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I don’t find comments that dismiss one type of technology over another without any reaons to be very interesting. Apparently there are two kinds of technology

I don’t find comments that dismiss one type of technology over another without any reaons to be very interesting. Apparently there are two kinds of technology that are discussed here: language technology and OS technology. Or at least that’s the two that they want to focus on. Yet you dismiss one of them as pretty much irrelevant.[1] Yet you can do the same for the OS technology, if this was about something that was implemented on OS Y: “It’s not interesting to me that this was developed on OS Y. The abstract techniques that they used are more interesting to me than the specific OS they used.” This would effectively communicate that either (1) the OS is irrelevant, or (2) the OS is uninteresting to you. (1) is doubtful (then threads like this would be irrelevant) and (2) is just an expression of your own proclivities and interests. It would seem obvious that developing certain things on certain OSes have tradeoffs. And likewise for programming languages. Unless you want to be consistent and subscribe to the ridiculously relativist idea that everything is the same; it’s just a matter of what you do with them. Complaining about evangelism without offering any kind of criticism of what is supposedly being evangelized betrays just as much bias as the supposed missionaries. [1] “The abstract software techniques they used to achieve certain properties is more substantial and generally applicable than the specific language they used to instantiate those properties”

CyberRabbi 5y ago
> Yet you can do the same for the OS technology, if this was about something that was implemented on OS Y: “It’s not interesting to me that this was developed on OS Y. The abstract techniques that they used are more interesting to me than the specific OS they used.” I would absolutely say that. OS evangelism is as uninteresting as language evangelism, at least in comparison to a discussion about abstract software techniques / concepts and their implications. > Complaining about evangelism without offering any kind of criticism of what is supposedly being evangelized betrays just as much bias as the supposed missionaries. I did offer clear and actionable criticism. Evangelism is less interesting than a talk based in general first principles. That’s my opinion and I think it’s a widely held one. I never accused the presenters of bias and if they are biased, I have absolutely no problem with that because all humans have biases. For the record, I am not biased against Rust but perhaps I am not sufficiently biased in favor of Rust to the extent that Rust evangelism would be interesting to me.

CyberRabbi 5y ago

> Yet you can do the same for the OS technology, if this was about something that was implemented on OS Y: “It’s not interesting to me that this was developed on OS Y. The abstract techniques that they used are more interesting to me than the specific OS they used.” I would absolutely say that. OS evangelism is as uninteresting as language evangelism, at least in comparison to a discussion about abstract software techniques / concepts and their implications. > Complaining about evangelism without offering any kind of criticism of what is supposedly being evangelized betrays just as much bias as the supposed missionaries. I did offer clear and actionable criticism. Evangelism is less interesting than a talk based in general first principles. That’s my opinion and I think it’s a widely held one. I never accused the presenters of bias and if they are biased, I have absolutely no problem with that because all humans have biases. For the record, I am not biased against Rust but perhaps I am not sufficiently biased in favor of Rust to the extent that Rust evangelism would be interesting to me.