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The insulting tone is well justified. No! No! A thousand times No! You can make the exact same point in a way that doesn't smell of the condescending dick-wav

The insulting tone is well justified. No! No! A thousand times No! You can make the exact same point in a way that doesn't smell of the condescending dick-waving and "laughing people out of the room" that debases the level of discourse. I think that HN can and should be a more civil community than Linux kernel programmers. Here, let me take a stab at it: "In my experience with systems and kernel development, there are some scenarios where working with a higher level language than C simply isn't possible. This sure looks like one of those scenarios to me. If the manager in this example is mandating that it be written in C, it could be that the manager knows this from painful experience."

heretohelp 14y ago
I don't tell my lawyer, my accountant, or my doctor how to do their job. I'll get a second opinion where prudent, but other than that, I don't assume I know more than somebody who's spent a good chunk of their life specializing into that field. Extend the same professional courtesy to your fellow programmers who specialized in a different field than you. Get a second opinion if you like. But stop spreading your ignorance. I have about as much patience for mollycoddling your ego as a doctor would for Jenny McCarthy telling people how dangerous and pointless vaccines are.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  I totally agree with that. I respect people who know more than I do and I don't tell any specialist how to do their job. But I sure as hell don't like it if a doctor or lawyer or accountant rolls their eyes at me and speaks to me in a dismissive or condescending tone because I'm trying to have an informed opinion even though I don't have the same degree of expertise that they have. Here's an example: Me: "I've done some research and I think I should get a Roth IRA..." Accountant A: "Roth? Seriously? Sigh... You obviously don't know a damn thing about tax planning. Good thing I'm here to save your sorry ass. You need a traditional IRA" -or- Accountant B: "Actually, in this case, a traditional IRA would make a lot more sense than a Roth IRA. It's a common misunderstanding." Technically, they are both on the same page, but tonally, the difference is huge. Our industry has too many people who act like Accountant A.
huhtenberg 14y ago
You are missing the point. Condescending dick-waving is there to discourage original poster from making half-assed assertive comments in the future. I understand that you don't like it, but it is the most efficient way to carry the point across. > Here, let me take a stab at it: Nope. Wishy-washy, excuse me this, excuse me that, I'm pretty certain to a degree that I might be right if you don't mind me saying. Not discouraging enough. If you want another justification for the tone, let me tell you that I would've not hesitate to say the exact same thing in person, which is the criteria for wording HN comments as per pg's original guidelines.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  I get the point, but I still disagree with it. Intentionally using an aggressive and insulting tone seems more harmful to the community than expressing the opinion that there is a performance gap between C and higher-level languages, but that gap is narrowing How dangerous is that opinion, anyway? I mean, even if the opinion were demonstrably incorrect, is it so important to keep someone from daring to express it a second time?
  - heretohelp 14y ago
    There is real and legitimate compiler and JIT research, like PyPy, that could lead to reasonably efficient implementations for dynamic languages that can be expressed in RPython. It is not, however, under any circumstances going to lead to code that's any faster than what an experienced C programmer can produce. That's a "hard problem" in the mathematical sense is essentially impossible for reasons related to the halting problem and writing programs that can holistically analyze programs. For similar reasons, I find the type-fascism of the Haskell community amusing, although I find stronger type systems useful. If aren't familiar with the implications and realities of systems programming and/or compiler implementation, stop making false statements about it. Ask questions, read books, but don't toss out ridiculous bull-honkey like: >thanks in particular to projects like cython that let you write python code that gets converted over and compiled as c++ that's often more performant than the c++ code that devs might write themselves. I'm actually pretty familiar with Cython and have spent many man-hours optimizing Python code. I'm a relatively terrible C++ and C programmer, but I can still produce code that profoundly outpaces Cython. The only way to write C/C++ code slower than Cython is to use the wrong goddamn algorithm or data structure. (like std::list when you should be using std::vector) Also, the protocol holds for me here too. I'd gladly say all of this to your face. Stop projecting manufactured confabulations about programming into the ether.

heretohelp 14y ago

I don't tell my lawyer, my accountant, or my doctor how to do their job. I'll get a second opinion where prudent, but other than that, I don't assume I know more than somebody who's spent a good chunk of their life specializing into that field. Extend the same professional courtesy to your fellow programmers who specialized in a different field than you. Get a second opinion if you like. But stop spreading your ignorance. I have about as much patience for mollycoddling your ego as a doctor would for Jenny McCarthy telling people how dangerous and pointless vaccines are.

MartinCron 14y ago
I totally agree with that. I respect people who know more than I do and I don't tell any specialist how to do their job. But I sure as hell don't like it if a doctor or lawyer or accountant rolls their eyes at me and speaks to me in a dismissive or condescending tone because I'm trying to have an informed opinion even though I don't have the same degree of expertise that they have. Here's an example: Me: "I've done some research and I think I should get a Roth IRA..." Accountant A: "Roth? Seriously? Sigh... You obviously don't know a damn thing about tax planning. Good thing I'm here to save your sorry ass. You need a traditional IRA" -or- Accountant B: "Actually, in this case, a traditional IRA would make a lot more sense than a Roth IRA. It's a common misunderstanding." Technically, they are both on the same page, but tonally, the difference is huge. Our industry has too many people who act like Accountant A.

huhtenberg 14y ago

You are missing the point. Condescending dick-waving is there to discourage original poster from making half-assed assertive comments in the future. I understand that you don't like it, but it is the most efficient way to carry the point across. > Here, let me take a stab at it: Nope. Wishy-washy, excuse me this, excuse me that, I'm pretty certain to a degree that I might be right if you don't mind me saying. Not discouraging enough. If you want another justification for the tone, let me tell you that I would've not hesitate to say the exact same thing in person, which is the criteria for wording HN comments as per pg's original guidelines.

MartinCron 14y ago
I get the point, but I still disagree with it. Intentionally using an aggressive and insulting tone seems more harmful to the community than expressing the opinion that there is a performance gap between C and higher-level languages, but that gap is narrowing How dangerous is that opinion, anyway? I mean, even if the opinion were demonstrably incorrect, is it so important to keep someone from daring to express it a second time?
- heretohelp 14y ago
  There is real and legitimate compiler and JIT research, like PyPy, that could lead to reasonably efficient implementations for dynamic languages that can be expressed in RPython. It is not, however, under any circumstances going to lead to code that's any faster than what an experienced C programmer can produce. That's a "hard problem" in the mathematical sense is essentially impossible for reasons related to the halting problem and writing programs that can holistically analyze programs. For similar reasons, I find the type-fascism of the Haskell community amusing, although I find stronger type systems useful. If aren't familiar with the implications and realities of systems programming and/or compiler implementation, stop making false statements about it. Ask questions, read books, but don't toss out ridiculous bull-honkey like: >thanks in particular to projects like cython that let you write python code that gets converted over and compiled as c++ that's often more performant than the c++ code that devs might write themselves. I'm actually pretty familiar with Cython and have spent many man-hours optimizing Python code. I'm a relatively terrible C++ and C programmer, but I can still produce code that profoundly outpaces Cython. The only way to write C/C++ code slower than Cython is to use the wrong goddamn algorithm or data structure. (like std::list when you should be using std::vector) Also, the protocol holds for me here too. I'd gladly say all of this to your face. Stop projecting manufactured confabulations about programming into the ether.