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Not everything is worth learning for everyone, especially when it's just something arbitrary people need to remember. If I invent a crazy unit system for measu

by xiaq 5y ago

Not everything is worth learning for everyone, especially when it's just something arbitrary people need to remember. If I invent a crazy unit system for measuring distances, where a "finger" is 8.3 centimeters and a "storey" is 246 centimetres and start using it in my writing, can I really blame others for "anti-intellectualism" when they refuse to learn my arbitrary new unit system? The problem with operator precedence is just that - any operator precedence rule is an arbitrary convention. I'm not saying that conventions are never worth learning, but it depends on (1) whether such convention is already well understood, and (2) whether the benefit of such conventions outweigh the trouble of requiring everyone to learn it. The precedence between * and + clears both criteria: most people have learned during school, and it's quite common to use both * and + in the same expression that defining that * binds tighter than + can save a lot of parentheses. On the other hand, combination of + and | are rare enough that the benefit of such conventions doesn't outweigh the confusion it could cause.

userbinator 5y ago
We're talking about a language you're going to be using almost every day, and for a lot of us here, presumably get paid for using. Those working in other industries have a lot of other things to memorise too. From that perspective, refusing to learn is definitely anti-intellectualism. To get good at anything you need to realise that you need to expend effort, and not just walk away at the first sign of difficulty thinking it's "too hard". On the other hand, combination of + and | are rare enough that the benefit of such conventions doesn't outweigh the confusion it could cause. Maybe for you it is, but for others it isn't. I suspect a lot of this "refusal to learn" sentiment is actually driven by management attempting to turn developers into easily replaceable, expendable "resources". From that perspective, lower-common-denominator dumbing-down barely-literate workers is their goal, and so we should definitely strive to fight against that and the degradation of our craft.

by xiaq 5y ago

userbinator 5y ago

We're talking about a language you're going to be using almost every day, and for a lot of us here, presumably get paid for using. Those working in other industries have a lot of other things to memorise too. From that perspective, refusing to learn is definitely anti-intellectualism. To get good at anything you need to realise that you need to expend effort, and not just walk away at the first sign of difficulty thinking it's "too hard". On the other hand, combination of + and | are rare enough that the benefit of such conventions doesn't outweigh the confusion it could cause. Maybe for you it is, but for others it isn't. I suspect a lot of this "refusal to learn" sentiment is actually driven by management attempting to turn developers into easily replaceable, expendable "resources". From that perspective, lower-common-denominator dumbing-down barely-literate workers is their goal, and so we should definitely strive to fight against that and the degradation of our craft.