Close pet peeve of mine is "simply" in documentation.
Aside from emotional aspects in OP, there is (not-so-well) hidden complexity, implicit assumptions, and/or non-intuitive implications papered over almost every time I see it.
"In CrabFramework, a StateCrab is simply a Crab which carries state."
"In order to garbage collect a Nest, you simply apply the GC op: Nest.applyOp(nest, Nest.GC, { tuningParams: Nest.StandardGCTuning }). That's all there is to it!"
One does not just simply.
bhaney · 7h ago
I've heard this take several times before and I can't help but roll my eyes every time. I know the intention is good but it simply does not work.
If I ask "Why don't you just do X?" I'm saying "You've been working on this for a while and I want to be caught up on some of what you've learned. The first thing I would try here with no context is 'just' X. I assume you've already tried that, so please tell me why it didn't work, since I'm clearly missing that information."
Yes, "just" is implying that the hypothetical solution is trivial. No, it is not implying that your entire problem is trivial and that the hypothetical solution we're talking about will solve it. I want to know why the trivial solution didn't work, because there's likely a wealth of useful context in that answer.
If you hear a completely innocent question like this and immediately ascribe a whole bunch of malice and pompousness to it, you are incredibly exhausting to talk to in the best case, and borderline insane in the worst case. I really don't want to have to comb over every sentence I say to you to make sure every random minor casual word in it can't possibly be twisted by you into a slight or dismissal like this blog post is doing. If I need to do that, I'm just going to stop talking to you and go speak to a reasonable adult capable of basic conversation who will default to a reasonably charitable interpretation of my words.
TheMongoose · 6h ago
This TBH. I consider "just" to be shorthand for "have you tried this idea?"
Aside from emotional aspects in OP, there is (not-so-well) hidden complexity, implicit assumptions, and/or non-intuitive implications papered over almost every time I see it.
"In CrabFramework, a StateCrab is simply a Crab which carries state."
"In order to garbage collect a Nest, you simply apply the GC op: Nest.applyOp(nest, Nest.GC, { tuningParams: Nest.StandardGCTuning }). That's all there is to it!"
One does not just simply.
If I ask "Why don't you just do X?" I'm saying "You've been working on this for a while and I want to be caught up on some of what you've learned. The first thing I would try here with no context is 'just' X. I assume you've already tried that, so please tell me why it didn't work, since I'm clearly missing that information."
Yes, "just" is implying that the hypothetical solution is trivial. No, it is not implying that your entire problem is trivial and that the hypothetical solution we're talking about will solve it. I want to know why the trivial solution didn't work, because there's likely a wealth of useful context in that answer.
If you hear a completely innocent question like this and immediately ascribe a whole bunch of malice and pompousness to it, you are incredibly exhausting to talk to in the best case, and borderline insane in the worst case. I really don't want to have to comb over every sentence I say to you to make sure every random minor casual word in it can't possibly be twisted by you into a slight or dismissal like this blog post is doing. If I need to do that, I'm just going to stop talking to you and go speak to a reasonable adult capable of basic conversation who will default to a reasonably charitable interpretation of my words.