Google's Developer World List Guide

Preface

I’ve seen a post in some random Facebook group, where they’ve shared this style guide by Google. It recommends, which words are “safe to use” in code, which should be avoided etc. I’ve look throught it, and just.. can’t believe my eyes. My brain is not able to comprehend, why was this written and why is it “recommended style guide”. In this rant blogpost, we’ll go over some of the words, and just rant about them. Oh, I’ll be using strong language as always.

Here is the list: Google Developer Documentation Style Guide
Words in the list that I’ve compiled consists only of words marked as “Don’t use” (with red circle). Some interesting/nonsensical/funny words from all categories are then listed below.

The List

  • Abnormal: ‘Don’t use to refer to a person. OK to use to refer to a condition of a computer system.’ Why tho. If a person is showing abnormal behaviour? Would you get cancelled if you write “Mark was acting abnormally today. Later we’ve found out he died because of stroke”.
  • Above: ‘Don’t use. Instead, use preceding.’ Dude that came up with these had to think really hard to come up with words that could offend someone. Why is this in the list tho.
  • allows you to: ‘Don’t use. Instead, use lets you.’ Why? If I provide for example wrong API key for request, my request was denyed, or disallowed. Not ‘not let through’. Also when I attack a network, the exploit allows me to enter the network, not ‘let me in’.
  • black-box: ‘Avoid using black-box, blackbox, or black box to describe monitoring and testing. Consider using a more precise term for clarity.’ Ah yes, here we go. First word that has racial subtone. I’ll keep a count of them (1).
  • Black Friday: ‘Avoid unless explicitly referring to an event in the US. Instead use peak scale event.’ We have black fridays in Czech republic too. The fuck. (2)
  • blackhat, black hat, black-hat, blackhole, blacklist, black list, black-list: ‘Don’t use. Don’t use. Don’t use. Don’t use.’ Again, lot’s of black- prefixed words. NOBODY FUCKING ASKED. Blacklist is a term used for fucking everything, not in programming exclusively. Why the FUCK would anyone care? You have to be real piece of shit human to be offended by blacklist. If you do, please stop doing what you are doing and go somewhere else. Because of people like you, we now have “main” instead of “master” and this shit. Get some help. Fucking hell. (9)
  • chubby: ‘Don’t use. Instead, use a word that clearly explains what you mean, such as unused or overextended.’ Ah yes, Karens back at it again.
  • crazy, bonkers, mad, lunatic, insane, loony, cripple: ‘Don’t use.’ LMAO. You can’t put it in code, but when you buy a shirt for 3.99$ it’s a “crazy good. Mad deal.” Bruh.
  • female adapter: ‘Don’t use.’ KAREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN.
  • first-class, first-class citizen, first class: ‘Don’t use socially-charged terms for technical concepts where possible.’ Ah yes again, someone from lower-class was offended as fuck so they had to do this. This is first-class bullshit.
  • gender-neutral he, him, or his (or she or her): ‘Don’t use. Instead, use the singular they.’ Fucking twitter bios got to code too. ‘My PrOnOuNs ArE hE/tHeM’ The fuck. WHY I CAN’T ADDRESS THINGS THE WAY THEY ARE.
  • grayed-out, grayhat, graylist: ‘Don’t use.’ After few long minutes of intensive thinking, I was unable to find reason why this word would be marked as “Don’t use”. I just can’t.
  • guys: ‘When referring to a group of people use non-gendered language, such as everyone or folks.’ I just can’t, my brain physically hurts. And that’s miraculous because brain does not have nerves to feel pain.
  • housekeeping: ‘Don’t use. Use less figurative and more precise terms, such as maintenance and cleanup.’ KA motherfucking REN
  • kebab, kebab-case: ‘Don’t use. Use dash-case instead.’ It’s literally indexed on Wikipedia as “Kebab-case” and it’s the official name. Is it because of Christchurch?
  • man-in-the-middle (MITM): ‘Avoid using gendered terms. Instead use terms like on-path attacker, person-in-the-middle (PITM).’ WHAT?
  • manmade, manned, manpower: ‘Avoid using gendered terms.’ FUCKING WHAT? If anything, this is fucking outrageous. MITM is literally a scientific term. It does not has to be a type of attack per se, it is also used in communication, delivery etc. Why.
  • master: ‘Use with caution. Never use in conjunction with slave.’ Ah yes, here we go. This was discussed a lot when GitHub changed “master” branch to “main” and removed term “slave”. I just don’t understand. GitHub was founded in 2008, and everyone was happy to use it, with that term for 12 fucking years no problem. Now one retard complains about it, so we have to rework the entire system and fuck up everybody’s repos because this dude complained. But when somethink is broken, or you have serious security flaw, you do big horse shit about that. That’s what I call “caring”.
  • preferred pronouns: ‘Don’t use. Use pronouns instead.’ Am I just too dense to understand this whole pronoun thing, or are people that are so clinged on it dense?
  • tarball: ‘Don’t use. Instead, use tar file.’ Lol no.
  • tribal knowledge, tribal wisdom: ‘Don’t use. Instead, use a less figurative term to indicate knowledge held by a group of people.’ Ah yes, offended minorities again. Just don’t, you’ll make everyones life a lot easier.
  • whitehat, whitelist: ‘Don’t use.’ Aaaaand more racial shit. (11)

And so, we’ve arrived at the end of the list. As a bonus, I’m adding some more words that has some type of “caution/don’t use” mark, but I don’t fin them worthy enough to be on the main list. Also, there are words that I just don’t understand why are there. Go figure by yourself, these will be without my comment.

  • autoupdate
  • cell phone
  • CLI
  • click here
  • Container Engine (Don’t use. Instead, use Google Kubernetes Engine.)
  • demilitarized zone (DMZ)
  • Developers Console
  • network IP address

So, in grand total, there are 71 words with racial tone and 35 with gender tone. This is so fucking sad.

Just take a moment and think about it. At the time of writing this blogpost, I’m 20, and been actively developing and interested in dev community for over 5 years. I remember days, when you would just write code. When nobody was getting cancelled, and if you’ve seen a dude, he was “he” and a girl was “she”. It was normal to use words like “white/blacklist, guys, male/female adapter, tribal knowledge” without ANYONE caring about it’s subtone. I don’t know how you people in united states of hamburger are using English, but usually, sentences have context. Even so, when there are multiple of them. And if you’re not absolutely retarded (and I mean literally clinically retarded), you CAN understand the context of what I’m saying. And if not, then I’ll provide the context. In other case, if context is not DIRECTLY available to you (let’s say “master” in GitHub), you can spin up at most 3 braincells to start thinking, and you’ll find the contet really fucking fast. And if not, reat the fucking docs. People spend days writing them.

So tell me, how the FUCK can you get offended by sentence like “This person was put on blacklist, because he violated ToS”. He (this person) was banned (put on blacklist) [from using our service] because he violated terms. IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER IF HE WAS WHITE, ASIAN, BLACK OR FUCKING E.T. He was rejected from using the fucking service. Banned. Gonski. Blacklist is term so widely used, very few will say the sentence like I did in explanation. That goes for whitehat for example. I’ve seen job ads that literally said “white hat hackers wanted” and nobody said anything. Just imagine goind to the interview, everything goes fine and then you say “btw, your ad is not politically correct. You’ve used white in it, but what if I was black?” Imagine being this dense, and believe me, there are people that would do this.

Conclusion

Don’t be a faggot. Don’t be offended by every little bullshit you see, hear or whatever. Think at least 20 times about it before complaining, if it is really necessary, and it isn’t just you who has problem with it. You could (and most likely will) avoid awkward situations with your boss/collegue and everyone’s life will be much, much more simpler and happier. Read the text, understand it and it’s context, and for love of god, STOP TAKING SHIT OUT OF CONTEXT. Thanks, bye.