Published 2025-04-19
tag(s): #random-thoughts
I am sure some philosopher or thinker already considered what I am about to comment on. And there's a chance I read a book or blog post or news article referencing the idea, and then it all hit my brain at the right time just now for me to write about it.
In any case, having three different situations touching on the same topic was enough to convince me to write this.
On our way to the store yesterday, we drove by a busy intersection, and my wife commented that
a group of people in a sidewalk where blocking others and wondered if that wouldn't be
considered loitering.
I mentioned that I dislike the idea of loitering being illegal because sometimes people just
gather for social reasons, and building community is nice.
And she countered, that she doesn't walk the kid to school on that side of the street anymore:
people hang around there because there is a liquor store, and every morning the street is
littered with bottles and food wrappings.
This all derived in an longer conversation, but the relevant point to this post was that
even if the idea of people hanging around in a place shouldn't be bad, the
restrictions against loitering exist because of these, say, "bad actors".
As a city or town, you can't say "people can gather anywhere, it's ok" unless you know every
citizen will behave. If not, you have to account for the worst case scenario.
But this causes other problems. Because now you either have a law so lax that
everyone can still do whatever they want, or so strict that you kill any sense of community.
And if your regulation/law is somewhere in the middle, then you open the door to having
disparity in how it is applied.
During the part of the conversation where we touched on this topic, I recalled how my son gets mad when his classroom misses recess because of bad behaviour from his classmates.
I acknowledged to him that yes, it is as unfair as he says (and I doubt how effective it is). I also explained that this is part of life, sometimes things are decided in a group setting, and you might lose privileges only because others don't behave, and it never stops being unfair but it is part of how things work in society etc. (not exactly those words but not far off).
If you know me, you know I will find a way to tie everything to either software or
organization dynamics :) so here we are.
This week we had a big conversation in my team on the topic of adopting code standards,
reviewing their application, and making our pull request process more than just "please check
this so I can merge" and more of a proper review.
I've been thinking about what would be a good set of "first rules" to start down this path...quite a bit since Friday. And I realized that I am having a hard time coming up with these rules or guidelines because I am trying to consider too many possible scenarios.
If you are in a perfect, idealized team, where everyone has enough ego to be proud of their work but not too much that they aren't open to changes, and everyone has the exact same preferences in style...then maybe you could get away with some guidelines that are loosely applied.
But in all places I've worked, there's been some people more prone to nitpick on A or B (and
for the record, I am 100% positive I was that guy, probably more than once 🙃).
Or, for example, a friend of mine suffers of a serial bikeshedder: equating number of review
comments with "doing a good review", every other line will have some note, and they all better
be addressed before merging. I have seen people stall review processes as a way of protest
that the reviews are being implemented. I've seen people get hung up on a minor stylistic
choice until a manager two levels above intervened.
At heart, I am still an optimistic guy, and eventually I will propose some loose rules and bet
on everyone to behave.
Part of "everyone should behave" includes me being patient in the application of these
reviews, and open to admit that maybe a preference I have is not beneficial for our use cases
(which is as easy to write, as it is easy to miss when others bring it up...and you
become that guy. Again.).
The common thread here is how people behave not only in groups, but in front of a group: will they try to be agreeable? or stand out in negative ways (talk back to the teacher, defy a cop, stall a merge). Will they be flexible (I understand this is just style, I notice how my classmates are punished, I can see I am blocking the sidewalk) or stand their position so as to not appear weak?
And this is before considering that we all play different roles at different times:
today I am the affable guy, mediating in a conflict; tomorrow the monster that doesn't want to
cede a centimeter on an petty argument.
(Not ceding a centimenter makes you even more stubborn than not ceding an inch, BTW).
One of the conclusions that my wife and I reached in our conversation, was that writing good laws is really difficult. Luckily code standards and reviews are not as critical to society 🤣 so I should chill a bit.