Maybe when a service/product/framework etc hits a specific point in it's lifecycle (when it's trying to be enterprisey for example), we can say that it's melted the snowman.

I mean ... this is one of the funniest comments I've read on HN. I will be diligent in adopting this into my nerd vernacular.

If it ends up as a thing I'll be surprised and proud.

I prefer the tick. It's self-documenting which makes it more useful and that also makes it amusing in its own way.

It's partially self documenting. As mentioned elsewhere, there's a vague implication that putting something else there could mean "don't use utf8", where if you put the utf8 X character that corresponds to the check you are still asking for utf8.

edited to add: This seems related to a problem various "try to sound like English" programming languages (e.g. Inform) have, where it is easy to assume invalid syntax will be valid because it's valid English.

An X is also a commonly accepted way to select a checkbox though. The only sure way to indicate a checkbox as not selected is to leave it empty. That's the true opposite, and actually does work.

Fair point.

they did use a snowman before, though I can't find the commit where they changed it.

EDIT: found the commit with some git log magic - https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/c616089