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Fascinating. This post illustrates precisely what -- in my opinion -- is the attitude that makes someone a Blub programmer. That's what Paul Graham was original

Fascinating. This post illustrates precisely what -- in my opinion -- is the attitude that makes someone a Blub programmer. That's what Paul Graham was originally talking about: people who learn and develop their skills as programmers up to a certain point and then say "That's enough, I'm comfortable." Don't get me wrong, you can get to be a damn good Blub programmer. You can also work at an international company, headquartered in US, without being skilled enough at English to appreciate Shakespeare's work; or, for that matter, loathe it, since you need the same level of proficiency. I do believe that you'll never get to enjoy English to the fullest, if you don't explore its poetic reaches. In words of Wilhelm von Humboldt: The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world. I believe that the same applies to programming languages. Yes, you can be really good with just Java. But just by learning C# on the side, you can gain valuable insights without stepping too far from your comfort zone. Learning Lisp, Self, Python and Factor, to name a few, will give you whole new worldviews, make you think differently. You don't really need that stuff to make software (or money). But it can make you a hell of a lot better at it and, more importantly, it can make you enjoy it more.

gtani 16y ago
Most of the devs I encounter recently are at least curious about different families of language - ruby or python (GTD lang's) - java, C and derivatives - concurrent/FP: ocaml, clojure, scala, haskell, clean, erlang, F# - lisp/scheme, dylan - smalltalk, factor, Ioke, forth, Fortunately, you can spend all weekend reading about languages: - hacker news; reddit; infoq.com; artima.com; theServerside.com and .net; Lambda the Ultimate
- JadeNB 16y ago
  > smalltalk, factor, Ioke, forth, This is an unexpected grouping; the design philosophies of Factor and Forth seem quite different from those of Smalltalk, which in turn I think is only one of the points of inspiration for Ioke. Is there some deeper similarity that you're pointing out here?
  - igrekel 16y ago
    Not to mention how close are Smalltalk and Ruby.
ananthrk 16y ago
The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world. WOW! I haven't heard that quote before. It quite aptly sums up the situation.
jayruy 16y ago
I think OP's point is that enjoying the simple prose of programming, reveling in what you can accomplish with simple tools and techniques, is another equally valid route to enjoyment. It's hard for me to disentangle pg's "blub" epithet from the fact that he's an investor who benefits from having a technical audience overly concerned with artistic merit and underly concerned with economic benefit.
- CodeMage 16y ago
  I think OP's point is that enjoying the simple prose of programming, reveling in what you can accomplish with simple tools and techniques, is another equally valid route to enjoyment. If that was true, the OP would have shown better understanding of the difference between "poetry" and "prose". Plinkplonk posted a pretty good analysis of false dichotomies and misinterpretations present in the OP's essay, so I won't repeat all that. There is one point, however, that I would especially highlight here. The OP first claimed that when he has to look at the code, "the more obvious the code the better". Yet he claims further down that "the vast majority of the world’s programmers, want an 'easy' language, not a highly expressive, poetic language". That's where the OP's lack of understanding of what he calls "poetic languages" is made evident. The benefit of a highly expressive language is that you can make your code more obvious. As it is, the essay basically reads as "Yes, we Blub programmers like Blub precisely because it's in our comfort zone and that's good enough and we don't care for the rest." It's hard for me to disentangle pg's "blub" epithet from the fact that he's an investor who benefits from having a technical audience overly concerned with artistic merit and underly concerned with economic benefit. I confess that I don't understand your logic. How does Paul Graham "benefit" from "having a technical audience overly concerned with artistic merit and underly concerned with economic benefit"? I would expect the opposite, that an investor would benefit from having an audience that always keeps both its eyes on the economic bottom line. I would give your statement a benefit of a doubt if he was a CEO of a company that markets some fancy, new Lisp platform as "The Next Big Thing".
  - jayruy 16y ago
    I am not discounting the application of "poetic" solutions, certainly there are cases where this is a justified approach. E.g. I think this is particularly relevent in regards to parallelization. There's a time for poetry and a time for prose: I'm merely saying that neither side should be throwing epithets. pg extracts shareholder value by managing the artistic/economic gap. I am not being critical: this is a perfectly valid thing to do with one's time, I'd take his job in a heartbeat =o) However, I'd wager that if you added up salaries forgone by ycombinator participants and compared them against aggregate payout it would paint a fairly bleak economic picture.

gtani 16y ago

Most of the devs I encounter recently are at least curious about different families of language - ruby or python (GTD lang's) - java, C and derivatives - concurrent/FP: ocaml, clojure, scala, haskell, clean, erlang, F# - lisp/scheme, dylan - smalltalk, factor, Ioke, forth, Fortunately, you can spend all weekend reading about languages: - hacker news; reddit; infoq.com; artima.com; theServerside.com and .net; Lambda the Ultimate

JadeNB 16y ago
> smalltalk, factor, Ioke, forth, This is an unexpected grouping; the design philosophies of Factor and Forth seem quite different from those of Smalltalk, which in turn I think is only one of the points of inspiration for Ioke. Is there some deeper similarity that you're pointing out here?
- igrekel 16y ago
  Not to mention how close are Smalltalk and Ruby.

ananthrk 16y ago

The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world. WOW! I haven't heard that quote before. It quite aptly sums up the situation.

jayruy 16y ago

I think OP's point is that enjoying the simple prose of programming, reveling in what you can accomplish with simple tools and techniques, is another equally valid route to enjoyment. It's hard for me to disentangle pg's "blub" epithet from the fact that he's an investor who benefits from having a technical audience overly concerned with artistic merit and underly concerned with economic benefit.

CodeMage 16y ago
I think OP's point is that enjoying the simple prose of programming, reveling in what you can accomplish with simple tools and techniques, is another equally valid route to enjoyment. If that was true, the OP would have shown better understanding of the difference between "poetry" and "prose". Plinkplonk posted a pretty good analysis of false dichotomies and misinterpretations present in the OP's essay, so I won't repeat all that. There is one point, however, that I would especially highlight here. The OP first claimed that when he has to look at the code, "the more obvious the code the better". Yet he claims further down that "the vast majority of the world’s programmers, want an 'easy' language, not a highly expressive, poetic language". That's where the OP's lack of understanding of what he calls "poetic languages" is made evident. The benefit of a highly expressive language is that you can make your code more obvious. As it is, the essay basically reads as "Yes, we Blub programmers like Blub precisely because it's in our comfort zone and that's good enough and we don't care for the rest." It's hard for me to disentangle pg's "blub" epithet from the fact that he's an investor who benefits from having a technical audience overly concerned with artistic merit and underly concerned with economic benefit. I confess that I don't understand your logic. How does Paul Graham "benefit" from "having a technical audience overly concerned with artistic merit and underly concerned with economic benefit"? I would expect the opposite, that an investor would benefit from having an audience that always keeps both its eyes on the economic bottom line. I would give your statement a benefit of a doubt if he was a CEO of a company that markets some fancy, new Lisp platform as "The Next Big Thing".
- jayruy 16y ago
  I am not discounting the application of "poetic" solutions, certainly there are cases where this is a justified approach. E.g. I think this is particularly relevent in regards to parallelization. There's a time for poetry and a time for prose: I'm merely saying that neither side should be throwing epithets. pg extracts shareholder value by managing the artistic/economic gap. I am not being critical: this is a perfectly valid thing to do with one's time, I'd take his job in a heartbeat =o) However, I'd wager that if you added up salaries forgone by ycombinator participants and compared them against aggregate payout it would paint a fairly bleak economic picture.