4 ms·

I don’t know what you mean, and currently do not agree with the idea of parse tree size being a bad mentality or making it harder to grow, and I don’t feel like

by dahart 2y ago

I don’t know what you mean, and currently do not agree with the idea of parse tree size being a bad mentality or making it harder to grow, and I don’t feel like you’ve provided any objective evidence to back up that claim. Parse tree size seems like a better metric than terseness, for the reasons I and others have already mentioned, despite the fact that sometimes tight small code has some advantages that might be invisible if your only metric is AST size. (Neither parent nor I made such a claim, but your argument depends on that assumption.) K specifically is unreadable by most people, and somehow examples never seem to come with comments or error handling. Is it the best poster child for programming progress as a whole? I have my doubts, even though it might be very useful for some people in some situations. I would be willing to bet that Excel spreadsheets are running more of our economy than K code, likely by orders of magnitude. I’d also be willing to bet that COBOL exceeds K use by similar multiples. Business/economic use doesn’t seem like a very good metric for what you’re talking about.

xelxebar 2y ago
The original post I replied to made an explicit claim with zero evidentiary support, so your demands for rigor are a bit lopsided. But more to the point, I'm really not saying anything about which metric is better or whatnot. What does it even mean to be a "better metric" when we have no consensus on what criteria we're using for comparison? In effect, replies here effect to provide some criteria, but each is slightly different and somewhat begs the question, since said criteria can be easily chosen to support whatever conclusion you want. When the object level discussion (i.e. in this case, the comparison of code size metrics) is ill-defined, the only natural thing we can reach for are cached ideas, heuristics, memetic trends, etc. That is, the discussion essentially becomes an implicit sharing of which cultural ideas we consider salient and important. That is why I keep going on about culture and values in my previous replies. I'm not saying anything about ASTs vs. token count or whatever. I'm trying to say, "Hey, fellow devs. You know all the obvious ways that K and APL violate our sense of what good and proper code should look like? You know how they feel wrong? Well, actual experience by APL and K devs provides us evidence that we're potentially wrong and should give these languages more open-minded attention."
- dahart 2y ago
  All programmers think they have culture and values. Getting them to agree on what those are and to prioritize them the same is the hard part. Having an open mind is great, and if you’d said that from the start I totally would have agreed, but you didn’t, you dismissed the GP’s comment with relatively strong language as being very wrong headed on behalf of the entire community, and doubled down on that stance in your followup comment, without acknowledging (or maybe without even realizing) that the suggestion might ultimately align with your message, that you might be picking a fight with someone who agrees with you. I don’t feel like the top comment required any evidence, partly because the claim is nearly tautological and quite easy to agree with, and partly because it wasn’t shitting on someone specific or being mean. You made a much bolder and more antagonistic claim and called their message a “scourge” and framed your point of view about over-engineering in opposition to their comment (which seems like straw man and very presumptuous), so yes I think your argument does require some evidence if you’re going to do that. There’s a famous couple of comments by @arcfide defending the extremely terse K/APL style of coding, and it really makes a strong case. From what I can tell, this might be what you’re trying to say. I would just say to take note that he does not try to make the poster of the comment he replied to feel wrong headed, he focuses on the positives of his own approach, and he does not project his style on everyone else or make any claims that everyone should use it, he focuses on why it works for him. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13571159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13571159
  - xelxebar 2y ago
    First off, thanks for continuing this exchange with me. Text communication between strangers is fraught with miscommunication perils left and right, so hanging in there is a really nice gesture. Cheers. It's so weird, though. Everything disagreeable you point out with my comments, I kind of feel like is true of GP's comment. It casually dismisses the content of OP, injecting a strawman about a "metrics". Wore still, it just touts normative and relatively mainstream opinions about better vs. worse thing, without even offering up a hint as to what these supposed metrics are supposed to be measuring. That's a dick move, IMHO, and a common one at that in these array language posts. I think we as a community do ourselves a disservice by allowing ourselves to propagate such echo chambers. Which is all a pretty different message than @arcfide (eloquently) attempts. Please note that nowhere do I attack GP or GP's comment specifically. If you're inclined to reread my comments, please note that I really do try hard to delineate ideas and cultural trends as the target. Heck, I even own up to being part of those trends and culture. Where you have thought I say "you", try rereading it as "we". Anyway, cheers!

by dahart 2y ago

xelxebar 2y ago

The original post I replied to made an explicit claim with zero evidentiary support, so your demands for rigor are a bit lopsided. But more to the point, I'm really not saying anything about which metric is better or whatnot. What does it even mean to be a "better metric" when we have no consensus on what criteria we're using for comparison? In effect, replies here effect to provide some criteria, but each is slightly different and somewhat begs the question, since said criteria can be easily chosen to support whatever conclusion you want. When the object level discussion (i.e. in this case, the comparison of code size metrics) is ill-defined, the only natural thing we can reach for are cached ideas, heuristics, memetic trends, etc. That is, the discussion essentially becomes an implicit sharing of which cultural ideas we consider salient and important. That is why I keep going on about culture and values in my previous replies. I'm not saying anything about ASTs vs. token count or whatever. I'm trying to say, "Hey, fellow devs. You know all the obvious ways that K and APL violate our sense of what good and proper code should look like? You know how they feel wrong? Well, actual experience by APL and K devs provides us evidence that we're potentially wrong and should give these languages more open-minded attention."

dahart 2y ago
All programmers think they have culture and values. Getting them to agree on what those are and to prioritize them the same is the hard part. Having an open mind is great, and if you’d said that from the start I totally would have agreed, but you didn’t, you dismissed the GP’s comment with relatively strong language as being very wrong headed on behalf of the entire community, and doubled down on that stance in your followup comment, without acknowledging (or maybe without even realizing) that the suggestion might ultimately align with your message, that you might be picking a fight with someone who agrees with you. I don’t feel like the top comment required any evidence, partly because the claim is nearly tautological and quite easy to agree with, and partly because it wasn’t shitting on someone specific or being mean. You made a much bolder and more antagonistic claim and called their message a “scourge” and framed your point of view about over-engineering in opposition to their comment (which seems like straw man and very presumptuous), so yes I think your argument does require some evidence if you’re going to do that. There’s a famous couple of comments by @arcfide defending the extremely terse K/APL style of coding, and it really makes a strong case. From what I can tell, this might be what you’re trying to say. I would just say to take note that he does not try to make the poster of the comment he replied to feel wrong headed, he focuses on the positives of his own approach, and he does not project his style on everyone else or make any claims that everyone should use it, he focuses on why it works for him. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13571159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13571159
- xelxebar 2y ago
  First off, thanks for continuing this exchange with me. Text communication between strangers is fraught with miscommunication perils left and right, so hanging in there is a really nice gesture. Cheers. It's so weird, though. Everything disagreeable you point out with my comments, I kind of feel like is true of GP's comment. It casually dismisses the content of OP, injecting a strawman about a "metrics". Wore still, it just touts normative and relatively mainstream opinions about better vs. worse thing, without even offering up a hint as to what these supposed metrics are supposed to be measuring. That's a dick move, IMHO, and a common one at that in these array language posts. I think we as a community do ourselves a disservice by allowing ourselves to propagate such echo chambers. Which is all a pretty different message than @arcfide (eloquently) attempts. Please note that nowhere do I attack GP or GP's comment specifically. If you're inclined to reread my comments, please note that I really do try hard to delineate ideas and cultural trends as the target. Heck, I even own up to being part of those trends and culture. Where you have thought I say "you", try rereading it as "we". Anyway, cheers!