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My time on this Earth is sadly finite. In light of this, I cannot learn every language. I must employ heuristics to decide whether something is worth doing. One

My time on this Earth is sadly finite. In light of this, I cannot learn every language. I must employ heuristics to decide whether something is worth doing. One of those for programming languages is: "Do the people who make this seem like they have good ideas?" In this case, the answer was no. When I listened to the creators of Zig, the answer was yes. I don't think it's at all unfair to make people aware of this conclusion, especially when I am clear that it is not one reached from actual study of the language. It is a sign to the creator of the language that he should present it and his ideas surrounding it in a better way so as not to drive people off. If he cannot do this, then the ideas are likely bad and so not worth looking into. I'm judging the book by its cover, because that's what covers are for.

forrestthewoods 2y ago
Sorry, I think comments like your root post make the internet a strictly worse place. There is no one who has created anything for which there isn’t some detractor who has deemed the creator to have bad ideas or communicate in an unacceptable way. Literally every single HN post ever could have someone reply with “this person said an unrelated bad thing and therefore should be ignored”. Comments like yours simply aren’t helpful and make HN worse. IMHO.
- James_K 2y ago
  > Literally every single HN post ever could have someone reply with “this person said an unrelated bad thing and therefore should be ignored”. This is a deep mischaracterisation of my perspective. It is not that has said a singular unrelated thing, but that he has made a pattern of saying many bad related things, such as "I will not support convenient error propagation because you shouldn't propagate errors", or "OOP and FP are bad concepts practised by dogmatic people who don't know what they're doing". I think your issue here is one of trust. I have reached a conclusion based on what I've seen, and you don't trust that it's accurate. You think I'm being disingenuous in some way, cherry picking bad quotes or whatever. It's fine not to trust people, but you should actually look into the matter instead of just making a fuss. When you see someone giving their opinion on something and you don't like it, here are some more productive things you can do: ask for evidence, provide a counter argument (supported by evidence), or even simply express that you disagree (what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence). Telling someone "you shouldn't have said that" is the worst of these options.
  - forrestthewoods 2y ago
    Re-read your initial comment and my initial reply. You solely complained about a bad analogy and called the author totally clueless. Then I specifically called you out for not criticizing the language itself. I don't think you're being disingenuous at all. I think if you have complaints about the language you should express them directly. Attacking the author as a means to dismiss the language is lame. And if you're going to do that you should provide a lot more evidence than a vague, non-specific comment about a supposedly bad analogy. If you want to criticize the philosophy of the language (anti-OOP, amongst other things) that's great. But you didn't do that. Let me re-iterate: in the future you should avoid posts that attack the author rather than the idea, call someone totally clueless, and don't present actual evidence. It sounds like you have an opinion formed from a variety of factors. Next time I would recommend you criticize the language at face value. If you haven't spent enough time with the language because you've dismissed it based on a proxy heuristic then I would recommend simply not posting that comment on HN.
    - James_K 2y ago
      > Attacking the author as a means to dismiss the language is lame If this is your view, then my comment was not intended for you. > If you want to criticize the philosophy of the language that's great. I did not want to do that. I wanted to express the true sentiment that I am not going to use this language because I do not trust its creator. > I would recommend simply not posting that comment on HN > you should avoid posts that attack the author rather than the idea That is your opinion. With respect, I do not care and you make no strong case for it. Many people use my same heuristic. They are my target audience and they would like to know about stuff like this. Just because you don't care about some piece of information doesn't mean it should be suppressed. All you have said here is that I shouldn't express my opinions because you disagree with them.
      - forrestthewoods 2y ago
        I disrespectfully disagree and will leave it at that. Good luck.

forrestthewoods 2y ago

Sorry, I think comments like your root post make the internet a strictly worse place. There is no one who has created anything for which there isn’t some detractor who has deemed the creator to have bad ideas or communicate in an unacceptable way. Literally every single HN post ever could have someone reply with “this person said an unrelated bad thing and therefore should be ignored”. Comments like yours simply aren’t helpful and make HN worse. IMHO.

James_K 2y ago
> Literally every single HN post ever could have someone reply with “this person said an unrelated bad thing and therefore should be ignored”. This is a deep mischaracterisation of my perspective. It is not that has said a singular unrelated thing, but that he has made a pattern of saying many bad related things, such as "I will not support convenient error propagation because you shouldn't propagate errors", or "OOP and FP are bad concepts practised by dogmatic people who don't know what they're doing". I think your issue here is one of trust. I have reached a conclusion based on what I've seen, and you don't trust that it's accurate. You think I'm being disingenuous in some way, cherry picking bad quotes or whatever. It's fine not to trust people, but you should actually look into the matter instead of just making a fuss. When you see someone giving their opinion on something and you don't like it, here are some more productive things you can do: ask for evidence, provide a counter argument (supported by evidence), or even simply express that you disagree (what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence). Telling someone "you shouldn't have said that" is the worst of these options.
- forrestthewoods 2y ago
  Re-read your initial comment and my initial reply. You solely complained about a bad analogy and called the author totally clueless. Then I specifically called you out for not criticizing the language itself. I don't think you're being disingenuous at all. I think if you have complaints about the language you should express them directly. Attacking the author as a means to dismiss the language is lame. And if you're going to do that you should provide a lot more evidence than a vague, non-specific comment about a supposedly bad analogy. If you want to criticize the philosophy of the language (anti-OOP, amongst other things) that's great. But you didn't do that. Let me re-iterate: in the future you should avoid posts that attack the author rather than the idea, call someone totally clueless, and don't present actual evidence. It sounds like you have an opinion formed from a variety of factors. Next time I would recommend you criticize the language at face value. If you haven't spent enough time with the language because you've dismissed it based on a proxy heuristic then I would recommend simply not posting that comment on HN.
  - James_K 2y ago
    > Attacking the author as a means to dismiss the language is lame If this is your view, then my comment was not intended for you. > If you want to criticize the philosophy of the language that's great. I did not want to do that. I wanted to express the true sentiment that I am not going to use this language because I do not trust its creator. > I would recommend simply not posting that comment on HN > you should avoid posts that attack the author rather than the idea That is your opinion. With respect, I do not care and you make no strong case for it. Many people use my same heuristic. They are my target audience and they would like to know about stuff like this. Just because you don't care about some piece of information doesn't mean it should be suppressed. All you have said here is that I shouldn't express my opinions because you disagree with them.
    - forrestthewoods 2y ago
      I disrespectfully disagree and will leave it at that. Good luck.