Swearing in comments is unacceptable IMO. You wouldn't write swear words in internal documents, so why do it in code. It's unprofessional and shows a level of dis-respect for your own code and for the people who might end up maintaining it. Plus, heaven forbid a client happened to see it as well.
PG*: "the way that he thought about professionalism did not differ from the thinking of a Mary Kay cosmetics saleswoman: wear nice clothes, drive a clean car, and don't say anything that might offend anyone" <http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-...;
We speak and write profanity in other contexts, so why not code? It shows respect for future maintainers that we're honest about what truly sucks, instead of watering it down. Plus, we don't care if clients or investors see that we don't wear suits (or even shoes); similarly, they care about what the code does, not what it looks like.
One interesting compiler bug later and your comment could end up in an error message.
Anyway I would only swear when I'm at home with a beer in my hand, so I only put swearwords in my code when I'm working at home with a beer in my hand ;)
True story:
During a summer internship years ago, I used Foo and Bar as placeholders throughout a web page comp. My boss sat me down for a serious chat about professionalism. Turns out he had never heard of Foo and Bar. Prior to that conversation, I had never heard of FUBAR.
Yes, that's the source of the symbols. Some people like them, some think they're unprofessional, yada yada. But I've never once had someone try to interpret "foo" as profanity...
We aren't building tractors, we're "painting" software and do whatever makes us feel more creative. In fact some really great hackers I knew were very passionate about their code and coding process in general. Once we had a dedicated Yellow Pages book to throw in a brick wall (literally). That was awesome.
BTW, didn't you notice how often good programmers curse in public?
You think people who build tractors don't swear? After my work in steel manufacturing, I would bet that there is some informal manual next to a machine that has at least one swear word in it.
You work in a corporate environment don't you. You had to fill out a "comment request form" in triplicate just to post the above comment ;)
I'd say it depends. If you're working for bigco, swearing is probably not going to go down well with your boss, or co-workers. If you're working in a startup/open source project/on your own, then swearing can be good and useful IMHO.
If I swear in the comments of some code (Rare), I can instantly see that I've had some issues with that code, or something I'm interfacing to is idiotic and needs fixing etc.
My last job was in a corporate cubedom for 4 years. Not a massive company, but a few 100s of employees. We held weekly code reviews at one point. Also bosses do have a habit of suddenly believing that if they help code the project might run quicker, so they ask for svn access etc, then break everything :)
We had so much Sarbanes-Oxley bs anything seemed possible. "Oh you can't use an IM client that isn't approved by us, as it's against S-OX". (Approved by us meant that they paid some inferior crappy IM company to install their client on all company computers. Then they paid a fee per user) Nothing like corporate waste :)
I'm located in the northern parts of Europe so perhaps that explains it but I routinely and deliberately use foul language in technically oriented internal documents. The rationale being that it should be harder to copy'n'paste and edit it in an ad hoc sales doc than to ask me for a more specific technical explanation.
I think people have mis-understood my comment. I never said swearing was bad. Practically every word that comes out my mouth is a swear word. I just don't think swear words in code makes for "beautiful" work. I even have a go at developers for not putting full stops at the end of comments ;)
In addition, it's got nothing to do with working for a large corporation as I work for a small advertising software company with less then twenty employees.
