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It's so incredible how two engineers can look at something like this and draw literally the opposite conclusion. Taste is certainly subjective... To me, this i

It's so incredible how two engineers can look at something like this and draw literally the opposite conclusion. Taste is certainly subjective... To me, this is largely an argument for TOML. I mean, > wishes = "I am fine" This is an array with one element???? > Even TOML's featured example proposes “the INI way” Obviously it is the TOML way too? Hence it being the featured example. That another way to express it doesn't change that... It's almost comical how much their arguments are convincing me that INI is a disaster. And yet they are, seemingly in all seriousness, truly trying to convince me that this is the way. What an odd field to be in.

deleted 3y ago
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Joker_vD 3y ago
> It's so incredible how two engineers can look at something like this and draw literally the opposite conclusion. Taste is certainly subjective... Well, in such cases it's likely because two engineers are actually expressing their tastes/beliefs, merely using the thing they look at as a running example. That also means that the running example, ironically, is actually mostly irrelevant to the topic: otherwise it wouldn't have been able to support two opposite conclusions. And in the field of philosophy this phenomenon is even more egregious: you can find e.g. one philosopher arguing that life is meaningless because it's finite, and another philosopher arguing that life has meaning because it's finite.
nayuki 3y ago
> It's so incredible how two engineers can look at something like this and draw literally the opposite conclusion. [...] It's almost comical how much their arguments are convincing me that INI is a disaster. And yet they are, seemingly in all seriousness, truly trying to convince me that this is the way. That pretty much sums up how I view arguments about metric vs. imperial measurement systems. Every feature of imperial that someone points out as an advantage is something I see as a disadvantage.
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  >That pretty much sums up how I view arguments about metric vs. imperial measurement systems. One argument I will make in favor of imperial: feet (when divided into inches) are easy to divide into thirds because it's base 12 instead of base 10. This makes a a lot of things (especially in construction, woodworking, and others) a lot easier. Of course it has a whole boatload of downsides to go along with it, but that's one real and tangible benefit to imperial over metric that I've experienced.
  - ziml77 3y ago
    Metric should have been base 12. You get more typical factors than base 10, and it's not an absurd deviation from base 10 (base 60 would allow for the same factors as both 12 and 10, but I doubt anyone would be happy to adopt that)
  - nayuki 3y ago
    That's exactly the kind of thinking that I'm alluding to. Okay, if base 12 is so great, why are gallons not divisible by 12? Why is our currency not divisible by 12? Why is a mile 1760 yards - what if you wanted to parcel a square mile into thirds on each side? Why is an inch partitioned into binary fractions? Why are pounds not divisible by 12? The imperial customs (it's hard to even call it a system) have no internal consistency. To add to the observation about lack of internal consistency: Metalworkers use decimal inches. Woodworkers use feet, inches, and binary fractions. Surveyors use decimal feet. Some people use decimal miles. You could argue that each of the aforementioned systems make sense on its own, but none of them interoperate. Seriously - you'll be baffled if you pick up a decimal foot measuring tape in real life (they exist). Metric doesn't have this problem because if someone is doing detailed work in millimetres, someone is planning a house's rooms in metres, and someone is organizing a town's land in kilometres, they can all work with each other by simply moving the decimal place and changing the prefix. Another problem is that you're presupposing that the products you interact with are designed in a whole number of feet, and then you subdivide from there. I don't see this as true at all; things come in all sizes like 2'5", how are you going to divide that into thirds?
jmholla 3y ago
> Obviously it is the TOML way too? Hence it being the featured example. That another way to express it doesn't change that... It's not even another way to express it. The example is a completely different data structure. The initial proposed "TOML way" is an array while the "INI way" is a table. The then corrected "TOML way" IS the equivalent table in TOML. It's a ridiculous strawman along with several other oddities where the author loves to give INI the benefit of its weirdness but then rails against TOML's. The author loves INI and refuses to understand why people wanted and needed TOML to fix its deficiencies. I'd love to tear this thing apart point-by-point, but I think it'd be more cathartic for me than useful to anyone else.
emodendroket 3y ago
Just yesterday a broadside against YAML was on the front page. I’m sure one could find them against JSON, XML, or any other possible choice.

deleted 3y ago

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Joker_vD 3y ago

> It's so incredible how two engineers can look at something like this and draw literally the opposite conclusion. Taste is certainly subjective... Well, in such cases it's likely because two engineers are actually expressing their tastes/beliefs, merely using the thing they look at as a running example. That also means that the running example, ironically, is actually mostly irrelevant to the topic: otherwise it wouldn't have been able to support two opposite conclusions. And in the field of philosophy this phenomenon is even more egregious: you can find e.g. one philosopher arguing that life is meaningless because it's finite, and another philosopher arguing that life has meaning because it's finite.

nayuki 3y ago

> It's so incredible how two engineers can look at something like this and draw literally the opposite conclusion. [...] It's almost comical how much their arguments are convincing me that INI is a disaster. And yet they are, seemingly in all seriousness, truly trying to convince me that this is the way. That pretty much sums up how I view arguments about metric vs. imperial measurement systems. Every feature of imperial that someone points out as an advantage is something I see as a disadvantage.

HideousKojima 3y ago
>That pretty much sums up how I view arguments about metric vs. imperial measurement systems. One argument I will make in favor of imperial: feet (when divided into inches) are easy to divide into thirds because it's base 12 instead of base 10. This makes a a lot of things (especially in construction, woodworking, and others) a lot easier. Of course it has a whole boatload of downsides to go along with it, but that's one real and tangible benefit to imperial over metric that I've experienced.
- ziml77 3y ago
  Metric should have been base 12. You get more typical factors than base 10, and it's not an absurd deviation from base 10 (base 60 would allow for the same factors as both 12 and 10, but I doubt anyone would be happy to adopt that)
- nayuki 3y ago
  That's exactly the kind of thinking that I'm alluding to. Okay, if base 12 is so great, why are gallons not divisible by 12? Why is our currency not divisible by 12? Why is a mile 1760 yards - what if you wanted to parcel a square mile into thirds on each side? Why is an inch partitioned into binary fractions? Why are pounds not divisible by 12? The imperial customs (it's hard to even call it a system) have no internal consistency. To add to the observation about lack of internal consistency: Metalworkers use decimal inches. Woodworkers use feet, inches, and binary fractions. Surveyors use decimal feet. Some people use decimal miles. You could argue that each of the aforementioned systems make sense on its own, but none of them interoperate. Seriously - you'll be baffled if you pick up a decimal foot measuring tape in real life (they exist). Metric doesn't have this problem because if someone is doing detailed work in millimetres, someone is planning a house's rooms in metres, and someone is organizing a town's land in kilometres, they can all work with each other by simply moving the decimal place and changing the prefix. Another problem is that you're presupposing that the products you interact with are designed in a whole number of feet, and then you subdivide from there. I don't see this as true at all; things come in all sizes like 2'5", how are you going to divide that into thirds?

jmholla 3y ago

> Obviously it is the TOML way too? Hence it being the featured example. That another way to express it doesn't change that... It's not even another way to express it. The example is a completely different data structure. The initial proposed "TOML way" is an array while the "INI way" is a table. The then corrected "TOML way" IS the equivalent table in TOML. It's a ridiculous strawman along with several other oddities where the author loves to give INI the benefit of its weirdness but then rails against TOML's. The author loves INI and refuses to understand why people wanted and needed TOML to fix its deficiencies. I'd love to tear this thing apart point-by-point, but I think it'd be more cathartic for me than useful to anyone else.

emodendroket 3y ago

Just yesterday a broadside against YAML was on the front page. I’m sure one could find them against JSON, XML, or any other possible choice.