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What I heard was that actual snake-oil was used for a number of things it actually worked on in china, but when someone tried to introduce it in the US, the sal
by ender89 9y ago
What I heard was that actual snake-oil was used for a number of things it actually worked on in china, but when someone tried to introduce it in the US, the salesmen figured it was complete bs and no one would notice if they just sold counterfeit oil.
- Simulacra 9y agoOh wow! I didn't know that, sort of reminds me of the olive oil market right now.
- glup 9y agoI thought the above was about object-oriented programming. Language is hard.
- ChristianBundy 9y agoAnother example of why explicit is better than implicit.
- danblick 9y agoWhat do you mean by that?
- stcredzero 9y agoWhat I heard was that actual snake-oil was used for a number of things it actually worked on in china, but when someone tried to introduce it in the US, the salesmen figured it was complete bs and no one would notice if they just sold counterfeit oil. Object Orientation was used for almost everything in Smalltalk, but when someone tried to introduce it in C-based languages, some programmers figured it was bs. Some "consultants" figured it was more programming industry bs/fashion and some marketers figured people would buy stuff if they just claimed everything was Object Oriented. In the right context, OO can be pretty darn good, but it's not a panacea for everything. (And there is some good OO in C-heritage languages.)
- stcredzero 9y agoThere's an analogy here for OO.
- smnrchrds 9y agoI don't get it. Can you explain a bit more?
- stcredzero 9y agoSee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14489472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14489472
- tdeck 9y agoThat last part at least is correct. Clark Stanley (the original snake oil salesman) traveled around with a bag full of snakes, and made a big show out of rendering them into oil. But the actual product was just beef fat and some other ingredients.
- macawfish 9y agoSo the actual product was pretty much the opposite of therapeutic... I mean, at least go with beef gelatin, at least that could fix someone's joints.