The Eighth Dirty Word – “Just”

https://blog.forrestthewoods.com/the-eighth-dirty-word-just-2d2386850cda#.awx35lon2

55 56 10 years ago

blog.forrestthewoods.com

33a• 10 years ago

If someone asks "Can you just..." and you can't do it for some reason, then can you just explain it to them why you can't do it? Getting mad about doesn't solve anything and passes up a great opportunity to fill in their missing information.

dmreedy• 10 years ago

Possibly. On the other hand, my experience with 'just' is symptomatic not of a knowledge gap, but an _understanding_ gap. A knowledge gap might exist between two peers with similar levels of domain knowledge but slightly differing portfolios, and can thus be resolved quickly via reference to mutually understood reference points. Two astrophysicists might have a knowledge gap between each other.

An understanding gap is more like a model gap; the people between which the gaps exist usually have entirely different domains with different useful models. An understanding gap might exist between a salesperson and a developer, or a chemist and a biologist; there might be shared reference points to serve as foundations for bridging the gap, but they're much further up the ontological hierarchy, as it were, and may require entire reconstruction from first principles in the worst cases. This leads to interesting conversation and personal development, for sure, but it's also not a way to quickly resolve what may be a pressing issue. Closing an understanding gap might take a four-year degree, or at the very least, weeks or months of reading and learning.

I agree that getting mad about it is not the way to go; but this latter case is where 'just' is most dangerous; to get a bit Rumsfeldian, the unknown unknowns on the part of the 'juster' often run very deep, and would require extensive education to mend.

forrestthewoods2• 10 years ago

This is my favorite comment to my post. On HN or else where. Thank you for sharing.

willismichael• 10 years ago

I love how your solution includes another "can you just", but I can't tell whether that was an intentional joke or not.

adwf• 10 years ago

A lot of the time you can't define exactly why you can't do something though. If someone asked me to just write a natural language recognition app, I'd be quite excited to give it a go, but instinctively I know it's a heck of a task. It's infeasible rather than impossible.

A bit like asking a golfer why he doesn't just hit the ball straight on the green every drive. It's instinct to attempt, but difficult to explain why it's not going to work. Not to mention if I had to explain every time why I can't just hit the green, I'd get pretty pissed off with people asking!

pjc502• 10 years ago

Now you have two problems: the original one, and dealing with the person who doesn't understand why you've not solved it already and thinks you're dumb.

gutnor• 10 years ago

You have guys working for weeks/months on a project, getting expert knowledge, analysing new requirement continuously.

The number of times I have had, over the course of months, to explain again and again why you can't "just" remove feature X from project Y to make it doable in less than D days it is currently estimated to. One day, I would commit to do it because at that moment I didn't remember that specific bit while being quizzed in an unrelated meeting that veered into offtopic armchair solution designing by bored "solution architects" (i.e. middle manager who last looked at code a decade ago)

dmansen2• 10 years ago

I get defensive when somebody dismisses my domain knowledge with a quick "why not just do this"? I'm not happy with myself when I react this way, but I do.

Therefore, when I'm in a position where I want to throw out a quick "can you just", I try to phrase it differently, because I know how frustrating that comment can be.

jnevill3• 10 years ago

I'm more interested in finding a solution to the problem then I am about protecting my domain of knowledge, or insuring that my coworkers are aware that my domain is special and mine. I can't help but feel that this article comes from a perspective of competitiveness rather than problem solving. Perhaps the reason so many seem to agree with this (even tentatively) is the competitive culture in so much of IT (at least that I read about). I'm glad we don't have that where I work.

more_corn2• 10 years ago

Can you just explain to me all of your specific knowledge about your area of expertise? I'd like to know why my naive understanding of your specialty doesn't resemble reality. Thanks.

hashkb2• 10 years ago

Also: "little". I have a quick little thing I'd like you to look at by EOD.

SonicSoul• 10 years ago

On one hand I understand your argument, it can get annoying to hear stupid suggestions. But on the other hand a naive question just might be the answer you needed.

Sometimes a solution gets disqualified for a wrong reason, or w/out looking at all ways it could work.

This happened to me enough times that now I try to put my ego aside and patiently go through my thinking again and again and each time the explanation (and problem) becomes more clear.

Edit: shortened.

hashkb2• 10 years ago

It's about the attitude, not literally the word.

mathattack2• 10 years ago

It's also about putting the burden of understanding on the presenter rather than the suggester.

forrestthewoods2• 10 years ago

There's a tough balance to strike. Like I said in the post, it's easy to get trapped in tunnel vision and an outside perspective is exactly what you need.

On the other hand if a producer/project managers says "can you just" day after day frustration is inevitable. It's easy to complain about producers though. Striking the right balance with peers is more nuanced.

mfringel• 10 years ago

Similarly, "I have a quick question for you."

It's quick for the person to say. It says nothing about whether it's quick to answer.

Gracana• 10 years ago

Give a short answer and let them figure it out. Either they really don't need the details (maybe they can find them on their own, maybe they just need confirmation, maybe the details really aren't relevant, etc), or they suck at asking questions, in which case they'll learn to ask better ones.

bitwize• 10 years ago

LPT for managers: If you take the "just" and turn it into a one (or 0.5) point story, then you not only get to avoid the just jar fee, you can also blame the developer when it's late!

TerminalJunkie• 10 years ago

I cried a bit, reading this.

mrgoldenbrown• 10 years ago

I hope you're joking, because in any sane methodology, the developer assigns the story points, not the manager.

meritt• 10 years ago

I disagree. Oftentimes people who are actively working on a problem cannot see the forest for the trees and an outsider's perspective will lead to a substantially simpler solution.

hvass• 10 years ago

I understand where you are coming from but usually a naive and simple 'just', especially coming from an outsider can be exactly what you need. Maybe you are so entangled in the problem that you've lost the proverbial forest.

pjc502• 10 years ago

Can you cite an example from your own experience where someone saying 'can you just' worked for you?

jnevill3• 10 years ago

Has that never happened to you? You are stuck on a problem for what feels like forever. It's complex and difficult to keep completely in your mind at once. You've hit it from every facet that you can think off. Then you explain it to someone that knows very little of the problem and they throw out a little perspective, maybe preceded with a "Can you just..." and it may not be the solution, but your mind sort of jump starts down a different path than it had before.

I see this "Can you just..." business similar to the advice that you just stop working on the problem that you can't solve and think about something else for a while. Take a nap, go for a walk, have a drink. Wait until tomorrow. Often times the problem isn't that the problem is difficult to solve or that it's complex (it is), but rather that you are too mired in it to come up with the solution. "Can you just... " suggestions often pull me out of the trees so I can see the forest.

13of40• 10 years ago

Nothing easy to explain, since they're in a specialized domain, but I can say that sometimes other people's insights can be annoying, but they can also be quite helpful. Anyone who doesn't know that first hand might have problems working well with others.

SerLava• 10 years ago

I've used a small handful of carefully thought-out "justs" myself.

I'm basically a marketer and I work with a lot of programmers who just finished school. We're building websites. I have really basic programming experience.

Sometimes a feature request comes in but without enough budget to really do it the right way.

So I have come up with logical workarounds after the programmers said it couldn't be done. And these instances have not caused any conflict.

Like for example, instead of making a huge slow product database, I built a huge list of URLs and then they parsed the product number in it, and output the tech specs to the page. The mfr's product numbers were encoding the tech specs.

That said, I also see people up the ladder flinging "justs" left and right and causing immense failure and suffering.

jnevill3• 10 years ago

I agree completely. Going a step further, as OP has and shutting down potential helpful new perspectives and solutions by implementing a "jar" is reprehensible. When I've been mired in a complex problem for hours and I'm not any closer to a solution than when I started out, helpful "can you just" perspectives is often the key to unlocking a new line of thought that allows me to come up with the solution. Implementing a jar is like having someone pay you to ignore their often helpful perspectives. It's reprehensible.

I guess another way to put this is... I'm more interested in finding the solution than I am in making sure that everyone around me thinks that my domain is special and complex and that they don't share it with me.

Confusion• 10 years ago

Not even necessarily an outsider. In my experience "Can't you just ..." is what the rubber duck [1] starts saying if explaining the problem wasn't enough to be enlightened and it starts talking back. Simple solutions to complicated seeming problems are usually from coworkers not directly involved with the issue that say "can't you just..".

[1] For those not following, Google 'rubber duck debugging'. Colleagues are the best rubber ducks.

lopatin• 10 years ago

I've been on the other side of this too. A few days into a design decision going "why didn't I just ...".

FussyZeus• 10 years ago

This word used in regard to completing tasks relating to software is bad enough, this word as it's used much more commonly in the field of public policy and politics in general is where it becomes truly sinister.

In general, and you can call this condescending but I'm willing to go there and say that the word "just" and all it's related questions comments and statements are the best way to show you genuinely, for better or worse, have no idea what you're talking about and I can't think of any scenario improved by a layman's understanding of it.

jameshart2• 10 years ago

Then how do you ever stop someone over-engineering, or building things you aren't gonna need? "Can you just..." is exactly the right question to ask to pull someone back from that trap.

Can you just solve the problem you know about and worry about the edge cases you suspect you'll run into later? How do you know that solving for that problem is important? Don't try to build a complete system in one go, build something that just solves part of the problem.

jachee• 10 years ago

Isn't this what the "Yes" section of the article covers?

jameshart2• 10 years ago

Not really. My point is that 'just' is a critical part of incremental development. Having a swear-jar for any time anybody uses the word means you're basically banning asking sensible questions.

davidgerard• 10 years ago

I find it helps to remember that usually, "just" correctly translates as "with tremendous difficulty and faff".

lisper• 10 years ago

I usually go with, "Is there are reason your don't do X?" That leave the person with two perfectly reasonable and face-saving responses. The first is, "Yes, it's because..." and the second is, "No, I guess there isn't. Thanks for the suggestion!" Either way you win. In the first case, I learn something, and in the second case my interlocutor does.

sophacles• 10 years ago

I tell my junior devs this heuristic: "whenever someone says the word 'just', that is going to be the hardest part of the project".

Is it always the case? No

Is it frequently the case? Yes

The reason I found is that the person doing the explaining is:

* hand waving over some complicated detail (e.g "just get the info from the accounting software", but there's no API for that software)

* thinking fuzzy (e.g. conflicting requirements "just update the struct" when doing so adds a race condition or is updating an immutable object)

* forgetting that computers and humans have different notions of "easy". (e.g "You just have to pick the person's faces out of the image") (I should probably update my example here)

It's almost always worth further exploration into what the other person means by "just do..." as an up-front exercise.

BenoitP• 10 years ago

I'd expand the jar to include "Simple" alongside "Just".

I have learned over the years that Simple means: no one has spent time thinking about it.

Simple means you are going to have to implement it alone, and take business decisions that aren't yours to take (and have to maintain the associated unstable code). On top of that people are going to question your abilities for taking so long.

adrusi• 10 years ago

When your first reaction is to interrupt with “can you just” you’re implicitly calling your co-workers stupid. Because if they weren’t stupid then they’d have figured out the solution in under a second like you did.

Sure, many common patterns of speech can be insulting if you're this uncharitable in your interpretation. Just like the speaker should consider how the listener will interpret their words, the listener should consider the speaker's intent, and give them benefit of the doubt. Communication is a two-way street. A more charitable interpretation would be that the "just"-sayer is actually asking a question: "Can you explain to me why you didn't do X, I feel I'm missing something". The difference between that question and "why didn't you just do X?" is more a reflection of the tone of the conversation and the speaker's mood than of the speaker's opinion of you.

Personally I'm always worried about how the least charitable listener might understand my words, but while it's a useful communication skill, it's also a curse: it puts a barrier of distrust between me and the people I'm speaking with, and often results in overly-formal sounding communication. And, of course, the least charitable listener will interpret formality as pretentiousness.

mbostleman• 10 years ago

Exactly. Many times I'll ask people from another domain, "Why can't you just...", so that they can explain why that seemingly simple idea won't work. And I know full well that it won't, I'm just not sure why.

But another problem with the idea of banning speech is that "just" recognizes that there are levels of complexity, effort, and risk. No, there is never a solution so simple that it is zero effort and risk. But there are certainly some solutions that have more or less effort and risk than others. And if you're asking if you could just do something else, you're implying that the something else is less effort or risk - not zero effort or risk.

I have worked with people that have a similar approach as never say "just" in that they insist that every problem is hard and should never be trivialized. That's a reasonably wise stance to take as a default in software development, but kills the recognition that some approaches are, in fact, easier than others.

mathattack2• 10 years ago

This is very much about putting the burden of understanding on the presenter rather than the suggester. I am big on sharing idea, but up to a point. After a while I started referring to providers of half-baked ideas as "idea fairies." Perhaps they're well intentioned, but they rarely help.

leahculver• 10 years ago

"Making a pop culture reference no one understands" is a punishable rule? Wait... the author works at a game company? How does one build games without understanding pop culture and what people enjoy about it?

buckbova• 10 years ago

I get this from PMs and managers more than other devs. As the labeled architect I'm trying to keep the system somewhat "clean" and "can't you just" suggestions drive me up the wall!

amelius• 10 years ago

"Can you just ..." is a persuasion to hacking. Don't give in.

devishard• 10 years ago

Sure, maybe if you're looking for reasons to take offense, "just" is one you could take offense to. But ultimately I think if we all are walking around on eggshells to the point we can't say that word, that's a much worse environment than one in which people say "just".

Besides, just because you take away the word doesn't mean they can't say it. Removing the word just makes it harder to recognize when people do it.

Bartweiss• 10 years ago

The obvious question: what do they do with the Jar? And do you get a cut of the contents for saying "can you just" and being right?

tener• 10 years ago

From the list of the rules they have it feels like they don't have a problem with 'just' questions, they have a problem with people and organization culture. Seriously, banning any mentions of Rust (see "bonus points" section)?

If you have people being a jerks too often then you are missing healthy environment.

Personally, when I'm asking a series of "just" questions I'm expecting one of the following scenarios to happen:

1. Less likely - the problem gets solved with a stroke of insight / fresh idea

2. More likely - I get better understanding of the problems involved, why it is more complex than it seems at first, and ultimately "level up" my expertise, which benefits the company.

_fs• 10 years ago

I firmly believe in Linus's Law, stating that "given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow". Because of this, I welcome any "can you just" when I feel that I am stuck debugging a bug that cannot be found. Often times it is outside intervention that pokes and prods my mind down a different path. The outside input may not even be correct, but its enough to nudge me into a new, unexplored view on the problem.

Try not to take outside input so personally. Give your ego a little break. (Hopefully) your coworkers are all here to solve the same big problems.

100k• 10 years ago

Good read. I have been trying to eliminate "just" from my vocabulary because I feel it denigrates the effort a task will take. It's much easier when writing. When speaking I still slip up.

kittyfoofoo• 10 years ago

It is awful that this article invokes the George Carlin routine, which argues that "There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions. And words."

neo2006• 10 years ago

In my experience the "ca you just..." solved a lot of problems cause very often developer (me included) start thinking about edge cases and uncommon scenarios before even solving the main path and sometimes a "can you just..." put the focus back on solving the common problem/path before thinking of that edge case that could be solved in a second iteration (divide and conquer). The other good aspect of the "can you just..." is that it force you to explain your motivation and the details that made you out rule the simple solution and that could help solving the problem. then, if your ego do not support a "can you just", it's your problem not the other guy as it's never meant to say I'm better then you but to engage the discussion and help solving an issue!!

jbigelow76• 10 years ago

With regards to the Just Jar, if you pay up but it turns out the answer actually is yes, do you get your dollar back?

Tone policing, now with real life ticket fees!

xxvxx• 10 years ago

New Title: "Tone Policing: How to share your ideas with Egomaniacs". FTFY.

more_corn2• 10 years ago

I've banned this word in personal mechanical and my professional technical work.

If you use it while speaking to me about my work or in my garage, I will stop you and ask you to rephrase your sentence. I know this sounds like a dick move, but it doesn't change the information conveyed just the connotations. Most people will laugh and leave it out. The other people are perfectly free to go talk to someone else ;- )

bdg• 10 years ago

No. I'm exhausted by the growing arrogance of modern people insisting the correct order of words are something to feel offended by.

I know people can feel offended by many words, but unless you stop to try and understand the intention of those words you don't deserve to say you are offended.

This is the crux of all the passive aggression of the last two decades that has finally blown into this out of control ideological debate about being politically correct.

Are you offended? Did you at least make an attempt to understand my motives and intentions?

This isn't to say if words from the offender are in their mind "kind" that it isn't offensive. This is about the listener being a participant in human exchange of communication.

The Eighth Dirty Word – “Just”

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