Someone submits a 1-line PR changing the gender used in a code comment
PR rejected on the grounds that the change is “politically motivated”
Submitter got mad, and proposed removing the rule against “politically motivated” changes, calling it “white supremacist,” which is closed
Someone wrote a blog post about it
Here’s my analysis:
Stupid change - don’t make PRs that simply correct an irrelevant typo in a comment somewhere; some people do this to put stuff on a resume (look at how much FOSS work I do!), and it just wastes everyone’s time
Stupid response - it should’ve been rejected because it’s a useless change, not because it’s “politically motivated”
Stupid proposal - do you really want to waste a bunch of time fighting over wording in a comment? Because that’s the kind of crap you get without a rule like this.
This is all about an irrelevant change to a comment? Why is this getting so much attention?
Fixing that makes sense because it’s wrong and misleading (it’s actually Manhattan distance), and a quick glace is insufficient to tell the difference.
But fixing a typo or something that wouldn’t be confusing is just noise and should only be fixed with other changes. For example, I intentionally misspelled Pythagorean in my comment above, fixing that to be the right spelling would be a useless change, even if the distance formula used the hypotenuse. It wouldn’t be an unreasonable policy to reject PRs that only fix spelling or similar to reduce noise for the maintainers.
Yep, I understand but disagree. Maybe it comes from working with so many ESL coders, but I’ll happily accept typo corrections because it’s not always obvious what words should be if you’re not steeped in the culture.
I’m surprised this got any kind of attention.
Here’s the turn of events from my perspective:
Here’s my analysis:
“comments must be accurate,” is not a rule you should bend. Bending it even a little leads to last programming and shit code.
True, but that only applies if it’s misleading. For example:
// pythagoran theorem distance = abs(p2.x - p1.x) + abs(p2.y - p1.y);Fixing that makes sense because it’s wrong and misleading (it’s actually Manhattan distance), and a quick glace is insufficient to tell the difference.
But fixing a typo or something that wouldn’t be confusing is just noise and should only be fixed with other changes. For example, I intentionally misspelled Pythagorean in my comment above, fixing that to be the right spelling would be a useless change, even if the distance formula used the hypotenuse. It wouldn’t be an unreasonable policy to reject PRs that only fix spelling or similar to reduce noise for the maintainers.
Yep, I understand but disagree. Maybe it comes from working with so many ESL coders, but I’ll happily accept typo corrections because it’s not always obvious what words should be if you’re not steeped in the culture.