Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youā€™ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this.)

  • khalid_salad@awful.systems
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    6 days ago

    After reading some of the counterpoints here, I began thinking about how I considered Excel a hyperkludge if you qualify it enough. I realized the qualifications apply to every programming language (good olā€™ Turing Completeness). I think, in my case, the common scenario of

    1. this tool[1] is just a proof of concept/prototype
    2. it costs less to maintain our tool than to write a more appropriate solution from scratch
    3. our infrastructure is now the tool

    had me erroneously criticizing the tool instead of its application[2]. In the case of Excel, I worked a few jobs where the spreadsheets used when the company was small led to an absolute nightmare after the company grew.

    I appreciate the thoughtful responses from everyone. <3


    1: Usually a spreadsheet, in my experience.
    2: Noting that, while ā€œitā€™s not the tool, itā€™s the applicationā€ is a common refrain from people using tools in shitty ways, there is a distinction between ā€œthis is the wrong tool for the jobā€ and ā€œthis tool will hurt peopleā€.