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Ask HN: Do you believe hubris to be a problem in present-day science and tech?
- bigiain 10y agoAccording to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Impatience: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hubris: The quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. (from memories of comp.lang.perl.misc in the late '90s, and a reminder via Google and http://threevirtues.com/ http://threevirtues.com/ )
- good_vibes 10y agoI agree with his train of thought 100%. But I see the three virtues could also be reworded to: 'Economy', 'Vision', 'Courage'. Thanks for the share, I like his way of thinking a lot. :)