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"What I meant with agnostic is that it is a point of personal preference, not dogmatic." I wonder if even this is true though. Very strong personal preferences

"What I meant with agnostic is that it is a point of personal preference, not dogmatic." I wonder if even this is true though. Very strong personal preferences for one tool or language over another can look like dogma to outsiders. What makes something "dogma" is ignorant adoption of a view point or preference and then blindly parroting it and actively demonizing people who choose other tools. The best programmers (the subset we are talking about) don't blindly adopt (or maintain) their preference for a specific language out of ignorance. Linus Torvalds, for example, has a very strong anti C++ bias [1]. That doesn't make him not part of the set of "best programmers". Again I agree with your larger point of going around bashing other people because they have different tastes from yours being an unproductive exercise. "I would hate to program in PHP (or even, I think PHP sucks as a programming language because of reasons x y z) and would much prefer to use Python (or arc or whatever) " is very different from "People who use PHP are idiots and should be burned at the stake". [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643/focus=57918 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643...

jacquesm 17y ago
judge for yourself: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1042208 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1042208
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  Actually I am fine with that headline ("PHP must die"). I didn't bother reading the article, because I know all the arguments about what is broken in PHP (and also what is not) and it was unlikely I would learn anything new and I have better things to spend my time on. I just read it as saying something like "Shaolin Kung Fu should die" It is just an opinion about a tool, not necessarily a correct one. Now if he had said "PHP programmers must die", then sure, I can see why that would bother people.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    True enough, but it was the most recent example from HN, I can find you much better ones if you want. In fact, I could probably find more of them than I care to remember, which is why I posted that bit of text in the first place.

jacquesm 17y ago

judge for yourself: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1042208 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1042208

plinkplonk 17y ago
Actually I am fine with that headline ("PHP must die"). I didn't bother reading the article, because I know all the arguments about what is broken in PHP (and also what is not) and it was unlikely I would learn anything new and I have better things to spend my time on. I just read it as saying something like "Shaolin Kung Fu should die" It is just an opinion about a tool, not necessarily a correct one. Now if he had said "PHP programmers must die", then sure, I can see why that would bother people.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  True enough, but it was the most recent example from HN, I can find you much better ones if you want. In fact, I could probably find more of them than I care to remember, which is why I posted that bit of text in the first place.