4 ms·

This article is very interesting. I recommend everyone who reads this to try and dissect what makes a wrong argument sound convincing. A ton of terrible argume

This article is very interesting. I recommend everyone who reads this to try and dissect what makes a wrong argument sound convincing. A ton of terrible arguments are made here: X is important so Y is not important. ABC is a sacred rule that must be followed without question and doing XYZ does not follow the sacred rule. Wrong thing is done to help dumb people so smart people shouldn't do wrong thing.

jonnycomputer 5y ago
Based on the comments thus far, I'd say that it wasn't very convincing.
- lanecwagner 5y ago
  maybe not anymore, now that we all use and love highlighting. but maybe back then?
  - kazinator 5y ago
    In 2007, every halfway viable programming editor or IDE had syntax highlighting, same as today.
chrismcb 5y ago
To me the flaw was "you shouldn't do X in the case of Y therefore you shouldn't do it in the case of Z" the assumption being that Y and Z are similar, but in reality they aren't.
mcv 5y ago
I'm not actually very convinced by the article, though I don't entirely disagree with it either; I've never been syntax highlighting's biggest fan, and never bothered to tweak it myself. But "the compiler checks it" doesn't mean I shouldn't care about it, and "it doesn't work in fiction" is just totally irrelevant. The only test is: does it work for you? For a long time, I thought it didn't do much for me, but recently I discovered that highlighting used and unused variables/functions differently helps me find typos, and clean up my code. Comments obviously should be a bit muted. And strings are nice. I don't care much about highlighting keywords, but it doesn't bother me either. I think highlighting the parameters of the function I'm in differently than the rest of my code would help me, but I don't think my IDE does that by default. Maybe it's time to start tweaking my code highlighting.

4 ms·

This article is very interesting. I recommend everyone who reads this to try and dissect what makes a wrong argument sound convincing. A ton of terrible argume

by quocanh 5y ago

jonnycomputer 5y ago
Based on the comments thus far, I'd say that it wasn't very convincing.
- lanecwagner 5y ago
  maybe not anymore, now that we all use and love highlighting. but maybe back then?
  - kazinator 5y ago
    In 2007, every halfway viable programming editor or IDE had syntax highlighting, same as today.
chrismcb 5y ago
To me the flaw was "you shouldn't do X in the case of Y therefore you shouldn't do it in the case of Z" the assumption being that Y and Z are similar, but in reality they aren't.
mcv 5y ago
I'm not actually very convinced by the article, though I don't entirely disagree with it either; I've never been syntax highlighting's biggest fan, and never bothered to tweak it myself. But "the compiler checks it" doesn't mean I shouldn't care about it, and "it doesn't work in fiction" is just totally irrelevant. The only test is: does it work for you? For a long time, I thought it didn't do much for me, but recently I discovered that highlighting used and unused variables/functions differently helps me find typos, and clean up my code. Comments obviously should be a bit muted. And strings are nice. I don't care much about highlighting keywords, but it doesn't bother me either. I think highlighting the parameters of the function I'm in differently than the rest of my code would help me, but I don't think my IDE does that by default. Maybe it's time to start tweaking my code highlighting.