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> Pretending this problem doesn't exist Young children tend to look with disgust upon many meals that adults find especially delicious. Is it a problem with t

by blunte 7y ago

> Pretending this problem doesn't exist Young children tend to look with disgust upon many meals that adults find especially delicious. Is it a problem with the food, or is it a matter of experience and perspective? I'm very tempted to give examples, but it's not worth it here. Suffice to say, this falls squarely in the category of "you don't know what you're missing". In this long essay by Paul Graham - http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html - if you're willing to search for and begin reading at "The Blub Paradox", you'll get a sense of what I mean. And then if you want to really be enlightened, at least to concepts that really what matter regarding programming languages, go watch videos from Rich Hickey (Clojure).

Roboprog 7y ago
That wasn’t very nice, but it felt spot on. Curly braces are the chicken nuggets and fries of computer science, lol. Within about 18 months at university (80s), I learned BASIC, FORTRAN, Pascal and Lisp. Syntax, yeah, whatever. (We transitioned to C later, to my horror, with an eye towards a future using “C with classes”)
- allover 7y ago
  > Syntax, yeah, whatever. The vast majority of the programming world simply doesn't seem to agree.
  - Roboprog 7y ago
    True. Don’t expect me to be happy about that, though. I’ll even upvote your comment, as it does matter a little. Too bad C is what “we” settled for.
allover 7y ago
> "you don't know what you're missing". I think I do. I've had the argument many times here, code-as-data, metaprogramming, structured-programming. Things I don't want, aren't worth the trade-off, and things I don't want to see colleagues inflicting on others. I've already watched (almost) every Rich Hickey video (well his main "talks"). I love them, agree with the vast majority of what he says and it has shaped me as a programmer, but I don't agree with the final conclusion being to code using lisps ;)

by blunte 7y ago

Roboprog 7y ago

That wasn’t very nice, but it felt spot on. Curly braces are the chicken nuggets and fries of computer science, lol. Within about 18 months at university (80s), I learned BASIC, FORTRAN, Pascal and Lisp. Syntax, yeah, whatever. (We transitioned to C later, to my horror, with an eye towards a future using “C with classes”)

allover 7y ago
> Syntax, yeah, whatever. The vast majority of the programming world simply doesn't seem to agree.
- Roboprog 7y ago
  True. Don’t expect me to be happy about that, though. I’ll even upvote your comment, as it does matter a little. Too bad C is what “we” settled for.

allover 7y ago

> "you don't know what you're missing". I think I do. I've had the argument many times here, code-as-data, metaprogramming, structured-programming. Things I don't want, aren't worth the trade-off, and things I don't want to see colleagues inflicting on others. I've already watched (almost) every Rich Hickey video (well his main "talks"). I love them, agree with the vast majority of what he says and it has shaped me as a programmer, but I don't agree with the final conclusion being to code using lisps ;)