logoalt Hacker News

kdkdkwndjekdyesterday at 9:47 PM3 repliesview on HN

“I found these issues.” Could be easily written as “These issues surfaced.”.

Do you need to point out the finder of the issues? Easy.

“Tool x ran for x amount of time and surfaced these issues…” “Parsing x code surfaced these issues.”

I don’t understand why are people pretending like the English language is incapable of transmitting information without personal pronouns when every program under the sun has always been written to interface with humans in a cold, detached, straight-to-the-point and impersonal way.

Finder doesn’t ask you “I see you want ME to delete these files. Want ME to do that for you?”. Toolbars don’t feature “Create a new file for me” options, terminal utilities don’t report back with “I’ve pattern matched the text you input and here’s the results I’ve found”.


Replies

pkulaktoday at 5:56 AM

Passive voice is so annoying. The LLM is the subject. We don’t need to jump through a bunch of hoops to hide that because it makes us insecure otherwise.

Fr0styMatt88today at 12:28 AM

But that's a lot more words than "I found these issues". I also don't particularly care that 'Tool x ran for x amount of time', I don't want it re-telling me that -- I've probably been sitting there watching it do that, so I already know.

Then again, I just dont have an issue with the 'I-isms'; it's a bit weird sure, but at the same time it's a bit more pleasant to interact with as well. After all it is trying to model itself as a person you're talking to.

show 1 reply
stavrostoday at 8:32 AM

I don't understand what's wrong with tools saying "I". I just don't mind it at all, even if Finder did say "do you want me to delete this?".