Programming Horror

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Welcome to Programming Horror!

This is a place to share strange or terrible code you come across.

For more general memes about programming there's also Programmer Humor.

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Vacant

Who needs a commit message, anyway? (github.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/programming_horror

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I was looking through various RCON tools and found this. Someone does not like commit messages.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Eh, I still think it's worth calling out sloppy practices like this. At a minimum, drawing attention to it is a way to socialize good practices for others and to spark discussions (like this one!) Nobody is saying this person shouldn't be putting code out there, they're just pointing out some pretty gnarly code hygiene. One could argue this is actually one of the main strengths of open source development! Consider the parallel of somebody giving away free food- if they are using unsafe practices like not keeping things at proper temperatures or picking their nose while handling food, there's nothing wrong with critiquing them, even if their intentions are good.

[–] Mikina 5 points 10 months ago

I agree, however I think that we could've raised the issue even without directly mentioning the developer or his repository, and could have discussed it without directly pointing at someone who did it.

Because that only derailed the discussion into whether he personally can or cannot do it (which he definitely can), instead of focusing on the best practices about commit messages in FOSS projects in general.

I also think that there's a pretty huge difference between offering someone advice directly when interacting with him, such as your example about unsafe food practices, and posting a meme post with his name to an entirely unrelated social network.

So, for your example, I think it's ok to either talk to the guy handing out food, to comment on his post about it. However, if you took a recording of him doing it, and posted it publicly to Facebook while mentioning him by name (and not even tagging him, so he isn't notified) - that's not a good way how to give meaningful feedback or critique.