Ask HN: Preferred word to describe “Unnecessarily complainsome grumpy person”?
I think that besides the obvious age distribution factor, the spectrum of social scenarios more frequently encountered by the HN demographic probably also contributes to certain common situations or stereotypes promoting/stimulating the use of more apt descriptions for them, whereas for those who less frequently encounter them there would be no occasion to dig out a dictionary word from memory to describe it.
For example, there seems to be a particular adjective that sees pretty frequent usage, used to label “cranky jaded programmer being unnecessarily complain-some or dismissive of new ideas”, which I only learned because of repeated occurrence on HN, but the actual word seems to escape me. I remember that it seems to be not too dictionary-obscure of a word, just that there seems to fewer occasions that calls for it in other online conversations.
What is the first word that comes to your mind when describing such a person?
49 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadTorvalds sarcastically quipped about the name git (which means "unpleasant person" in British English slang): "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', now 'git'."
That's it. Thanks.
How sexist! Curmudgeon / termagant.
slightly related: I like the definition of "programmer" at urban dictionary:
A person who is paid to professionally scream at a computer.
Programmer: "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-oh, it works."
Sounds like that was probably written by somebody who used to work either with me, or with one or two of my former colleagues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblin_mode
> 1960s: from Yiddish kvetsh (noun), kvetshn (verb), from Middle High German quetschen, literally ‘crush’.