3 ms·

> How do you know you could have done better? Because it was an error! I could have done better by doing the thing that fixed the error! I am not a religious

> How do you know you could have done better? Because it was an error! I could have done better by doing the thing that fixed the error! I am not a religious person, but the Lord save us from those who have an excuse for everything.

jodrellblank 7y ago
So answer the rest of my questions - you could have, you didn't. Why not? a) you actively wanted to produce bad code. b) you couldn't have. c) other? > the Lord save us from those who have an excuse for everything. Lord save us from people who think self-flagellation is at all useful or beneficial to anything. It's status-signalling and nothing else, you're in hypothetically the same situation as someone else (having made a mistake) but you want to claim to be superior because you're feeling the most bad about it?
- deleted 7y ago
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- mannykannot 7y ago
  c) I made a mistake first time around. In this post [1] we see you arguing that everyone makes mistakes, yet here you seem unable to recognize it as the obvious answer to your question. Perhaps not coincidentally, a failure to be semantically consistent is a common root cause of programming errors. > So answer the rest of my questions - you could have, you didn't. Why not? As a rule, I try to avoid responding to utter nonsense, though I must admit to breaking that rule in this thread. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22975241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22975241
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    That doesn't get around the fundamental problem here. Why did you make a mistake if you're arguing that you could have not made one? Either you didn't want to make zero mistakes, or you couldn't have made zero mistakes. > yet here you seem unable to recognize it as the obvious answer to your question. I'm the one who is insistent that it was a mistake and that people make mistakes. You're the one insisting there's some loophole where you can both get it wrong and feel good that you could have got it right, at the same time. I'm saying that it's your position which is utter nonsense, a meaningless double-think designed to make you feel good, which reflects nothing about the world. Like a kid saying “I ate ten hot dogs and threw up, but I could have eaten fifteen!” - nobody believes it, you couldn’t, you’re trying to save face and get credit for eating fifteen hotdogs without actually doing it. Now, whether you can do better in future is a different matter - I’m not saying you can’t do things to avoid that mistake happening again, or learn from experience, or get better.
    - mannykannot 7y ago
      > Why did you make a mistake if you're arguing that you could have not made one? This is bizarre. Where on earth did you get the idea that I am arguing that one could have not made a mistake? The whole issue is about one's attitude and behavior after having done so. I am not going to consider anything else you write here until you clear up that mystery, which seems to be the root of your confusion.

jodrellblank 7y ago

So answer the rest of my questions - you could have, you didn't. Why not? a) you actively wanted to produce bad code. b) you couldn't have. c) other? > the Lord save us from those who have an excuse for everything. Lord save us from people who think self-flagellation is at all useful or beneficial to anything. It's status-signalling and nothing else, you're in hypothetically the same situation as someone else (having made a mistake) but you want to claim to be superior because you're feeling the most bad about it?

deleted 7y ago
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mannykannot 7y ago
c) I made a mistake first time around. In this post [1] we see you arguing that everyone makes mistakes, yet here you seem unable to recognize it as the obvious answer to your question. Perhaps not coincidentally, a failure to be semantically consistent is a common root cause of programming errors. > So answer the rest of my questions - you could have, you didn't. Why not? As a rule, I try to avoid responding to utter nonsense, though I must admit to breaking that rule in this thread. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22975241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22975241
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  That doesn't get around the fundamental problem here. Why did you make a mistake if you're arguing that you could have not made one? Either you didn't want to make zero mistakes, or you couldn't have made zero mistakes. > yet here you seem unable to recognize it as the obvious answer to your question. I'm the one who is insistent that it was a mistake and that people make mistakes. You're the one insisting there's some loophole where you can both get it wrong and feel good that you could have got it right, at the same time. I'm saying that it's your position which is utter nonsense, a meaningless double-think designed to make you feel good, which reflects nothing about the world. Like a kid saying “I ate ten hot dogs and threw up, but I could have eaten fifteen!” - nobody believes it, you couldn’t, you’re trying to save face and get credit for eating fifteen hotdogs without actually doing it. Now, whether you can do better in future is a different matter - I’m not saying you can’t do things to avoid that mistake happening again, or learn from experience, or get better.
  - mannykannot 7y ago
    > Why did you make a mistake if you're arguing that you could have not made one? This is bizarre. Where on earth did you get the idea that I am arguing that one could have not made a mistake? The whole issue is about one's attitude and behavior after having done so. I am not going to consider anything else you write here until you clear up that mystery, which seems to be the root of your confusion.