4 ms·

If you look in the past history of language features that are being added or might be added (e.g. generics) you can find a whole lot of past explanation of why

If you look in the past history of language features that are being added or might be added (e.g. generics) you can find a whole lot of past explanation of why the language doesn't need those features in the name of simplicity and why the reader just doesn't understand the brilliance of Rob Pike. Reminds me a lot of the Mac forums where every poor feature in an Apple product is explained with a "let me help you understand why you're thinking about it wrong" kind of answer -- up until Apple fixes the bug / implements the feature to the applause of the same people who were talking down why it would ever need to get fixed. And just the tone of the article here turns me off in the way it begins with a bunch of quotes and philosophy. I actually agree entirely with “Don't communicate by sharing memory. Share memory by communicating" but I figured that out myself in probably 2003 writing crappy perl scripts that utilized parallelism but I wanted to aggressively avoid all the concurrency pitfalls. Actor models and Erlang later made completely intuitive sense to me. The principle is entirely correct, but its fucking weird that a programming language needs to have a list of "proverbs".

throwaway894345 5y ago
> If you look in the past history of language features that are being added or might be added (e.g. generics) you can find a whole lot of past explanation of why the language doesn't need those features in the name of simplicity and why the reader just doesn't understand the brilliance of Rob Pike. Isn't this just nutpicking[0]? You have that with every language. I can criticize C++ on proggit right now and 3 or 4 people will respond "C++ has every language feature, just use the ones you want/like/etc and ignore the others, your problems are invalid!". Similarly, on an OCaml forum I can find a dozen people who tell me if Jane Street hasn't run into my problem before and solved it, then it's not a real problem and I'm dumb for trying to do it. I can post here or on r/rust (or proggit) and people will tell me that Rust is strictly faster/easier to develop with than any GC language because in the worst case you can always throw `Rc<T>` on everything. I can post on r/python about how hard it is to optimize Python and people will tell me I'm dumb and I can just use multiprocessing, rewrite the slow bits in C/Cython/etc, use numpy/pandas/etc. I can merely register for an account on a Java forum and be berated for my low intelligence. :) > The principle is entirely correct, but its fucking weird that a programming language needs to have a list of "proverbs". I don't feel as strongly as you do, but I agree that proverbs and analogies are pretty low quality and invite more confusion than they address. Probably only a rung above analogies and a rung below quotations. [0]: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nutpicking https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nutpicking
- lamontcg 5y ago
  > Isn't this just nutpicking[0]? From that article, I'm specifically addressing "Does this movement _promote_ crazies?" I'd argue the sloganeering attracts them like moths to a flame.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I don't know what is meant by "sloganeering" but if writing a full, nuanced article (e.g., TFA) fits the bill then I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion... In other words, I agree that "sloganeering" attracts the nuts, but I'm not sure I agree that TFA is sloganeering.
    - lamontcg 5y ago
      proverbs == sloganeering the focus on "simplicity" also is both a good thing, and a great way to shut down any discussion.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        > proverbs == sloganeering If the TFA amounted to "don't communicate by sharing data; share data by communicating <mic drop>" then yeah, I would be on your side, but the author went to the trouble of writing a 4K word essay to support his points. That you and others reduce it to mere slogans isn't a valid criticism of TFA IMHO. To your point, there are actual people in and outside of the Go community who do this kind of lazy argumentation. For example, someone upthread said (and I'm hardly paraphrasing), "Hoare called nullable pointers a billion dollar mistake and Go has nullable pointers so... <mic drop>". > the focus on "simplicity" also is both a good thing, and a great way to shut down any discussion. Pretty sure you could levy the same criticism against the Java folks for "configurability" or the C++ folks for "performance/control" and the Haskell folks for "type safety". It still sounds like you're nutpicking rather than observing something unique to the Go community.
Zababa 5y ago
I don't think generics are a good example, as from what I understand their stance was "We haven't find a good way to put them in Go, but we understand that you might want them. We'll try some things and see which fits with Go the best.". That got warped to "you don't need generics anyways" by some overly zealous people. Maybe a better example would be the type system, with Rob Pike saying something about taxonomy being boring?
AmpsterMan 5y ago
I myself like the "proverbs". It's short, simple ways that get me to understand what frame of mind I should be in when writing or reading a particular language.

throwaway894345 5y ago

> If you look in the past history of language features that are being added or might be added (e.g. generics) you can find a whole lot of past explanation of why the language doesn't need those features in the name of simplicity and why the reader just doesn't understand the brilliance of Rob Pike. Isn't this just nutpicking[0]? You have that with every language. I can criticize C++ on proggit right now and 3 or 4 people will respond "C++ has every language feature, just use the ones you want/like/etc and ignore the others, your problems are invalid!". Similarly, on an OCaml forum I can find a dozen people who tell me if Jane Street hasn't run into my problem before and solved it, then it's not a real problem and I'm dumb for trying to do it. I can post here or on r/rust (or proggit) and people will tell me that Rust is strictly faster/easier to develop with than any GC language because in the worst case you can always throw `Rc<T>` on everything. I can post on r/python about how hard it is to optimize Python and people will tell me I'm dumb and I can just use multiprocessing, rewrite the slow bits in C/Cython/etc, use numpy/pandas/etc. I can merely register for an account on a Java forum and be berated for my low intelligence. :) > The principle is entirely correct, but its fucking weird that a programming language needs to have a list of "proverbs". I don't feel as strongly as you do, but I agree that proverbs and analogies are pretty low quality and invite more confusion than they address. Probably only a rung above analogies and a rung below quotations. [0]: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nutpicking https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nutpicking

lamontcg 5y ago
> Isn't this just nutpicking[0]? From that article, I'm specifically addressing "Does this movement _promote_ crazies?" I'd argue the sloganeering attracts them like moths to a flame.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I don't know what is meant by "sloganeering" but if writing a full, nuanced article (e.g., TFA) fits the bill then I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion... In other words, I agree that "sloganeering" attracts the nuts, but I'm not sure I agree that TFA is sloganeering.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    proverbs == sloganeering the focus on "simplicity" also is both a good thing, and a great way to shut down any discussion.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      > proverbs == sloganeering If the TFA amounted to "don't communicate by sharing data; share data by communicating <mic drop>" then yeah, I would be on your side, but the author went to the trouble of writing a 4K word essay to support his points. That you and others reduce it to mere slogans isn't a valid criticism of TFA IMHO. To your point, there are actual people in and outside of the Go community who do this kind of lazy argumentation. For example, someone upthread said (and I'm hardly paraphrasing), "Hoare called nullable pointers a billion dollar mistake and Go has nullable pointers so... <mic drop>". > the focus on "simplicity" also is both a good thing, and a great way to shut down any discussion. Pretty sure you could levy the same criticism against the Java folks for "configurability" or the C++ folks for "performance/control" and the Haskell folks for "type safety". It still sounds like you're nutpicking rather than observing something unique to the Go community.

Zababa 5y ago

I don't think generics are a good example, as from what I understand their stance was "We haven't find a good way to put them in Go, but we understand that you might want them. We'll try some things and see which fits with Go the best.". That got warped to "you don't need generics anyways" by some overly zealous people. Maybe a better example would be the type system, with Rob Pike saying something about taxonomy being boring?

AmpsterMan 5y ago

I myself like the "proverbs". It's short, simple ways that get me to understand what frame of mind I should be in when writing or reading a particular language.