4 ms·

HN's top-voted comment at this moment begins: "Why so much hate for loops?" The item cited as 'hate for loops' is an introduction to 'loopless' programming in J

HN's top-voted comment at this moment begins: "Why so much hate for loops?" The item cited as 'hate for loops' is an introduction to 'loopless' programming in J, a universally admired language developed by Iverson. Whether LINQ or SQL etc. are also examples of 'hate for loops' or not ... I'm done. For every web site there's a moment when user comments need to be declared 'not worth the pain of sifting through.' HN has crossed that threshold for me. [Edit: My point is that we are crossing a sort of event horizon. Short-sighted micro-kvetching is becoming the largest single focus of user comments, upvotes, etc. on this site. Perennial examples: one-indexing vs zero-indexing; OO 'vs' FP; whitespace. You can list more yourself.]

jedimastert 5y ago
> For every web site there's a moment when user comments need to be declared 'not worth reading.' HN has crossed that threshold for me. So what you're doing is the exact same thing, but for HM ITSELF? /j I don't think think the comment was unwarranted in this case, because the article makes no attempt to explain why what it says is a it admits is a building block of traditional programming is a bad idea. It just says "j does loops bad, do this instead"
throwawaygh 5y ago
> HN's top-voted comment... ...spawned a really interesting conversation on the PL design-tradeoffs of various special-purpose iteration/recursion schemes. > J, a universally admired language developed by Iverson. Even in hard-core PL communities that seems like a reach. Lots of PL courses exclude APL/J, which is a pretty strong empirical proof-point against universal (or even strong majority) admiration. Outside of PL enthusiast communities, array PLs sit somewhere between "niche" and "esoteric". I think there is a lot to admire in APL, J, et al. They clearly had far-reaching influence. But there's also a reason that the dominant reaction is closer to "um... heh" than admiration. There's no need to over-state the case here.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jessaustin 5y ago
This comment should reply to the comment about which it kvetches, instead of being a top-level comment.

jedimastert 5y ago

> For every web site there's a moment when user comments need to be declared 'not worth reading.' HN has crossed that threshold for me. So what you're doing is the exact same thing, but for HM ITSELF? /j I don't think think the comment was unwarranted in this case, because the article makes no attempt to explain why what it says is a it admits is a building block of traditional programming is a bad idea. It just says "j does loops bad, do this instead"

throwawaygh 5y ago

> HN's top-voted comment... ...spawned a really interesting conversation on the PL design-tradeoffs of various special-purpose iteration/recursion schemes. > J, a universally admired language developed by Iverson. Even in hard-core PL communities that seems like a reach. Lots of PL courses exclude APL/J, which is a pretty strong empirical proof-point against universal (or even strong majority) admiration. Outside of PL enthusiast communities, array PLs sit somewhere between "niche" and "esoteric". I think there is a lot to admire in APL, J, et al. They clearly had far-reaching influence. But there's also a reason that the dominant reaction is closer to "um... heh" than admiration. There's no need to over-state the case here.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jessaustin 5y ago

This comment should reply to the comment about which it kvetches, instead of being a top-level comment.