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As time goes on, my bafflement at our collective need to swear allegiance to our tools is turning into bewilderment. Our tools have objective, technical merits
by fusiongyro 14y ago
As time goes on, my bafflement at our collective need to swear allegiance to our tools is turning into bewilderment. Our tools have objective, technical merits and flaws, but our love and hate for them is subjective and mostly useless. Cargo cult behavior is the real problem, and the endless bickering and correcting that articles like Joe's and this one contain only serve to perpetuate it.
- cdmckay 14y agoI don't think the author was loving or hating OO, he was just pointing out the Joe Armstrong's points weren't very well argued. It's not bickering, it's discussion, and it helps people to understand the paradigms better.
- pfraze 14y agoThis isn't pointless. If you have good points, I want to hear them, at least so I know the reasons to look at other approaches.
- zzzeek 14y agoif you've ever had a job where your manager insisted that you must use technology XYZ, or that you were not allowed to use technology QPR, that's why people defend/attack approaches. nobody wants the industry to shift to a technology they find personally distasteful, lest you now have to base your career around it.
- rsaarelm 14y agoProgramming languages aren't just tools like hammers, they're sometimes also tools like railroads and AC mains power supplies. There you will be in a world of hurt if you want to pick different rail distances and voltages for each project. In programming, if you lose in the popularity politics badly enough, your tool will die. Just ask the Dolphin SmallTalk or Lisp Machine programmers.
- Ralith 14y agoThere are plenty of happy Lisp programmers and healthy tools for them around today. A rapidly increasing number, even, thanks to the likes of Clojure and maturing free CL implementations and ecosystems.
- rsaarelm 14y agoThere aren't many happy Symbolics Lisp Machine programmers around, though.
- wonderzombie 14y agoOne man's bickering is another's thoughtful and substantive discussion about our craft. :)