I would argue that the character most responsible for the Reverend Dimmesdale's suffering is Dimmesdale, himself. He whips himself with a scourge, fasts, keeps late-night vigils, and wrestles with his conscience again and again throughout the novel, but he never does the one thing that will end his suffering until the book's conclusion: confess that he is Hester's co-sinner. He sort of confesses to his congregation, saying that he is "utterly a pollution and a lie," but these terms are so veiled that his auditors interpret them only as a sign of his humility. He never says explicitly that he is Pearl's father. Then, standing on the scaffold at night, holding hands with Hester and Dimmesdale, their daughter asks him if he will stand with them and hold her hand during the day in front of the town. He says that he will not; it is thus clear that he does not ultimately want anyone to know about his sin, and it is this hiding that causes him such anguish. Dimmesdale could confess but chooses not to for over seven years. If he didn't have such a guilty conscience, Chillingworth would not be able to torture him with it. The minister is responsible for his own suffering.
As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
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