27 June, 2008 | Written by Vincent Tan

Never incorrect

My friend approached me for help today.

“What does ‘He will never be incorrect‘ mean?” he asked.

The genius logician that I am, I answered “He will always be correct”. My friend gave me a puzzled look. Then I translated the answer into Chinese, because he’s more familiar with Chinese than English.

It took a while, but he finally got it.

Use “positive” words whenever possible. Even words such as “reckless” can be considered “positive”, in the sense that it’s opposed to “incautious”, a direct negation of “cautious”.

This applies to writing code too. Don’t expect the next programmer who reads your code to be an expert logician. Nor a philosopher.

I hate writing about double negatives… I always end up focusing on negatives myself…

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