear, I call it respect. I know that some of my coworkers may not appreciate seeing that kind of language, so I don't expose them to it. Simple as that.
I can swear a lot while talking. I have never written a curse word in my code, especially professionally. Just seems odd and not useful? I wouldn't be offended if I came across one, but it seems weird to use in a professional setting? A lot of the times I have seen inappropriate words used were not in any context and were used as a "joke" when logging/debugging. So "dicks 01" or "fuck me 01" instead of a bland "check 01" or whatever. For some reason, that seems much more unprofessional than a comment like "this code is shitty but works, need to clean up."
The contextless swearing seems so unnecessary and adds nothing to the code, whereas a comment with a curse word in it reads way more human.
> So "dicks 01" or "fuck me 01" instead of a bland "check 01" or whatever. For some reason, that seems much more unprofessional than a comment like "this code is shitty but works, need to clean up."
Agreed.
Context matters a lot. People say "shitty code" all the time. I don't see that as unprofessional. But "dicks01" I would probably change if I came across it in code. Not because I would find it offensive, but because it serves no purpose other than to be juvenile... and that can easily be counter-productive if the goal is easy to read and maintain code.
With respects to "shitty code", I'm not even sure that I would personally even consider the word "shit" to be a swear word in 2025. I'm reminded of the TV show on Showtime called Bullshit (by Penn & Teller). They wanted to name the show "Humbug", which was considered profane in the early 20th century when Houdini was alive and famous. But Showtime didn't like it because they figured it wouldn't land with a modern audience. "Bullshit" it was.
That said, the article even includes the word "crap" (though perhaps they are making the point that it is replacing other, "more profane" words). That one strikes me as odd. If that is considered rude and offensive, then surely "humbug" ought to be as well. Probably very culture-specific.
When I was a child in the 80s (US east coast), my parents considered "crap" to be a bad word, and my sister and I got in trouble if we used it.
It's funny to think of that today; I can't imagine any of my peers who are parents forbidding their child from saying "crap" (though I wouldn't be surprised if that was still a thing in some places).
But yes, time and culture matter. "Crap" has fallen off the list just has "humbug" has (and "humbug" has fallen out of use nearly entirely; I imagine the only reason people are familiar with it at all today is because of the fictional Ebenezer Scrooge), and new words have been added as "bad" that weren't a problem in my childhood, or back when "humbug" was a big deal.
I have a very clear memory of offending someone with the use of the word “crap” years ago.
As a kid I worked in a restaurant that sold Cincinnati-style chili - noodles with sweet chili and cheese on top. We were encouraged to offer customers who ordered a plain bowl of chili this noodle concoction instead.
Late one night, I had a customer order a bowl of plain chili. I gave her the spiel I was supposed to, suggesting that she try the noodle dish. She said, “so you won’t sell me a bowl of chili?”. I replied, “sorry for the confusion ma’am, I am happy to sell you chili. We are asked to say this crap because management is worried customers don’t know what they want”. She replied, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to use the word ‘crap’ with me”. I apologized again, gave her her order, then was removed from my position 3 days later when she emailed management to complain. I had “refused to sell her chili”, and “used vulgar language”.
That sounds more like someone who was looking to be offended, not necessarily someone who finds "crap" offensive specifically.
I try to be silly rather than explicitly vulgar for my own sanity. Having a comment about a hack that "stinks worse than expired chicken nuggets" or seems to have been "composed by a series of dartboard throws at random character sheets" is way more fun to me.
That said, I don't take issue with cursing in code that remains private to the development staff. As others have said more eloquently than I can, the issue is when it is exposed to customers who might take issue and churn. Not a good look, so for better or worse, there are professions where professionalism cozies up to sterile language.
> I can swear a lot while talking. I have never written a curse word in my code, especially professionally.
I can swear a lot while talking. I have, once or twice, written curses in my code, sometimes including curse words, especially professionally. "Within this function lie buried the bones of those intrepid explorers who came before you. It is hallowed ground, and cursed be thy soul if you re-order anything without a +2 from a priest. You have been warned."
> The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd.
I find your assertion to be absurd. Do you really believe that no one should ever be upset by something someone else has said? If so, you have a huge misunderstanding of nearly-universal human behavior.
Also 3, fear of reputational harm if the code leaks. Microsoft got a lot of PR for curse words in code that leaked, and then they locked it down.
3) in case the code is open sourced or leaks, the company might get cancelled, especially if it's the n or r word.