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Critizising the title is not exactly nitpicking. The title is important. And it’s misleading. I disagree that this article is well written. It is hard to ident

Critizising the title is not exactly nitpicking. The title is important. And it’s misleading. I disagree that this article is well written. It is hard to identify what is compared exactly, at least as someone not deeply familiar with the ruby ecosystem. The article doesn’t do a great job of explaining the caveats and limitations of the comparison either.

coldtea 3y ago
>Critizising the title is not exactly nitpicking. The title is important. Only if one doesn't bother to read the article. Else the title is just an insignificant detail, or, at worse, a redundant piece of promotional material attached to the article.
- starbugs 3y ago
  And how do you decide if you're going to read the article? Ah yes, the title. I guess we will always find someone who tries to word-wrangle their way out of an obvious fact. The title is the first thing you see. It's printed in a bigger font than the rest. Most people won't even read anything else. In short: It's important. It's not a detail. Hence it's not nitpicking when I criticize it.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >And how do you decide if you're going to read the article? Ah yes, the title. Nope: the subject. This is about Ruby and execution speed, for example. Then you open it and give it a quick cursory glance. Most articles have non-descriptive titles to begin with, or clickbait titles. The title could say any kind of non descriptive BS like "Ruby's new JIT rocks!" or "Ruby smoking C in benchmarks". That's even the case for "serious" media, like NYT. If you go by the title you're in for a bad experience.
    - starbugs 3y ago
      Exactly. This is why without the original title nobody who's not into Ruby would even consider reading it. And only a fraction of those people who are into Ruby and upvoted it would consider upvoting it. Thanks for confirming it.
      - coldtea 3y ago
        Well, it's not meant for people not into Ruby.
        starbugs 3y ago
        Well, maybe read the original title again: "Ruby Outperforms C: Breaking the Catch-22"
        coldtea 3y ago
        Still not meant for people not interested into Ruby.
        starbugs 3y ago
        Got it. The title of an article is a detail and this title in particular doesn't draw any attention from people interested in C or the claims made by performance comparisons between different types of programming languages in general. That's probably also the reason why the title was changed on HN after this criticism was made and the submission disappeared from the front page a short while after that.
        nirvdrum 3y ago
        I get your point, but it's a blog post by a Ruby & Rails core member, published on a Ruby-oriented blog named "Rails at Scale", with a particular audience in mind, and is written as a response to an ongoing discussion in the Ruby community. In context, I think the title is fine. But, for those without the context the title may be misleading. At no point is the goal to convince people to throw away C and switch to Ruby for everything.

coldtea 3y ago

>Critizising the title is not exactly nitpicking. The title is important. Only if one doesn't bother to read the article. Else the title is just an insignificant detail, or, at worse, a redundant piece of promotional material attached to the article.

starbugs 3y ago
And how do you decide if you're going to read the article? Ah yes, the title. I guess we will always find someone who tries to word-wrangle their way out of an obvious fact. The title is the first thing you see. It's printed in a bigger font than the rest. Most people won't even read anything else. In short: It's important. It's not a detail. Hence it's not nitpicking when I criticize it.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >And how do you decide if you're going to read the article? Ah yes, the title. Nope: the subject. This is about Ruby and execution speed, for example. Then you open it and give it a quick cursory glance. Most articles have non-descriptive titles to begin with, or clickbait titles. The title could say any kind of non descriptive BS like "Ruby's new JIT rocks!" or "Ruby smoking C in benchmarks". That's even the case for "serious" media, like NYT. If you go by the title you're in for a bad experience.
  - starbugs 3y ago
    Exactly. This is why without the original title nobody who's not into Ruby would even consider reading it. And only a fraction of those people who are into Ruby and upvoted it would consider upvoting it. Thanks for confirming it.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      Well, it's not meant for people not into Ruby.
      - starbugs 3y ago
        Well, maybe read the original title again: "Ruby Outperforms C: Breaking the Catch-22"
        coldtea 3y ago
        Still not meant for people not interested into Ruby.
        starbugs 3y ago
        Got it. The title of an article is a detail and this title in particular doesn't draw any attention from people interested in C or the claims made by performance comparisons between different types of programming languages in general. That's probably also the reason why the title was changed on HN after this criticism was made and the submission disappeared from the front page a short while after that.
        nirvdrum 3y ago
        I get your point, but it's a blog post by a Ruby & Rails core member, published on a Ruby-oriented blog named "Rails at Scale", with a particular audience in mind, and is written as a response to an ongoing discussion in the Ruby community. In context, I think the title is fine. But, for those without the context the title may be misleading. At no point is the goal to convince people to throw away C and switch to Ruby for everything.