[erlang-questions] Coon - new tool for building Erlang packages, dependency management and deploying Erlang services

[alisdair sullivan]

this is good advice; you should take it
fred and others simply pointed out the negative connotations of the chosen name and outlined some potential consequences. you were the one who read that as some outraged demand for political correctness. in fact, if you had applied your own principle of charity to fred's reply you probably would have just assumed he was trying to prevent a potentially unintended faux pas and gone back to tweeting about the rothschild takeover of france or whatever. instead you assumed malice and made it into a whole issue. great work, much demonization was accomplished here today
the bottom line is we're all free to name our projects whatever dumb offensive garbage we want but we should probably not expect those choices to be consequence free
 
 
  On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 4:49 PM, Loïc Hoguin<essen@REDACTED> wrote:Empathy does matter. But not everyone has the same capability for 
empathy. For some people it's entirely built in and they never have to 
think twice about social situations. People with high functioning autism 
or Asperger[0] tend to have a really difficult time with social 
situations because they cannot know what is a social taboo without 
experience of it. But even then it never becomes natural.

It's easy to say that you should ask yourself how someone might feel, 
but it's impossible for some people to actually do it. Some people 
probably think it is completely crazy to go with a name like Coon, and 
at the same time others can't imagine choosing that name will blow up in 
their face until it does, and even when it does they might not 
understand why it blows up in their face despite knowing it can be used 
as a slur.

Not because they are assholes, not because they are stupid, just because 
they can't. Some people can't see colors, others can't see feelings.

That's not to say the OP has Asperger or other[1]. But the outraged 
response from some people presumably does not take this into account. 
Being offended or outraged at someone for being insensitive is one 
thing, assuming they are malevolent is another. The world would be a 
much better place if we all tried to assume no ill intent from people we 
interact with when we think they are wrong. There's enough malevolence 
in the world that we do not need to seek it in everyone.

Tech is a place that's been very good for people who are on that end of 
the spectrum, because of their problem-solving skills, so it's not 
surprising that there's so many people in tech who seem to be 
insensitive jerks and keep making social faux-pas (especially in an 
international setting!). But perhaps the right approach is not to 
demonize people for making these mistakes but rather to be understanding 
of the shortcomings of some people and instead try to convince them on 
their grounds instead of remaining on the topic of feelings.

[0] Self tests can help figure out if you might be in that category, for 
example http://aspergerstest.net/aq-test/ - feel free to reply privately 
with the results or thoughts about it! Been there, done that.

[1] I don't want to say "trouble", I'm very much on board the 
neurodiversity train.

Cheers, 
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