> saw multiple articles in Russian from this specific author. Actually, the one linked in this post is a translation. To put it bluntly, while they clearly have a background in software engineering, they are a troll. All their articles seem to have one thing in common: they look to be as controversial as possible on purpose, I don't believe them to be sincere.
Is "don't be an asshole when it's actually not helping the other person like you told yourself if you look closely" actually controversial enough on that site to be considered a troll?
Honestly, the article comes across to me as someone publicly acknowledging their shortcomings in an attempt to combat them. If that's trolling Russian developers that frequent that site... maybe they deserve to be trolled in that way?
> Is "don't be an asshole when it's actually not helping the other person like you told yourself if you look closely" actually controversial enough on that site to be considered a troll?
In Russia, yes. Like the OP comment author, I'm familiar with both IT cultures, and there's a dramatic differences in the amount of politeness.
I have actually seen people get into a physical fight because of work-related dispute, more than once.
That's interesting; the article did seem like something more common in Russian and other East European cultures. Maybe it's a side effect of intellectualism being more highly valued (a good thing) but then leads to these superiority contests where "good enough" is derided if it is not done in some intellectually interesting way. Which can be a disadvantage in software engineering.
Is "don't be an asshole when it's actually not helping the other person like you told yourself if you look closely" actually controversial enough on that site to be considered a troll?
Honestly, the article comes across to me as someone publicly acknowledging their shortcomings in an attempt to combat them. If that's trolling Russian developers that frequent that site... maybe they deserve to be trolled in that way?