3 ms·

> Why should this be changed? Is it broken? Is it something that 1 second on google can’t answer? Pretty sure every year there's thousands of unnecessary searc

by 2143 4y ago

> Why should this be changed? Is it broken? Is it something that 1 second on google can’t answer? Pretty sure every year there's thousands of unnecessary search requests for this nonsense. Programming languages are tools. Make it as easy and straightforward as possible so that its users can build whatever it is they were building with the least amount of friction. > There are two reasons this term will stay. It is a tip of the hat to the amount of PHP work that came out of Israel Funny because PHP — particularly theearlier versions — isn't exactly considered an example of good language design (though it has vastly improved recently). > but you google it once in your life and then you ‘forget’ about it. Negative. I had forgotten what it meant. All I remembered was that I've seen it years ago and was annoyed back then. > And if you can’t remember the meaning of something like that, I hardly doubt you’d be a decent programmer anyway. That's just, wrong on so many levels. Anyway, I'm just happy they didn't say anything like "people who screw up colons shouldn't be coding"

akiselev 4y ago
> "people who screw up colons shouldn't be coding" If you can’t get something as simple as a colonoscopy right, you shouldn’t be anywhere near a terminal.
porker 4y ago
> And if you can’t remember the meaning of something like that, I hardly doubt you’d be a decent programmer anyway. Ah, the elitest assholery that made PHP a wonderful place to be /s
- skrebbel 4y ago
  If seen PHP called a lot of things but “elitist” is new to me.
  - 9dev 4y ago
    Read through old-ish posts on their maintainer mailing lists. There’s so much snobbery, elitism, and straight-out hostility to anyone from the outside, it reads like 8chan. This has changed by now, but the PHP maintainer community before version 7 was a circle jerk of hyper anal trolls.
- cookie_monsta 4y ago
  > I hardly doubt you’d be a decent programmer anyway. I would like for somebody to hardly doubt that I was a decent programmer. Unfortunately most people belong to the "highly" faction
serial_dev 4y ago
To me, it feels like adding a booby trap in one of emergency rooms in the hospital. When nurses complain about the injuries and the inconvenience, you berate them because "if they can't remember that in room 4 there is a booby trap, are they really intelligent enough to be nurses?"
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  This exact argument was made about pilots. If they can't figure out <counter-intuitive nonsense design>, then they shouldn't be pilots! For a recent example, the MCAS design is nonsense, yet people were blaming the pilots, stating something along the lines of: "On page 837 paragraph 7, there's half a sentence that explains how to resolve the issue." Forgetting to mention that the cause of the issue was purposefully omitted, and that the issue of unexpected trim change typically has a familiar and resolvable cause, not one that physically overpowers pilots... repeatedly. With delays. With no warning signal. Even other pilots were blaming the dead pilots for making mistakes that were not humanly possible to avoid or recover from.
  - atoav 4y ago
    Why stop at bad design? The cause for that design decision had (as often) monetary/managment reasons. So the bad design decision resulted from a bad business decision, which was the result of the whole incentive structure within the company, which was the result of the way that corporation operates (has to operate?) within a capitalist environment. On another layer the regulators did not prevent the MCAS because they themselves have been influenced by economic incentives, lobbying and lack of expertise. In short: capitalism again. If we wanna live in a capitalist society that is driven by such incentives, we need to be aware that the huge resources and big incentives for corps to take shortcuts and prevent effective regulatory overssight need a powerful counterplayer that is capable of keeping these entities in check. How we go about that is a different thing, but anybody labouring under the illusion that a next MCAS could be prevented by market forces alone should go see a doctor.
    - tialaramex 4y ago
KronisLV 4y ago
> That's just, wrong on so many levels. Anyway, I'm just happy they didn't say anything like "people who screw up colons shouldn't be coding" A lot of those arguments read like they have a lack of empathy and desire to make things easier for new programmers who want to learn or use the language. To me, it comes across as if coming from a position of arrogance, especially the latter claim - a perspective that I've sadly have encountered often, with many people unapologetically being happy about their solutions or the status quo being being unapproachable or needlessly complex - be in regards to system design, code structure, or even how entire libraries (or languages) work. Then again, even people like Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds have been known to be difficult in certain regards. I'm not sure whether our industry seems to attract people who have strong feelings about certain things, or whether those beliefs are simply more apparent. Either way, you'll have to deal with that, either because of technologies that you need to use and don't have control over, or because of having to work on certain projects together with developers like that. Best you can do is probably be as nice as you can towards others yourself. Also, web archive link, in case the site is down (rate limited) for anyone else: https://web.archive.org/web/20221204044109/https://phil.tech/2013/wtf-is-t-paamayim-nekudotayim/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221204044109/https://phil.tech...
n3storm 4y ago
This remind me a discussion about making Wordpress natively compatible with Sqlite. Somebody put on the the table that Sqlite is using the rule of St. Benedict (adapted I would say) as they code of conduct and that should be a no-go for such development.

by 2143 4y ago

akiselev 4y ago

> "people who screw up colons shouldn't be coding" If you can’t get something as simple as a colonoscopy right, you shouldn’t be anywhere near a terminal.

porker 4y ago

> And if you can’t remember the meaning of something like that, I hardly doubt you’d be a decent programmer anyway. Ah, the elitest assholery that made PHP a wonderful place to be /s

skrebbel 4y ago
If seen PHP called a lot of things but “elitist” is new to me.
- 9dev 4y ago
  Read through old-ish posts on their maintainer mailing lists. There’s so much snobbery, elitism, and straight-out hostility to anyone from the outside, it reads like 8chan. This has changed by now, but the PHP maintainer community before version 7 was a circle jerk of hyper anal trolls.
cookie_monsta 4y ago
> I hardly doubt you’d be a decent programmer anyway. I would like for somebody to hardly doubt that I was a decent programmer. Unfortunately most people belong to the "highly" faction

serial_dev 4y ago

To me, it feels like adding a booby trap in one of emergency rooms in the hospital. When nurses complain about the injuries and the inconvenience, you berate them because "if they can't remember that in room 4 there is a booby trap, are they really intelligent enough to be nurses?"

jiggawatts 4y ago
This exact argument was made about pilots. If they can't figure out <counter-intuitive nonsense design>, then they shouldn't be pilots! For a recent example, the MCAS design is nonsense, yet people were blaming the pilots, stating something along the lines of: "On page 837 paragraph 7, there's half a sentence that explains how to resolve the issue." Forgetting to mention that the cause of the issue was purposefully omitted, and that the issue of unexpected trim change typically has a familiar and resolvable cause, not one that physically overpowers pilots... repeatedly. With delays. With no warning signal. Even other pilots were blaming the dead pilots for making mistakes that were not humanly possible to avoid or recover from.
- atoav 4y ago
  Why stop at bad design? The cause for that design decision had (as often) monetary/managment reasons. So the bad design decision resulted from a bad business decision, which was the result of the whole incentive structure within the company, which was the result of the way that corporation operates (has to operate?) within a capitalist environment. On another layer the regulators did not prevent the MCAS because they themselves have been influenced by economic incentives, lobbying and lack of expertise. In short: capitalism again. If we wanna live in a capitalist society that is driven by such incentives, we need to be aware that the huge resources and big incentives for corps to take shortcuts and prevent effective regulatory overssight need a powerful counterplayer that is capable of keeping these entities in check. How we go about that is a different thing, but anybody labouring under the illusion that a next MCAS could be prevented by market forces alone should go see a doctor.
  - tialaramex 4y ago

KronisLV 4y ago

> That's just, wrong on so many levels. Anyway, I'm just happy they didn't say anything like "people who screw up colons shouldn't be coding" A lot of those arguments read like they have a lack of empathy and desire to make things easier for new programmers who want to learn or use the language. To me, it comes across as if coming from a position of arrogance, especially the latter claim - a perspective that I've sadly have encountered often, with many people unapologetically being happy about their solutions or the status quo being being unapproachable or needlessly complex - be in regards to system design, code structure, or even how entire libraries (or languages) work. Then again, even people like Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds have been known to be difficult in certain regards. I'm not sure whether our industry seems to attract people who have strong feelings about certain things, or whether those beliefs are simply more apparent. Either way, you'll have to deal with that, either because of technologies that you need to use and don't have control over, or because of having to work on certain projects together with developers like that. Best you can do is probably be as nice as you can towards others yourself. Also, web archive link, in case the site is down (rate limited) for anyone else: https://web.archive.org/web/20221204044109/https://phil.tech/2013/wtf-is-t-paamayim-nekudotayim/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221204044109/https://phil.tech...

n3storm 4y ago

This remind me a discussion about making Wordpress natively compatible with Sqlite. Somebody put on the the table that Sqlite is using the rule of St. Benedict (adapted I would say) as they code of conduct and that should be a no-go for such development.