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Epic Games' woke coding standards

excreationist

excreationist

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At Epic Games, we have a few simple coding standards and conventions. This document reflects the state of Epic Games' current coding standards. Following the coding standards is mandatory.
........
Inclusive Word Choice

Word choice applies when you:
  • name classes
  • functions
  • data structures
  • types
  • variables
  • files and folders
  • plugins.

It applies when you write snippets of user-facing text for the UI, error messages, and notifications. It also applies when writing about code, such as in comments and changelist descriptions.

The following sections provide guidance and suggestions....

Racial, ethnic, and religious inclusiveness

Do not use metaphors or similes that reinforce stereotypes. Examples include contrast black and white or blacklist and whitelist.

Do not use words that refer to historical trauma or lived experience of discrimination. Examples include slave, master, and nuke.

Gender inclusiveness

Refer to hypothetical people as they, them, and their, even in the singular.

Refer to anything that is not a person as it and its. For example, a module, plugin, function, client, server, or any other software or hardware component.

Do not assign a gender to anything that doesn't have one.

Do not use collective nouns like guys that assume gender.

Avoid colloquial phrases that contain arbitrary genders, like "a poor man's X".

.....

Overloaded Words

Many terms that we use for their technical meanings also have other meanings outside of technology. Examples include abort, execute, or native. When you use words like these, always be precise and examine the context in which they appear.
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Well I thought that was surprising.
 
It's not new. Seems to be a trend among corporations who want to seen to be doing something to demonstrate Corporate Social Responsibility.


The other day I needed to label the sibling of a parent entity to indicate that it had no child entities. I started with "childless", then switched to "childfree", then finally aettled on "barren_spinster". I also considered "confirmed_bachelor", "cat_lady", and "incel". Naming things is hard!
 
When I saw this I wanted to write: "Egads! Puleeze tell me this is satire." 'Slave/master' is in very common use, as are other taboo words. Did any of the "victims" of such abusive diction complain about comments in software source? Or are real problems just too boring now? Either way, this seems like the sort of excess wokeism that triggers centrists into ridiculing the "Left" and voting for right-wingers.

One chess guy* had a YouTube taken down because he they said, of a mid-game position, "White is better."

* - Oops. I'm afraid I've given away the chess guy/gal's gender. Whip me with a wet noodle!
 
bigfield said:
It's not new. Seems to be a trend among corporations who want to seen to be doing something to demonstrate Corporate Social Responsibility.


The other day I needed to label the sibling of a parent entity to indicate that it had no child entities. I started with "childless", then switched to "childfree", then finally aettled on "barren_spinster". I also considered "confirmed_bachelor", "cat_lady", and "incel". Naming things is hard!
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When there are multiple children to be visited, I suppose you avoid accusations of ageism by visiting them in reverse order half the time. And I suppose you can't set the sticky bit to speed up executions -- too much sexual suggestion.

In Unix killing a process with extreme prejudice may leave it as a zombie if it is unable to free one of the enslaved devices that were servicing it. The other processes that the killed process owned become orphans, but are not eligible for any adoptions.
 
Ooops. It's been so long since I harvested the last remains of a killed child that I've forgotten the metaphors. A process becomes a zombie when its parent doesn't bother to attend funeral. By that time the zombie's children are already orphans.

bigfield said:
Swammerdami said:
One chess guy* had a YouTube taken down because he they said, of a mid-game position, "White is better."
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I have heard that phrase in hundreds of chess videos on YT, and I'm pretty sure they are all still online.
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The YTer was agadmator and he complained about the take-down several years ago.

:confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :confused2:
I'm afraid your comment seems VERY VERY peculiar.
* For starters, how do you know all are still on-line? Did you check all of the "hundreds" this morning?
* The YouTube that was taken down is obviously NOT among the hundreds that you "heard"
* You assume that if ANY YT with the phrase was NOT taken down, then NONE were taken down.

And despite all these obvious flaws in your reasoning you seem to want to insinuate that agadmator and/or Swammi is lying. The peculiar take-down of an agadmator YT might have just been a prank by a jilted girlfriend or something, but he DID make the complaint.

:fuckoff:
 
Swammerdami said:
Ooops. It's been so long since I harvested the last remains of a killed child that I've forgotten the metaphors. A process becomes a zombie when its parent doesn't bother to attend funeral. By that time the zombie's children are already orphans.

bigfield said:
Swammerdami said:
One chess guy* had a YouTube taken down because he they said, of a mid-game position, "White is better."
Click to expand...
I have heard that phrase in hundreds of chess videos on YT, and I'm pretty sure they are all still online.
Click to expand...

The YTer was agadmator and he complained about the take-down several years ago.

:confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :confused2:
I'm afraid your comment seems VERY VERY peculiar.
* For starters, how do you know all are still on-line? Did you check all of the "hundreds" this morning?
* The YouTube that was taken down is obviously NOT among the hundreds that you "heard"
* You assume that if ANY YT with the phrase was NOT taken down, then NONE were taken down.

And despite all these obvious flaws in your reasoning you seem to want to insinuate that agadmator and/or Swammi is lying.

:fuckoff:
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I've watched a lot of chess Youtube, including plenty of agadmator, and if their videos were being taken down because they said "white is better" or something similar then I'm sure I would have seen it discussed in other videos or on social media.

I can believe that agadmator had a video taken down for this reason,, but it's not a common thing.

Edit: OK found the Sun article reporting it. Looks like it was a stupid mistake by an automated system. Which explains why this isn't a widespread problem on chess youtube.
 
Swammerdami said:
OK. So you misread my "ONE YouTube" as "MANY YouTubes." I guess I should apologize for not using a bigger font! 8-)
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Nah I'm just not that worried about one instance where a Youtuber guesses which phrase caused his video to be taken down. It doesn't really tell us anything about how "woke" Youtube is or some person's absurd objection to chess commentary, rather it just seems to demonstrate that automated moderation is undercooked technology.
 
This is less of a problem in my industry, where text has to be brief and easily understood, leaving less room for the policing of political correctness.

It really wouldn't be practical, when re-surfacing a road, to put up a sign saying:

CAUTION: RAISED NON-GENDER SPECIFIC PERSONNEL ACCESS HATCH COVERS

By the time drivers read all that they will already have smashed the sump off their engine.
 
Politesse said:
Why is this thread in computers and technology? Looks like a bog-standard rant about the woke mind virus to me.
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It is about coding standards / programming. It is just about programmers. And personally I'd never heard of the word "nuke" being taboo in the US... BTW Epic Games is worth about $32 billion.
 
bigfield said:
It's not new. Seems to be a trend among corporations who want to seen to be doing something to demonstrate Corporate Social Responsibility.
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Or managing liability. 30 years ago, no one would ever know the code. Or if someone did manage to get to it, there was no way to spread the word.

Today there is little space between corporate privacy and the public. People with agendas go out looking for this stuff. It is probably a niche industry.

Add to that, people are becoming more sensitive (or thr eotkforce in America is becoming more diverse AND international) so internally it would be a source of potential conflict. It seems silly, but why open the door for needless issues? I mean if you need to use derogatory language to be funny, you aren't doing funny right.
 
Understandable. Some people get offended over stupid stuff, it's easier to not have stupid stuff for them to be offended over.

Nuke surprises me, though.

As for the lack of niblings:

bool HasChildren = false;
 
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