Actually, it is not "their nature". The nature of people on the spectrum is to have difficulty understanding social conventions. Having a system whereby social conventions are explicitly spelled out in detail is likely to help people on the spectrum adhere to them, because they no longer have to be inferred.

People on the spectrum deserve understanding (like everyone else) when they break social norms or say hurtful things due to not understanding that they're doing anything wrong. When they know that what they're doing is not acceptable, they are as responsible as anyone else who knowingly acts like a jerk.

I'm also highly skeptical of the idea anyone outside of a tiny minority would be unaware that "garbage" is an intentionally insulting term, especially given that it is a metaphor. Even "completely fails to meet standards" is vastly better and more descriptive (outside of the emotional content of "garbage").

For many on the spectrum (though certainly not all; it’s called a “spectrum” for a reason), this notion of “emotional content of <word>” is simply an alien concept! I know this is quite hard for a “neurotypical” person to truly accept (let alone empathize with), but it’s true: Which words are emotionally charged, and which aren’t, must be learned by rote memorization, and this can take a great deal of effort.

In this “neurotypical” world we live in, those of us on the spectrum must put a lot of effort into “acting neurotypical”, since “being yourself” just doesn’t fly when it means you can accidentally hurt others feelings (and we certainly don’t want that either).

Nobody is perfect though, and mistakes do happen. What’s unfortunate is that the kind of mistakes often made by people on the spectrum aren’t naturally tolerated or forgiven by most people, because the behavior is often seen as so far beyond the norm that “surely malice must be the only explanation”. Therefore, forgiveness and tolerance is often bypassed entirely.

Of course, I’m not trying to make excuses arguing that hurtful behavior should be tolerated; rather, I’m agreeing with the original point that we should help teach people how to behave well first, rather than dropping some kind of “ban hammer” on the first offense. Responding with the maximum penalty at the first offense is not only unfair, but creates a culture of fear and terror and anxiety, at least among those who aren’t the best at predicting what may or may not be seen as an offensive statement.

Holy moly, please don’t tell me what I do and don’t have difficulty understanding. Even if you were a clinical psychologist, it’s a spectrum and throwing out what entire populations do or do not understand is so weird, I’m not sure what point it serves.

Even if I was the elected spokesperson of this population in the world, I’m not sure I’d have the authority to issue such a nebulous statement.

Is that still a nebulous statement?

And you can do better than "this code is fucking garbage." Even "this code is poorly done, try harder" is much better. It is more polite, and the more times I see this discussion, the more I like the idea that you should just treat your colleagues like ladies and gentlemen, or whatever.

At a given point in my TDD learnings, I thought I invented a new term for a really powerful idea – "Shame-Driven Development" – turns out I was not the first person who named this idea.

My idea of "SDD" is basically that noticing a failing test will motivate you to fix your code, so it's imperative that we set up CI early in development and shine a light on those failing tests at every opportunity. My idea is not important, if you google the term, you'll see that it really is a bigger idea than that, and all of the top links are perhaps obviously not presenting it in a positive light.

You don't want "shame-driven development." Embarrassment is only a powerful motivator for the people you haven't used it on yet. Other people will seek to avoid being embarrassed, but the person you embarrass will only be left feeling bad.

1) people that start a serious open source product must be self-assured and innately isolated from any external community/pressure in order to avoid distractions from their goal. Shame has likely 0 effect, or negative (i.e. the person/group doing the shaming would get banned from any future interaction). It takes a certain type of person that is likely "very thorny" to the outside world unless persuaded by desired qualities in other people that want to interact.

2) those projects often start as angry reactions to what is happening in the outside "meatspace" (corruption, vendor lock-in, "voluntary" censorship, you-can-buy-everyone, selling underwhelming/dangerous stuff for a lot of money etc.); doing things differently when they start working inevitably invokes feelings of superiority over people that "just don't get it"/"noobs" and it's difficult to resist temptation of showing off. Or external people are viewed as "conformists to old ways" that would prevent better things from happening in order not to disrupt current status quo they benefit from, hence interacting with them is not desirable (and arguably dangerous until project really makes it)

3) having to wade through a lot of new issues daily and cherry pick the ones that are worth examining is time consuming and tiring. After doing this for a while it likely leads to anger and telling off someone is a way to vent

4) popular free/open source projects that made it are often targeted by people trying to subvert them for their hidden agendas; any original developer intelligent enough can be at least disturbed if not outraged by that; harsh reactions following. "How would you punish those subverters?" is a better question than to penalize a developer that was easily provoked to an angry outburst by those poking at their weak areas (and that's often trivial with honest technical folks)

5) priority of creators is often getting things done as fast as they could; "unnecessary social talk" is often viewed as a waste of effort/time, and honestly it often is, unfortunately. If they decide that at some point "talking nice" is leading to being more efficient, they would do work on it, but not before they perceive it that way.

6) Many junior developers think that they are entitled to some coding celebrity's special attention instead of taking the hard way, improving themselves and then contributing when they are finally able to.

How does calling it garbage help anyway, except perhaps to give yourself an adrenaline kick?

Then do so. If you cannot articulate why it's bad, and suggest ways to improve it, then you do not have any business reviewing the code. Review is just as important as writing the code itself, and if you are unable to give that task the attention it deserves, then delegate it to someone who can.