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As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or
by angersock 10y ago
As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?
Um, Graham is more than a little off here.
Like, by a country mile.
- dylz 10y agoLet's discuss text editors. Anyone?
- AlwaysBCoding 10y agolol @ Vim users that have to write configuration files, memorize complicated keyboard shortcuts, and install 20 plugins just to be able to copy and paste text between files. It's 2016, try using a real editor like Atom. (Am I doing it right?)
- clock_tower 10y agoYes, you certainly are -- you hateful covert Emacs advocate! I know what you're up to, you're trying to discredit the good editor so that you can quietly build up your overbuilt piece of crap! Atom is built on Emacs, isn't it?! (/s. All the /s in the world.)
- ythl 10y agoAtom? What is this, 2015? Sublime is still king, Atom was a passing fad.
- devishard 10y agoI use vim w/o plugins and with the stock configuration. I frequently have two files open side-by-side. If I want to copy the current line in the left file to the right file, the keystrokes are: yy<Ctrl+w>lp It's really not that hard to copy between files in Vim. :P
- jlg23 10y agoA user who has been using vi[m] and emacs for 20+ years - what are you trying to say? Please don't tell me that I should just use the mouse and context menus, I'm so much faster with touch typing.... [EDIT: yes, I know both editors very well and have config files for both; does this make me "worse" than someone who has not taken the time to learn how to configure his/her editor?]
- trentmb 10y ago> (Am I doing it right?) No, you're using Atom
- clock_tower 10y agoDeath to Emacs! It's as arrogant as it is shoddy; it has a narrow provincial name for the Alt key, and it makes you learn Lisp in order to make it handle backspaces properly! Also, you Limeys need to learn how to spell. (There, that should get the conversational juices flowing...)
- jlg23 10y agoThe "narrow [, [sic]] provincial name for the Alt key" is actually what it was once called. And backspace just works as expected in a unix environment. > (There, that should get the conversational juices flowing...) Sane people here know when to engage in a conversation, no trolling needed.
- clock_tower 10y agoUpvoted this for the first part (noticing the information while missing the pointless quibble about comma use, which should have been a red flag), before I saw the second. A "take back upvote" option would be nice...
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoWell, I'm an emacs guy, because I've used it for 30 years, and the commands are burned into my fingertips by now. I'll admit that vi is more logical and easier to learn, though. And I don't get "religious" about editors except in jest...
- clock_tower 10y agoI think that's what it comes down to: vi is easier to learn, but emacs is much more powerful. My current job involves using a very esoteric in-house language, which doesn't have any IDEs or even Notepad++ text-formatting extensions; I'm thinking about learning emacs, which can be programmed relatively easily to become little less than an IDE for it. (Speaking of, behold another holy war: IDEs versus command-line development...)
- bbcbasic 10y agoI'm a weirdo. I love visual studio and I love vim. Windows and Linux. Haskell and C#. Etc. I more I learn the less I think I know.
- snowwrestler 10y agoI like, and frequently use, nano. There, I said it. Now vim and emacs users can both mock my child-like ignorance of real text editing.
- danieltillett 10y agoI will join in on the love for nano. If you are just doing simple things like editing config files it is all you need. I don't use vim often enough ever get really comfortable with it.
- setpatchaddress 10y agoPerverse! Nano is actually more difficult to use than vi over time. Sad, but true. The first time you have to learn the arcane control-keys to search for something, you've already lost, because vim is approximately as arcane, but much faster.
- mcbits 10y agoI don't think I've ever had to search for anything in nano or vi to get a system into a state where I can use an editor with good ol' Ctrl-F. But then I'm not hot-patching a server over an acoustic coupler from a phone booth in rural Nevada, or whatever hardcore sysadmins do.
- douche 10y agoNotepad++, anyone?
- groby_b 10y agoYep. I don't think we need to even talk about JS, and I'm happy to point him to a few baking forum flame wars that are epic. And his comment about the problem being a threshold for expertise is equally laughable. People feel perfectly happy to comment on anything catching their fancy, expertise or not. (Add to that Dunning Kruger...)
- jdquey 10y agoAgreed. I find it depends on how people go about talking about the subjects. I think it has to do more with the potential impact it has on us and others. Not to mention how much broad appeal there is. I don't know much about Javascript, but debates about how to properly use it aren't going to change a nation. Or the implication of someone's life, both now and after death. People have a lot of opinions on baking. You don't need to be an expert to blog about it (e.g. probably 1/2 the mommy blogs out there). But again, who cares if you add organic cheese to your chili or sour cream? Very few. And most would remove it if not important.
- DonaldFisk 10y agoI don't feel strongly either way about this. It isn't worth getting into an argument about.
- jayvanguard 10y agoIs he though? Questions on the most performant way to iterate over something rarely result in flame wars. I believe you are thinking of people arguing over JS frameworks or whether JS sucks or not. Both are identity related. When it comes down to arguing the specific mechanics of comparing how framework X uses MVC vs how framework Y uses it, you don't see so much conflict because it is expertise, not identity driven.
- ixtli 10y agoYes, he is. In fact he's SO off that he goes on to directly contradict himself later in the article: > For example, the question of the relative merits of programming languages often degenerates into a religious war, because so many programmers identify as X programmers or Y programmers.
- brhsiao 10y agoYou used 14 words to say what could've been said in 3 or 4.
- dang 10y agoI doubt pg was off when he wrote that about Javascript in 2009. If it had been obviously untrue, he would have known it from moderating HN. It doesn't much matter, though, because the important point holds: arguments about JS became more like religious arguments when people started to identify for and/or against being a JS programmer. The same could become true about baking; there's nothing stopping people from identifying with anything.