Discussion on:

Would you hire someone with poor grammar skills?

Not to belabor the point, but there is a typo in the poll included in your blog today. "Somoene" else catch it?

Your resume may have already been round-filed.

*worker who does not use (how ironic)

Then well played, sir, well played indeed.

If not...eeek.

The idea that it might have been intentional came to mind, but it doesn't take much investigation to see this is not out of the ordinary for the commenter in question. Check out the user's profile, and from there go to RSmiedy's answer to a question about Google Chrome. It reads:

"Try reinstalling crome. If that doesn't work than I don't know."

(edit: forgot part of a sentence)

You're saying a programmer can't be focused on anything other than programming? Is it okay if she chews with her mouth closed, or if he remembers to zip up after he pees?

My superviser forgets nearly every time.


And no chewing gum, what do you think this is a party?


/sarcasm

Most of the folks that hate grammar nazis are grammatical luddites/incompetents, so their opinion of those that appreciate attention to detail (such as communicating well or coding in an orderly fashion) is suspect from the outset.

That isn't to say poor grammar precludes a brilliant coder. On the whole, however, people that speak poorly aren't the brilliant coders, either.

No, French people who can't correctly express themselves IN FRENCH can't code.

There is a few of them. Quebec french is a bit different than France french.
Is a french grammar nazi going to refuse to hire them?
Actually bad example, the french grammar nazi would surrender.

It's even harder with French. Not only will the French grammar Nazi's be on the watch but many will also refuse to hire a Parisienne French speaking person or Frankophone, either way.

When I was working in Montreal, the Frankophones would discount and scoff at what the Parisiennes had to suggest in meetings, "what do THEY know, Tabernac!" and vice versa.

The two are like oil and water, they will work together and have drinks after work, grudgingly. In QC it was even worse but speaking broken French myself, even service in public restaurants etc was awful, they really like to stick to themselves.

I say great, let them separate. They should all grab a shovel and dig Quebec out of Canada and float North through Hudson's bay. Then they can have language, laws, lower taxes, whatever they want, in floating Canafrance. They can't build bridges to the mainland of Canada though, no imports either, sure we'd all miss out on canned maple syrup and poutine but we'd learn to adjust. I wonder how it would work in their favour though.

Who cares, I'd grab a shovel and help them dig themselves free too, thanks for your help fighting off the Americans and keeping the border, have a nice triiip, seeeee yoooouuuuuuu, good luuuck !! (wave goodbye kids).

The word "that" is for everything (not everybody) that is not human. For example: that dog, that table, that window ... etc. "Who" refers to only people: people who speak poorly, who is that man ..., the person who closed the door, etc.. Several were mentioned above. Thanks

It's 2013, not 1917. Some language has been left in the dark ages. The fact that English has been destroyed through the years and countless English speaking nations, we have to have some slack. If the sentence still reads as a sentence, who cares.

It's when improper terms are used that I get irked. People who don't know how to differentiate through from threw, their vs there, then vs than (my personal pet peeve) and people who think I COULD CARE LESS actually makes sense!

It's the hooked on phonics routine, where people use words or phrases they don't understand just because they've heard other people say them.
Reality shows are the worst for that. Everyone wants to SOUND educated to the camera but starts saying "A bird in the hand is better than two bushes" or they repeat sentences they have heard in slang but don't understand the actual English spelling or meaning behind it, THAT's when I get really thrown.

I publish and have problems with programmers who do not have the basic rudimentary knowledge of grammar! (here I say a prayer!) on one occasion I had to instruct 3 corrections (including spelling ) for the words "Whishing you..."

Oops - spelling mistake!

One 's', not two.

I know I have been, and it's a pain because no spell check.
The latest Chrome seems to be working again thankfully. Now if only Firefox would hurry up and get patched I'd be happy again.

for also missing the starting of a sentence with a lowercase letter:

"(here I say a prayer!)"

A prayer for what?

It's a parenthetical remark. I'd give that one a pass. The sentence following the parenthetical remark offers no excuse that comes to mind, though.

Grammer, on the other hand, is just about inexcusable if it's not an honest fat-fingering typo (which it could be, I suppose).

I used ieSpell back in the day, when Microsoft and IE roamed the Earth.

Subtle joke, there. Thanks for the laughter.

Remember, I before E except after Chrome.

another good joke

I should have been keeping up with this discussion earlier.

Thank you all for the reasonable comments. Yes, one I did on purpose! No, I didn't use the spell checker! and typos were from my multitasking.

So tell me, if you pay for a programmer to do the programming, use the spell checker and edit the work - what are the safety net measures needed to ensure the work is up to standard (Just a general standard of acceptable work).

* (Here I say a prayer!) refers to the situation I just described and in reference to my not being in the office, am probably at a meeting or driving or doing something equally as important as what the programmer is doing and I see 'the work- errors and all' on my phone,tab,laptop and and so I say a prayer to calm myself down!)

The QA people are the closest you get.
Programming standards are for the programmers benefit. We could just code using goto for everything, and it would work. But it would be a major pain to maintain.

"... programmers'..."?

So I don't care

It's the same as saying something like, "... David's benefit" but the "s" at the end of the word "programmer" indicates there is more than one programmer who will get the "benefit." It's the same as writing, "programmers's" but without having to add the extra "s." (I've got a degree in Journalism and had to learn a lot.) :O)

But even if you can get everything investigated and planned and resourced and you get everything you can right, you have to bare ( ) in mind there's only so much we can do. Development is a microfocus role. We could be working on machine code or bolting together off the shelf code, somethings we won't notice and I've never seen any commercial organisation that feels investing counteracting that beyond paying someone like yourself to give it a once over.

Which bit of this did you disagree with whimp?

http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-402571-3752415

Or, for a truly impressive one, find that discussion about take your gun to work in Texas. I was definitely king of the down votes on that one.

I'm gonna get it for this but did you also screw up the grammar in your last post, purposely?

Aside from ignoring the mis-spelling of gammar. Wondering why you felt the need to qualify rudimentary with basic or vice versa.
There's good reason for IDEs not have a build in spellchecker, though on literals it would be handy.
In general when a programmer is typing W the next character is extremely likely to be h. Most of the time that word will be While, at the point they are typing it they are not thinking about how to spell while they are thinking about the condition.

Just three spelling mistakes? You should be treating them to a meal, or finding them more work...

It checks comments and stuff in quotes. And underlines them same as Word does.

But you restated my point perfectly. A proper programmer is worried about logic, syntax, etc. Spelling is near the bottom of our concerns.

Also, we have business analysts that make up the message text. So if a spelling or grammar mistake gets through, it's usually their fault or the testers fault.
Pretty much any time I need to write an informative message (and sometimes even just error messages) I have to write one up, then send it off to the BA's to get it re-written.

I don't even bother trying to come up with something. If it isn't in the spec,
MessageBox.Show("Ooher : Oops what happened here then")

Gets their attention straight off that, whereas you put something vaguely sensible in there they don't notice until the pre-release check.
Then you have to have a two hour meeting deciding what the text should be, how important it is, and whether the release should be delayed for it.
And head them off at the pass when they use the opportunity to completely rework the UI, to get some other bits they just noticed....

My favourite one was my colleague who is dyslexic used to paste the text from the ms word spec, and then they told him it was wrong. Used to drive him potty. Even more fun when word starts using back ticks and extended hyphens though.

There is no apostrophe in pluralization in contemporary English. That should be "BAs", not "BA's".

Just trynna he'p.

So that it's easy to tell what is an acronym or not. It helps the people that don't speak English as their first language.

"... analysts who make up..." not "that"
"...tester's..." or "... testers'..."
"... to the BAs..."

Do it immediately.

http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-402571-3752952

There is also the matter of punctuation. Not just what you would learn at school, but what you would learn in order to make effective use of a word-processor.

Please don't take this as being picky because we all break the rules when we are pushed for time, but you have a space before a closing parenthesis. This would permit a word-processor to throw the parenthesis onto the next line on its own.

A similar situation occurs when people used to conventional typing practices religiously type two spaces between sentences. Many word-processors don't have special handling for it, so you get the extra space prefixed to the next line if they cause a line-break. Some people never master this sort of thing, don't even know why it happens, or worse, don't even notice.

Reading comments in code at work causes me mental agony. I have to force myself not to revise them because we have a principle of making least change so as not to overtax the text comparator tools we use. (Machines controlling humans. They don't have to be intelligent to take over.)

Someone once gave me a 3,000-line source file with no indenting of the code. I spent hours re-formatting it so that it would be readable. It is amazing what some people find acceptable. I don't understand how anyone can read things in such aesthetically unappealing forms without throwing up. And it is not just the aesthetics, it has as much to do with the probability of spotting an anomaly, which is far easier to do when code is formatted in a familiar way.

I see a big parallel between attention to grammar and syntax, and care in coding. After all, we code in programming 'languages', and they too have their grammar and syntax rules. I cannot see how someone can switch between sloppiness with human-readable text and precision with computer-readable text. Besides, the latter still has to be read by code reviewers and maintainers.

I am home from work now, slowly coming out of the zombie state that the local traffic causes, and feelings of hunger are impinging on my consciousness, so I must end this rant. But I am ever so glad that this issue has come up as a discussion topic as it has always been something of concern to me.

The most likely person to have to change the worst piece of code in the system is the last freaking eejit to work on it...
Opening up something awful, and start calling the person who wrote it bad names and then discovering it was you is just soul destroying.

It is truly amazing how often we do it though. One little bit of sloppiness, or corner cutting, a couple of developers and a couple of versions and it's proliferated all through the system. Of course management attitude to technical debt isn't a big help there. But you've got in to the habit spelling received wrong and now you are doing it in captions, tests, the help, the documentation...

Bad habits are as easy to pick up as good ones, and just as hard to break. Worse thing is a lot of them are picked up in academia, you have to shoot yourself several times, before you hesitate and start thinking i before e except after c...

Word processors are a scourge, a pustulent boil on the face of technology. Bending the language to fit the misbehavior of word processors is a terrible idea when the real solution is to use tools that do not make (bad) decisions on behalf of the user, even overriding the conscious decisions of users.

Two spaces between sentences help with readability, for instance, as an example drawn from your explanation. Ceasing to use two spaces between sentences to suit the stupidities of word processor misbehavior is damaging readability for the sake of bad software. If you're typing text, use a text editor. If you're typing code, use a code editor. If you're laying out print media, use a print layout tool. The only excuse to use a word processor is to satisfy the bureaucratic requirements of idiots too stupid to realize word processors only make their lives more difficult; do it only when you absolutely must, and stop doing it immediately after finishing the distasteful task.

In short, word processors are not tools -- they are users, machines controlling humans, and we are the tools who think we use them.

Apart from apparent implication that word processors are tools we should use for some purposes, I generally agree with what you've said, though. I sympathize with your plight, and even though I believe that word processors are much of the problem, I also agree with you that those who must deal with them should take note of how they screw things up for us and, knowing so, make adjustments to ensure things get screwed up as little as possible.