[fsckboy]

Nit nit: I don't accept your quibble, I think my usage was well within English usage standards; I even put "internal" in quotes! Consider this hypothetical conversation:

"Is the style guide they use for internal projects the same as this style guide that they have published externally?"

"could you clarify which ones you're talking about?"

"Is the internal style guide you described the same as this one I found in google's account on github?"

"oh, I see what you mean"

will you send your second, or shall we simply pistols-at-dawn?

[kelnos]

I think this is a tough one, and different people are going to interpret it differently.

The fact that you put "internal" in quotes suggested to me a mild level of sarcasm or disbelief, i.e, I read your message as "You mean this style guide, published on the internet, for all to see? Clearly that's not 'internal'!"

Either way, to me, "internal style guide" (regardless of any quotes placed around any word) means "style guide that is internal" (that is, the style guide itself is private or unpublished).

But the person you were replying to called it a "style guide for internal c++ code": that word ordering makes it clear that "internal" is describing "c++ projects", and that the internal/external (or unpublished/published or private/public) status of the style guide itself is not being talked about at all.

(As an aside, if the commenter upthread had instead said "internal style guide for c++ code", that could have also meant the same thing, but would have been ambiguous, as it wouldn't have been clear if "internal" was describing "style guide" or "c++ code", or both, even. But "style guide for internal c++ code" is about as unambiguous as you can get.)

[fsckboy]

you are mistaken how English works, how punctuation works, and how context works wrt parsing and semantics. Freighting what I said with your misinterpretations is on you, not me.

what noun cluster would you use for the style guide that google uses internally? Their internal style guide is perfectly accurate. If they publish it externally, does make it no longer their internal style guide? Nope. Would it make somebody exploring the topic wish to add the clarification "oh, their internal and external style guides are one and the same"? Yes.

None of that conflicts with what I wrote, but it does conflict with what you wrote.

[philsnow]

“External internal style guide” vs “internal external style guide”, both could make sense in different contexts.

Like I said, I never wrote c++ there so I’m quite likely misremembering details, but IIRC the published style guide linked to upthread is more or less a snapshot of the previously-unpublished style guide used internally for internal code. It may have some omissions and it’s quite likely out of date.

I’m just amused that this discussion about semantics reminds me so much of the gif linked from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40882247

[fsckboy]

the point is not whether your suggestions also work, but whether "internal style guide" does as I showed in the context as I wrote it. You need to reply to arguments made, not change the subject.

[JasonSage]

> you are mistaken how English works, how punctuation works, and how context works wrt parsing and semantics. Freighting what I said with your misinterpretations is on you, not me.

Uhm, no. I think you've got that completely backwards. Agree entirely with what they said, not at all with your interpretation. I think you're flat-out wrong here.

[fsckboy]

I like how you don't reply to the specifics of what explanatory text I wrote: not replying to the riposte being the last refuge of a scoundrel

and btw, the Hesperus/Phosphorus reference I made many commments ago refers to a famous example of these exact questions in the Philosophy of Language. Read up on it and you may begin to know as much about this as I did before we started.

[samatman]

Nit^3: this point would have been effectively conveyed as '"Google's internal style guide"'. By putting only "internal" into quotes, you call into question whether its public existence invalidates the internal nature of it.

Whereas the respondent said this:

> Google has a “style guide” for internal c++ code

This is a style guide for definitely-internal c++ code, with the internality of the style guide itself unspecified. I'm not sure what the effect of the scare quotes around "style guide" is meant to be, just that it doesn't move the internal part next to the style guide part.

Putting the whole thing in quotes, rather than just "internal", questions whether the guide you found is the guide referred to, rather than the internal nature of the style guide itself, which the quoted sentence takes no position on.

This has been your daily dose of Hacker News style guides for discussing style guides.

[Maxatar]

>"Is the style guide they use for internal projects the same as this style guide that they have published externally?"

Consider that the style guide that AirBnB uses for internal projects is not the same as the style guide they publish externally, and you can sympathize with why the distinction matters :P.

[fsckboy]

"the distinction" is literally the question I was asking to clarify, so telling me the distinction matters is divorced from the reality of my comment

[Maxatar]

Yikes! Tough day today?

[fsckboy]

autistic with high IQ. every day I have to listen to illogic is a tough day, so yes, every day is a tough day :) don't worry about me though, as long as I feel I've pointed out the minute distinctions I was drawing, I feel happy.

[Maxatar]

Fair enough man, my original comment was mostly in jest but I understand where you're coming from.