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What? GP's response is terse but not impolite, and explaining what an abbreviation means is a far cry from "smacking people with tribal knowledge", it's just t

What? GP's response is terse but not impolite, and explaining what an abbreviation means is a far cry from "smacking people with tribal knowledge", it's just table stakes explanation in a field which requires precision. The only reason modern computing got where it is today is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If we go back and re-litigate every naming decision of the past several decades just to make newcomers feel welcome, all progress will slow as we collectively devolve into continuous bikeshedding.

hinkley 6y ago
I'm talking about the name GenServer, not brobinson's response. There is the corollary: If we have not seen farther, it is because giants were standing on our toes. There's a huge degree of cognitive dissonance on these issues. Just because something had a reason in the past doesn't mean we have to keep doing it forever. Also "nobody understands" why people keep re-inventing wheels. It's not all hubris, at least not all the time. It's also declaring open season on those past compromises, especially the ones people bump into immediately. Especially the ones the current maintainers immediately get defensive about. Technology dies for a lot of reasons, but the apologists never seem to grasp that the apologies are a stopgap. They explain the pain, they don't cure it. Believe it or not, I'm pro-Elixir. It's just that as I learn any new technology, I start filling out proverbial bingo card boxes for the things I can predict the next person will complain about. Is that a bit cynical? It could be, but it also serves as my todo list for when someone makes an offhand comment about how you really don't have to do this dumb thing, you could use this library that does it for you. Now my coworkers either don't have to worry about that or I have a suggestion when they do. Turns out when people are in pain, they appreciate sympathy a lot more than they appreciate being gaslit about how it's just their poor sense of history. Their blatantly implied selfishness. GenServer could use a new name. I think we forget sometimes that you can rename old things by giving them a second, better name and phasing out the old one. I don't think there's anything seditious in that statement.
- pmontra 6y ago
  I've been using Elixir for 4 years, it pays my bills and I generally like it. GenServer could be a misleading name (it never occurred to me) but the real mess is the bag of handle this / handle that function names. They follow the conventions of Erlang [1] but Elixir's developers could have cast some syntactic sugar on top of it. The real name of those functions is in their first argument. handle_* is mostly noise. [1] https://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html https://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html
  - supernintendo 6y ago
    Syntactic sugar is of course another form of abstraction and so you have to balance developer ergonomics with that added complexity. As you point out, Elixir's `GenServer` is a fairly simple wrapper module over Erlang's own `gen_server`. As new versions of OTP are released, the maintainers of the Elixir language must also update their own abstractions over those underlying Erlang libraries. It also creates a niche disparity between Erlang and Elixir which some Erlang developers might find superfluous. Coming from Erlang, it's easy to appreciate the syntax of Elixir even if it means getting over some old habits. Perhaps changing the names of foundational parts of the standard library would be less appreciated by those already familiar with OTP, and feel as if the mental overhead is being shifted to those developers rather than simply being ameliorated for developers who are new to the platform. Designing a programming language is hard, especially when building on top of a 35 year old language like Erlang. As is often the case: if engineers could change the past without breaking everything in the present, we would have already done it. :)
    - pmontra 5y ago
      They did the right thing if their goal was to move Erlang developers to Elixir. Not so much if they aimed to onboard Java or C++ developers. If they did, GenServer had to look like a Class like and they would use { } instead of do end. Strangely it seems that they aimed to Ruby developers (like me). That's why they picked do end and similar names for modules and functions. But Ruby developers wouldn't mind a GenServer looking like a class with proper function names instead of atoms in argument lists.
  - 6y ago
- dasil003 6y ago
  I am not very deep on Elixir, but I have heard of some substantive complaints about GenServer as a specific implementation and the cultural effects of the community say "just use GenServer" which shuts down discourse around why it might not be appropriate or at least optimal for all the cases it's recommended. We should absolutely have those discussions. I'm just not sure how many problems are solved by picking a better name.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    I think the community typically says "don't use genserver" more than "just use genserver"
intergalplan 6y ago
FWIW I thought the response was entirely fine and it wouldn't have occurred me to take offense at it. (I actually googled what "gen" in "GenServer" was supposed to mean before posting, because I couldn't remember but knew it wasn't "generate", and couldn't find an answer, including in the docs for GenServer) [EDIT] to clarify, I failed to find the answer in any of the Elixir docs for GenServer. Evidently I should have looked at Erlang.
- dnautics 6y ago
  Version 1.0.4, first paragraph: https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/1.0.4/GenServer.html#content https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/1.0.4/GenServer.html#content `The advantage of using a generic server process (GenServer)` current release (1.11.4), first paragraph; https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/1.11.4/GenServer.html#content https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/1.11.4/GenServer.html#content `The advantage of using a generic server process (GenServer)`
  - intergalplan 6y ago
    TIL: ignore elixir-lang.org, go to hexdocs.
    - dnautics 6y ago
      Elixir-lang.org > docs > elixir takes you straight to hexdocs.

hinkley 6y ago

I'm talking about the name GenServer, not brobinson's response. There is the corollary: If we have not seen farther, it is because giants were standing on our toes. There's a huge degree of cognitive dissonance on these issues. Just because something had a reason in the past doesn't mean we have to keep doing it forever. Also "nobody understands" why people keep re-inventing wheels. It's not all hubris, at least not all the time. It's also declaring open season on those past compromises, especially the ones people bump into immediately. Especially the ones the current maintainers immediately get defensive about. Technology dies for a lot of reasons, but the apologists never seem to grasp that the apologies are a stopgap. They explain the pain, they don't cure it. Believe it or not, I'm pro-Elixir. It's just that as I learn any new technology, I start filling out proverbial bingo card boxes for the things I can predict the next person will complain about. Is that a bit cynical? It could be, but it also serves as my todo list for when someone makes an offhand comment about how you really don't have to do this dumb thing, you could use this library that does it for you. Now my coworkers either don't have to worry about that or I have a suggestion when they do. Turns out when people are in pain, they appreciate sympathy a lot more than they appreciate being gaslit about how it's just their poor sense of history. Their blatantly implied selfishness. GenServer could use a new name. I think we forget sometimes that you can rename old things by giving them a second, better name and phasing out the old one. I don't think there's anything seditious in that statement.

pmontra 6y ago
I've been using Elixir for 4 years, it pays my bills and I generally like it. GenServer could be a misleading name (it never occurred to me) but the real mess is the bag of handle this / handle that function names. They follow the conventions of Erlang [1] but Elixir's developers could have cast some syntactic sugar on top of it. The real name of those functions is in their first argument. handle_* is mostly noise. [1] https://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html https://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html
- supernintendo 6y ago
  Syntactic sugar is of course another form of abstraction and so you have to balance developer ergonomics with that added complexity. As you point out, Elixir's `GenServer` is a fairly simple wrapper module over Erlang's own `gen_server`. As new versions of OTP are released, the maintainers of the Elixir language must also update their own abstractions over those underlying Erlang libraries. It also creates a niche disparity between Erlang and Elixir which some Erlang developers might find superfluous. Coming from Erlang, it's easy to appreciate the syntax of Elixir even if it means getting over some old habits. Perhaps changing the names of foundational parts of the standard library would be less appreciated by those already familiar with OTP, and feel as if the mental overhead is being shifted to those developers rather than simply being ameliorated for developers who are new to the platform. Designing a programming language is hard, especially when building on top of a 35 year old language like Erlang. As is often the case: if engineers could change the past without breaking everything in the present, we would have already done it. :)
  - pmontra 5y ago
    They did the right thing if their goal was to move Erlang developers to Elixir. Not so much if they aimed to onboard Java or C++ developers. If they did, GenServer had to look like a Class like and they would use { } instead of do end. Strangely it seems that they aimed to Ruby developers (like me). That's why they picked do end and similar names for modules and functions. But Ruby developers wouldn't mind a GenServer looking like a class with proper function names instead of atoms in argument lists.
- 6y ago
dasil003 6y ago
I am not very deep on Elixir, but I have heard of some substantive complaints about GenServer as a specific implementation and the cultural effects of the community say "just use GenServer" which shuts down discourse around why it might not be appropriate or at least optimal for all the cases it's recommended. We should absolutely have those discussions. I'm just not sure how many problems are solved by picking a better name.
- dnautics 6y ago
  I think the community typically says "don't use genserver" more than "just use genserver"

intergalplan 6y ago

FWIW I thought the response was entirely fine and it wouldn't have occurred me to take offense at it. (I actually googled what "gen" in "GenServer" was supposed to mean before posting, because I couldn't remember but knew it wasn't "generate", and couldn't find an answer, including in the docs for GenServer) [EDIT] to clarify, I failed to find the answer in any of the Elixir docs for GenServer. Evidently I should have looked at Erlang.

dnautics 6y ago
Version 1.0.4, first paragraph: https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/1.0.4/GenServer.html#content https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/1.0.4/GenServer.html#content `The advantage of using a generic server process (GenServer)` current release (1.11.4), first paragraph; https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/1.11.4/GenServer.html#content https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/1.11.4/GenServer.html#content `The advantage of using a generic server process (GenServer)`
- intergalplan 6y ago
  TIL: ignore elixir-lang.org, go to hexdocs.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    Elixir-lang.org > docs > elixir takes you straight to hexdocs.