17 ms·

I'm going to cite Steve Pavlina here: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/07/how-to-get-from-a-7-to-a-10/ http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/07/how-to-get-

I'm going to cite Steve Pavlina here: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/07/how-to-get-from-a-7-to-a-10/ http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/07/how-to-get-from-a-7... Some snippets: A 7 seems very close to a 9 or 10, but often a 7 is a local maximum — you can’t get any higher by continuing to follow the same path that got you to that 7 in the first place. A 7 is pretty good. At this level you feel generally content. It’s OK, fine, acceptable, satisfactory. What you’ll find when you leave the comfort of your 7 and go chasing after that 10 is that your 7 was never a 7. It was only a 3. Java is the epitome of "7"-ness. It's a decently powerful language that you can do cool things in if you find a good rock and smash the right things in the right places. As a language, it's mediocre but so much work has been poured into it that nothing is too hard to accomplish in it... then again, very little is easy or fun in the way that Ocaml (once you get it) is easy and fun. Java appeals to business types because it seems like the low-risk choice. The libraries are going to be there, and even if it's hard to be better than a 7.0 programmer in it, mediocrities can easily get up to 3-4, which is seen as "good enough". You might be able to go from a 6 to a 7 in a week or a month, perhaps even a day with conscious effort. A few tweaks here and there, and you’ve got it. But to go from a 7 to an 8 might take a year or two. 7 doesn’t always connect with 8. You might have to take a path like 7-6-4-2-3-4-5-6-5-4-6-7-8 to get there. This is what switching out of the Java paradigm, into Ocaml or Haskell, is like. You have to work hard and learn new things before you get to a level of skill where you can be even a 5, much less an 8 or 9... but it's actually possible in those languages.

guard-of-terra 15y ago
If Java is 7, then clojure is your 9, and it runs on JVM.
- pavpanchekha 15y ago
  The nines and tens are the path, not the destination. It's foolish to argue that any one language represents perfection, or even close.
  - guard-of-terra 15y ago
    If we're talking about the path, then clojure is 11 probsbly, being kind of the thing with which the universe is crafted.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
forensic 15y ago
... and yet Steve Pavlina was a Windows developer. Do we have to quote cult leaders on Hacker News? Steve Pavlina is the guy who writes blog posts about winning blackjack through ESP. His wife is a professional psychic. He sells magic CDs for hundreds of dollars that will give you psychic powers when you listen to them in bed. There's no credibility to be found here.
- overgard 15y ago
  I'd rather we consider what's being said rather than who is saying it.
  - zedshaw 15y ago
    No, because failing to ignore the history of the person telling you something and their motivations is how you get slippery slope logic that leads to things like using Eugenics to validate killing people who are poor or mentally ill.
    - mncaudill 15y ago
      I see what you did there.
  - seanp2k 15y ago
    Overall source credibility should always be considered. It's a major point in overall media literacy.
  - joe_the_user 15y ago
    I generally am not concerned with who said what but whole "wind-up" of OP kind of hinged on this "1-7-8" conceit and Steve Pavlina as the authority documenting it.
  - forensic 15y ago
    The truth of a statement can be determined by two things: 1. If the person is an authority or expert on the topic being discussed. In this case, the person has credibility and it is smart to give them a level of trust. 2. If the person is providing a reference to some objective, public evidence that can be independently evaluated to determine if the statements are valuable. The post in question did not provide either #1 or #2. Steve Pavlina is popular because he's a good writer, not because his ideas are supported by evidence or because he has credibility or legitimate authority. With the general public, all it takes to be influential is good writing. e.g. Jesus Christ is popular. Hacker News should aim for a higher level of discourse: discourse based on verifiable facts, or based on credible authority. Not sophistry by well-spoken demagogues.
Periodic 15y ago
I'm reminded of the first time I tried out Ruby on Rails. I had done some PHP, Perl, C, and Java programming before that. I had worked on some medium sized projects, but in general anything larger than a few dozen files got so complicated it was hard to keep track of. Then I saw what a really good OO design was like. I learned what real separation of concerns and encapsulation could do. It was an epiphany that the programming I was doing wasn't nearly as good as I thought it was, despite everyone around me being proud of it. I quit that job do my best not to look back.
- cpt1138 15y ago
  What about the language you are using enforces real separation of concerns and encapsulation that Java doesn't have? Seems to me that those principals are not a quality of a language per se but of design principles that can be applied to any language (maybe some easier than others).
  - sunchild 15y ago
    Presumably, Periodic was referring to Rails' emphatically opinionated framework, which (under the right circumstances) can shine a light on at least one approach to SoC that may, in turn, lead to a deeper understanding of the underlying principles.
- ssmoot 15y ago
  That's weird because a lack of SoC is probably my biggest pet peeve with 99% of the Ruby code available, including the Rails source. Other than that, sure RoR can be a nice introduction to MVC. But Monorail was a much cleaner framework from an OOAD perspective. I won't even append "IMO" to that. :-)
- aagha 15y ago
  What does "I had done some...Java" mean? You used servlets to write a web app? With our without JSPs? When? That elham are sfo many frameworks out there that comparing RoR to (generic) Java seems nonsensical to me. Have you played with Stripes? Simple, efficient, fast, extensible--blows Struts out of the water, and is up and running in under five minutes.
nostrademons 15y ago
"This is what switching out of the Java paradigm, into Ocaml or Haskell, is like." If you try to do real, production programs in Haskell or Ocaml, you find that they have a lot of problems too. I've written some reasonably cool stuff in Haskell (like one of the top tutorials that people use to learn it). My teammate got his Ph.D under Simon Peyton Jones and did his doctoral thesis in Haskell. We were talking one day about what it'd be like to write real production systems in it. His strong opinion (and my weak opinion) was that it'd be hellish, because of certain misfeatures like lazyness or the hacked-up record system. All the people that complain about Java would merely find new things to complain about with Haskell, other ways in which the language prevents them from getting useful work done. Instead of whining about verbosity, they'd whine about space leaks. I find that people who are a 9 or 10 on the expertise scale usually know Haskell, but they don't program in Haskell. Because the causation works the other way. If you're a good programmer, you'll seek out other languages and learn them, because it'll make you a better programmer. But if you're a great programmer, you'll know when not to use stuff you've just learned, because it'll just make your life harder. Learning Haskell doesn't make you a great programmer, but great programmers have probably learned Haskell at some point in their path to greatness.
- fleitz 15y ago
  I've written a lot of code in F# and I have to agree that writing business software in a functional language has a little bit of a learning curve but once you figure out how it's done it's much easier.
  - dustingetz 15y ago
    please blog?
    - fleitz 15y ago
      Hacking on rails these days, probably won't go back to F# for a while.
- gnosis 15y ago

guard-of-terra 15y ago

If Java is 7, then clojure is your 9, and it runs on JVM.

pavpanchekha 15y ago
The nines and tens are the path, not the destination. It's foolish to argue that any one language represents perfection, or even close.
- guard-of-terra 15y ago
  If we're talking about the path, then clojure is 11 probsbly, being kind of the thing with which the universe is crafted.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

forensic 15y ago

... and yet Steve Pavlina was a Windows developer. Do we have to quote cult leaders on Hacker News? Steve Pavlina is the guy who writes blog posts about winning blackjack through ESP. His wife is a professional psychic. He sells magic CDs for hundreds of dollars that will give you psychic powers when you listen to them in bed. There's no credibility to be found here.

overgard 15y ago
I'd rather we consider what's being said rather than who is saying it.
- zedshaw 15y ago
  No, because failing to ignore the history of the person telling you something and their motivations is how you get slippery slope logic that leads to things like using Eugenics to validate killing people who are poor or mentally ill.
  - mncaudill 15y ago
    I see what you did there.
- seanp2k 15y ago
  Overall source credibility should always be considered. It's a major point in overall media literacy.
- joe_the_user 15y ago
  I generally am not concerned with who said what but whole "wind-up" of OP kind of hinged on this "1-7-8" conceit and Steve Pavlina as the authority documenting it.
- forensic 15y ago
  The truth of a statement can be determined by two things: 1. If the person is an authority or expert on the topic being discussed. In this case, the person has credibility and it is smart to give them a level of trust. 2. If the person is providing a reference to some objective, public evidence that can be independently evaluated to determine if the statements are valuable. The post in question did not provide either #1 or #2. Steve Pavlina is popular because he's a good writer, not because his ideas are supported by evidence or because he has credibility or legitimate authority. With the general public, all it takes to be influential is good writing. e.g. Jesus Christ is popular. Hacker News should aim for a higher level of discourse: discourse based on verifiable facts, or based on credible authority. Not sophistry by well-spoken demagogues.

Periodic 15y ago

I'm reminded of the first time I tried out Ruby on Rails. I had done some PHP, Perl, C, and Java programming before that. I had worked on some medium sized projects, but in general anything larger than a few dozen files got so complicated it was hard to keep track of. Then I saw what a really good OO design was like. I learned what real separation of concerns and encapsulation could do. It was an epiphany that the programming I was doing wasn't nearly as good as I thought it was, despite everyone around me being proud of it. I quit that job do my best not to look back.

cpt1138 15y ago
What about the language you are using enforces real separation of concerns and encapsulation that Java doesn't have? Seems to me that those principals are not a quality of a language per se but of design principles that can be applied to any language (maybe some easier than others).
- sunchild 15y ago
  Presumably, Periodic was referring to Rails' emphatically opinionated framework, which (under the right circumstances) can shine a light on at least one approach to SoC that may, in turn, lead to a deeper understanding of the underlying principles.
ssmoot 15y ago
That's weird because a lack of SoC is probably my biggest pet peeve with 99% of the Ruby code available, including the Rails source. Other than that, sure RoR can be a nice introduction to MVC. But Monorail was a much cleaner framework from an OOAD perspective. I won't even append "IMO" to that. :-)
aagha 15y ago
What does "I had done some...Java" mean? You used servlets to write a web app? With our without JSPs? When? That elham are sfo many frameworks out there that comparing RoR to (generic) Java seems nonsensical to me. Have you played with Stripes? Simple, efficient, fast, extensible--blows Struts out of the water, and is up and running in under five minutes.

nostrademons 15y ago

"This is what switching out of the Java paradigm, into Ocaml or Haskell, is like." If you try to do real, production programs in Haskell or Ocaml, you find that they have a lot of problems too. I've written some reasonably cool stuff in Haskell (like one of the top tutorials that people use to learn it). My teammate got his Ph.D under Simon Peyton Jones and did his doctoral thesis in Haskell. We were talking one day about what it'd be like to write real production systems in it. His strong opinion (and my weak opinion) was that it'd be hellish, because of certain misfeatures like lazyness or the hacked-up record system. All the people that complain about Java would merely find new things to complain about with Haskell, other ways in which the language prevents them from getting useful work done. Instead of whining about verbosity, they'd whine about space leaks. I find that people who are a 9 or 10 on the expertise scale usually know Haskell, but they don't program in Haskell. Because the causation works the other way. If you're a good programmer, you'll seek out other languages and learn them, because it'll make you a better programmer. But if you're a great programmer, you'll know when not to use stuff you've just learned, because it'll just make your life harder. Learning Haskell doesn't make you a great programmer, but great programmers have probably learned Haskell at some point in their path to greatness.

fleitz 15y ago
I've written a lot of code in F# and I have to agree that writing business software in a functional language has a little bit of a learning curve but once you figure out how it's done it's much easier.
- dustingetz 15y ago
  please blog?
  - fleitz 15y ago
    Hacking on rails these days, probably won't go back to F# for a while.
gnosis 15y ago