Otherwise we wouldn't have the Linux kernel; and I bet the swearing guy behind it got more stuff done and made a bigger difference than the combination of the most effective programmers you have ever met.

Think of it akin to us studying cave paintings, wondering what whoever left their handprint on the cave wall was thinking when they did it. So these ancient lines of code might be studied in some future by our descendants, or whatever form we'll take. Interesting to perceive the author's frustration with said bit of code.

By comparison LLM generated code is neat and tidy with clean and clear comments. Plenty of that to go around for the future. No need to suck the soul out of every bit of code we currently have.

There’s even a comic about how common swearing is in a professional coding environment: https://www.osnews.com/story/19266/wtfsm/

You don't get that kind of widespread usage by mere faddism and preaching. A lot of people had to find it to be genuinely better than the alternatives.

Maybe the unprofessional hackers knew what they were doing after all.

At least I can have a laugh while looking at the hack someone came up with...

Something that's a mere "hack" might be something I don't mind, but worth being aware of and revisiting if and when the code becomes more complicated and has to do more things.

A "stupid fucking hack" indicates something that could have only come about by a whole chain of stupidity and mistakes, inflicting brain damage that we're now stuck with, to great anguish and misery.

Those things are important to highlight, if only as lessons in what not to do.

"Overall the findings suggest that, with the exception of female-sex-related slurs, taboo expressives and general pejoratives comprise the core of the category of taboo words while slurs tend to occupy the periphery, *and the ability to generate taboo language is not an index of overall language poverty.*" [* Emphasis mine]

Politeness is not the end goal. It is a means to that goal, if and when it enables people to communicate more effectively and with less friction.

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.

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 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.