4 ms·

Paraphrasing: Myth 1 “Perl is not finished”. Why is it a myth? Because a language spec is complete, there just aren’t any compilers for the full spec. “ Come

Paraphrasing: Myth 1 “Perl is not finished”. Why is it a myth? Because a language spec is complete, there just aren’t any compilers for the full spec. “ Come on.... A few myths down it becomes even more confusing when it talks about subsets of Perl and compilers for those subsets. I thought for a moment maybe this is satirical but I think the defenses were honestly given. Anyway I am not involved in Perl and not attacking it. If it works for you, then great.

jannotti 7y ago
Exactly! After the first two "myths" I truly thought I was being trolled by some well-crafted geek satire.
- dkarl 7y ago
  My money is on satire. > Modern English came to be as a solution to the fact that Old and Middle English weren’t very good languages – or, at the very least, they didn’t represent their usages any longer. It's either satire or mental illness.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    This comment is not okay, by the rules of the site here or the basic tenants of civility.
    - dkarl 7y ago
      You couldn't include the community standards of HN. We often speculatively diagnose mental illness based on disorganized reasoning and bizarre arguments. See for example the recent submission of a mathematics site where a fair portion of the discussion was about whether the author might suffer from paranoid schizophrenia. I don't know why we feel fine publicly speculating about the mental health of people who seem to be clearly suffering in some way, but in a case where the odds are in favor of intentional trolling the topic becomes taboo.
      - KirinDave 7y ago
        "These arguments aren't well written, therefore this person is mentally ill" is a terrible argument to defend.
        dkarl 7y ago
        That's not what I said. I don't think the section I quoted is meant to have a literal meaning any different from what it says, so it's well enough written as it stands. The bizarre leaps of logic are either a humorous wink to acknowledge that the author is writing ironically (which, again, is my guess) or a reflection of an impaired relationship with reality. My guess is that it's a reflection of how far you have to reach to ensure that people recognize ironic writing, the phenomenon known online as Poe's Law. I only mentioned mental illness to force the comparison for context. Really, I think the question is what relation the face-value writing in this piece has to what the author believes, which honestly I can't make head nor tail of. Are they a Perl 6 fan humorously acknowledging the difficulty of putting an optimistic spin on the status quo? Are they expressing disrespect for the criticisms by refusing to answer them straightforwardly (trolling, essentially?) Or are they trolling people who still have hope for Perl 6? I never expected to like Perl 6, but I always hoped for it to be a stimulating presence, so I guess I wonder if I'm being trolled myself as well.
        nkurz 7y ago
        The author has commented on Twitter that the entire piece is not satire and is meant to be taken seriously: https://twitter.com/aearnus/status/1147960078680485889?s=21 https://twitter.com/aearnus/status/1147960078680485889?s=21 I don't think you are being trolled. Instead, I think you are jumping somewhat unkindly to an unfounded conclusion. Rather than satire or mental illness, I think you are encountering "earnestness" combined with a mind that doesn't work like yours.
      - dang 7y ago
        Internet psychiatric diagnosis is not ok on HN. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20psychiatric https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... If anyone sees that happening and we haven't moderated it, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. Users can help in a case like that by flagging the comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) or by emailing hn@ycombinator.com in egregious cases, which guarantees we'll see it.
    - gbacon 7y ago
      Tenet and tenant have the same Latin root. A tenet is a principle to hold. A tenant is the person who does the holding.
      - KirinDave 7y ago
        You are correct. I blame my phone and upvoted your post.
VerbEncroacher 7y ago
I am a fringe observer who has been writing items of minimal use for the past two decades... with this being the case, I will avoid entirely the intellectual, philosophical fapfest that the olympic practitioners of this ritual engage in. if your contribution saves the world, good for you... other than that, accuracy and efficiency is wanting

jannotti 7y ago

Exactly! After the first two "myths" I truly thought I was being trolled by some well-crafted geek satire.

dkarl 7y ago
My money is on satire. > Modern English came to be as a solution to the fact that Old and Middle English weren’t very good languages – or, at the very least, they didn’t represent their usages any longer. It's either satire or mental illness.
- KirinDave 7y ago
  This comment is not okay, by the rules of the site here or the basic tenants of civility.
  - dkarl 7y ago
    You couldn't include the community standards of HN. We often speculatively diagnose mental illness based on disorganized reasoning and bizarre arguments. See for example the recent submission of a mathematics site where a fair portion of the discussion was about whether the author might suffer from paranoid schizophrenia. I don't know why we feel fine publicly speculating about the mental health of people who seem to be clearly suffering in some way, but in a case where the odds are in favor of intentional trolling the topic becomes taboo.
    - KirinDave 7y ago
      "These arguments aren't well written, therefore this person is mentally ill" is a terrible argument to defend.
      - dkarl 7y ago
        That's not what I said. I don't think the section I quoted is meant to have a literal meaning any different from what it says, so it's well enough written as it stands. The bizarre leaps of logic are either a humorous wink to acknowledge that the author is writing ironically (which, again, is my guess) or a reflection of an impaired relationship with reality. My guess is that it's a reflection of how far you have to reach to ensure that people recognize ironic writing, the phenomenon known online as Poe's Law. I only mentioned mental illness to force the comparison for context. Really, I think the question is what relation the face-value writing in this piece has to what the author believes, which honestly I can't make head nor tail of. Are they a Perl 6 fan humorously acknowledging the difficulty of putting an optimistic spin on the status quo? Are they expressing disrespect for the criticisms by refusing to answer them straightforwardly (trolling, essentially?) Or are they trolling people who still have hope for Perl 6? I never expected to like Perl 6, but I always hoped for it to be a stimulating presence, so I guess I wonder if I'm being trolled myself as well.
        nkurz 7y ago
        The author has commented on Twitter that the entire piece is not satire and is meant to be taken seriously: https://twitter.com/aearnus/status/1147960078680485889?s=21 https://twitter.com/aearnus/status/1147960078680485889?s=21 I don't think you are being trolled. Instead, I think you are jumping somewhat unkindly to an unfounded conclusion. Rather than satire or mental illness, I think you are encountering "earnestness" combined with a mind that doesn't work like yours.
    - dang 7y ago
      Internet psychiatric diagnosis is not ok on HN. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20psychiatric https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... If anyone sees that happening and we haven't moderated it, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. Users can help in a case like that by flagging the comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) or by emailing hn@ycombinator.com in egregious cases, which guarantees we'll see it.
  - gbacon 7y ago
    Tenet and tenant have the same Latin root. A tenet is a principle to hold. A tenant is the person who does the holding.
    - KirinDave 7y ago
      You are correct. I blame my phone and upvoted your post.

VerbEncroacher 7y ago

I am a fringe observer who has been writing items of minimal use for the past two decades... with this being the case, I will avoid entirely the intellectual, philosophical fapfest that the olympic practitioners of this ritual engage in. if your contribution saves the world, good for you... other than that, accuracy and efficiency is wanting