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If you ever see anything online that has more than, say, half a dozen users, then it is NEVER the case that it suffers from "poor pedagogy". Why? Because it o

If you ever see anything online that has more than, say, half a dozen users, then it is NEVER the case that it suffers from "poor pedagogy". Why? Because it only takes 1 person to explain something, even if it's brief, people will start linking to there and eventually that method of explanation spreads. Like pointers in C, or classes - who would say they "suffer from poor pedagogy"? Anything is easy to teach, it just takes a single person who undersatnds it. But. If you ever see a technology truly suffer from "poor pedagogy" then it has a secret: in some fundamental, underlying way, it sucks. Now the rules of the game are different. Suddenly, those who understand it will keep it under their breath and muddy the issue. No one will be explicit about these design choices and simply explain it: to explain it is to criticize it. Then you have this case where people are holding their tongue, and those who eventually figure something out join that small cabal and simply don't mention it in normal, sane terms. They just don't - it would be rude to do so. So remember. If you ever perceive poor pedagogy online in any tech subject, then it is camouflage, you are being lied to. In some fundamental way nobody will mention, it simply sucks. At that point it's up to you to read between the lines and decide whether it still has enough benefits for you to learn it.

mbrock 11y ago
If you can explain clearly why something "sucks," then that explanation will spread and soon enough everyone will agree that you are right and the thing is useless and bad. But if you notice yourself spreading irrational FUD under throwaway nicknames, and people don't seem to quickly catch onto your point, it may be that secretly and fundamentally, you are trolling.
- throwawayignt 11y ago
  it's inappropriate to make ad hominem attacks here, please refrain from doing so. I didn't name any shortcomings in Haskell, I gave a general rule of thumb. However, as you yourself demonstrate dramatically, by using an ad hominem and saying "spreading irational FUD", if I did have a clear and rational understanding of why your prefered technology has underlying shortcomings as a trade-off, which learners need to deal with, then I certainly would keep that information to myself. Who wants to be skewered by a community? For this reason, you will never see clear explanations in that format. Instead, people who have attained that information for themselves will simply keep it to themselves - they won't teach it at all. They will teach it without reference to alternatives or to the strength of trade-offs that have been made. That's why it will seem like a case of "poor pedagogy". But it never is that. It's a case of people in the know politely avoiding teaching it. Please note that this is just my personal opinion, you can disagree with it. I didn't mean to start a debate.
  - omginternets 11y ago
    His point is that your argument is so difficult to follow that it looks ad hoc. That, in combination with your throwaway account, raises red flags for trolling. Ad hominem attacks are informal fallacies, granted, but they're still sometimes relevant.
  - mbrock 11y ago
    You were claiming, with extremely vague reasoning from a throwaway account, that any technology with a reputation of bad pedagogy—obviously referring to Haskell—"fundamentally sucks." Ad hominem fallacy is when you use a character attack but pretend it is a logical argument. I don't claim to make a logical argument—there's nothing logical in your comment to respond to. If you don't want to start debates on the internet, try not telling people that the technology of their choice "fundamentally sucks."
    - throwawayignt 11y ago
      Haskell doesn't have a reputation of bad pedagogy per se. My only point was what anyone's reaction should be when their personal impression is "bad pedagogy", in any area of software. It means that something is missing. The idea that I'm "obviously referring to Haskell" and attacking me for it is beneath a response. By the way this thread is an excellent example of why if I did have clear arguments for limitations baked into technology xyz, I certainly wouldn't share them: leaving learners in the difficult position of being presented difficul material/approaches, without a context, by those who understand it but keep mum about any limitations or difficulties. (An example would be the syntax for standard library container operations in C++ (stl things), like with vectors. Nobody is going to explain that this syntax is so much uglier than higher-level vector/array syntax due to history, because the minute they did it would become obvious that there should be a CoffeeScript-like intermediate syntax parser that turns easy syntax into C++. Instead, it's presented without any such context, and nobody fixed the fact that this is harder to learn, harder to parse or debug, and more error-prone, than higher-level interpreted languages. It's just silently accepted without reference to this being a historical design trade-off. I'm not objecting to it, but if something seems to be described circuitously or not being taught very well, then you're probably not being told the whole story. There is a good and specific rason why.)
omginternets 11y ago
So difficult concepts are useless... got it. >Anything is easy to teach, it just takes a single person who undersatnds it. Spoken like someone who's never taught a difficult subject. More to the point: this is what anti-intellectualism looks like, and it's not something to be proud of. If you made the effort to understand the occasional cryptic idea, you'd be amazed at the number of useful things you would learn.
- throwawayignt 11y ago
  I'm sorry, can you give a single example in the arts and sciences of something that has a reputation for "poor pedagogy"? (But is in fact just inherently difficult.) Here are some inherently difficult subjects: quantum field theory, advanced calculus, orbital mechanics. Do any of these subjects suffer from a reputation of "poor pedagogy"? I was referring instead to specific technological solutions, and, specifically, to encountering the idea that a subject "merely" suffers from poor pedagogy. My comment had zero to do with the difficulty of any subject.

mbrock 11y ago

If you can explain clearly why something "sucks," then that explanation will spread and soon enough everyone will agree that you are right and the thing is useless and bad. But if you notice yourself spreading irrational FUD under throwaway nicknames, and people don't seem to quickly catch onto your point, it may be that secretly and fundamentally, you are trolling.

throwawayignt 11y ago
it's inappropriate to make ad hominem attacks here, please refrain from doing so. I didn't name any shortcomings in Haskell, I gave a general rule of thumb. However, as you yourself demonstrate dramatically, by using an ad hominem and saying "spreading irational FUD", if I did have a clear and rational understanding of why your prefered technology has underlying shortcomings as a trade-off, which learners need to deal with, then I certainly would keep that information to myself. Who wants to be skewered by a community? For this reason, you will never see clear explanations in that format. Instead, people who have attained that information for themselves will simply keep it to themselves - they won't teach it at all. They will teach it without reference to alternatives or to the strength of trade-offs that have been made. That's why it will seem like a case of "poor pedagogy". But it never is that. It's a case of people in the know politely avoiding teaching it. Please note that this is just my personal opinion, you can disagree with it. I didn't mean to start a debate.
- omginternets 11y ago
  His point is that your argument is so difficult to follow that it looks ad hoc. That, in combination with your throwaway account, raises red flags for trolling. Ad hominem attacks are informal fallacies, granted, but they're still sometimes relevant.
- mbrock 11y ago
  You were claiming, with extremely vague reasoning from a throwaway account, that any technology with a reputation of bad pedagogy—obviously referring to Haskell—"fundamentally sucks." Ad hominem fallacy is when you use a character attack but pretend it is a logical argument. I don't claim to make a logical argument—there's nothing logical in your comment to respond to. If you don't want to start debates on the internet, try not telling people that the technology of their choice "fundamentally sucks."
  - throwawayignt 11y ago
    Haskell doesn't have a reputation of bad pedagogy per se. My only point was what anyone's reaction should be when their personal impression is "bad pedagogy", in any area of software. It means that something is missing. The idea that I'm "obviously referring to Haskell" and attacking me for it is beneath a response. By the way this thread is an excellent example of why if I did have clear arguments for limitations baked into technology xyz, I certainly wouldn't share them: leaving learners in the difficult position of being presented difficul material/approaches, without a context, by those who understand it but keep mum about any limitations or difficulties. (An example would be the syntax for standard library container operations in C++ (stl things), like with vectors. Nobody is going to explain that this syntax is so much uglier than higher-level vector/array syntax due to history, because the minute they did it would become obvious that there should be a CoffeeScript-like intermediate syntax parser that turns easy syntax into C++. Instead, it's presented without any such context, and nobody fixed the fact that this is harder to learn, harder to parse or debug, and more error-prone, than higher-level interpreted languages. It's just silently accepted without reference to this being a historical design trade-off. I'm not objecting to it, but if something seems to be described circuitously or not being taught very well, then you're probably not being told the whole story. There is a good and specific rason why.)

omginternets 11y ago

So difficult concepts are useless... got it. >Anything is easy to teach, it just takes a single person who undersatnds it. Spoken like someone who's never taught a difficult subject. More to the point: this is what anti-intellectualism looks like, and it's not something to be proud of. If you made the effort to understand the occasional cryptic idea, you'd be amazed at the number of useful things you would learn.

throwawayignt 11y ago
I'm sorry, can you give a single example in the arts and sciences of something that has a reputation for "poor pedagogy"? (But is in fact just inherently difficult.) Here are some inherently difficult subjects: quantum field theory, advanced calculus, orbital mechanics. Do any of these subjects suffer from a reputation of "poor pedagogy"? I was referring instead to specific technological solutions, and, specifically, to encountering the idea that a subject "merely" suffers from poor pedagogy. My comment had zero to do with the difficulty of any subject.