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Why is this comment ranking above the much more insightful and beneficial thread started by malandrew? It's partly a question of how HN works but I assumed comm

by jwdunne 14y ago

Why is this comment ranking above the much more insightful and beneficial thread started by malandrew? It's partly a question of how HN works but I assumed comments with the highest karma filter up to the top? If that's true, I must also question the community: why has this received so many votes? It only serves to make robomartin look like an idiot by maki g fun of him. He is most definitely not an idiot and this commenter makes it clear that they haven't read the entire comment. I have a lot to take away from his comment and from the thread I mentioned. I'm sure there are a few here who will also have big take aways. It's content and comments like these that make me love HN. The negativity from the commenter can spiral out of control and fatally harm a community if endorsed. I've seen it happen before to another community I deeply loved and it pains me to be reminded of such negativity.

robomartin 14y ago
> He is most definitely not an idiot Thanks. The way I look at it, those who read HN and can filter out the BS don't need anyone to tell them when a post is bad or useless. And, yes, I have been an idiot on HN a few times. It happens mostly when I, against my better judgement, choose to enter into political discussions. I should not do that. I am trying hard not to discuss politics on HN. My views come from years of having skin in the business trenches. You'll never never find me self describe as a democrat or republican. On HN my views tend to run contrary to the <conjecture>mostly liberal leaning</conjecture> audience here. It's really easy to come off as an idiot if you are not careful. We are all idiots at something. When it comes to technology and using it to create products and build a business I am nothing but pragmatic. You use what you have at hand and make the best of it. Case in point: Objective-C. I don't like it. Yet, if I wanted to write native iOS apps it really is the only choice. The frameworks that try to avoid it are always fraught with issues. So, I learned it and use it every day. It's about putting out a product and not about polishing the wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers in your toolbox. That's not to say that if a new approach or better tools surface I ignore them. Not so. I love good tools.
saurik 14y ago
While I agree that the form of this comment was too harsh (so, your second paragraph largely rings true for me), I was wondering why robomartin's comment was at the top in the first place: it starts with a general insult to commenters ("C'mon kids. Not again.") and then continues with a "proof by how much money I made using it" against the apparent strawman "if you don't use OOP you can't do things that are useful (such as make a lot of money)". The article that Rob Pike was responding to, and Rob Pike's response, were about whether people who use (or do not use) OOP somehow fundamentally better understand "the nature of computation". There are people out there, some of whom I have on my list of "personal heroes", whom are quite clear when asked that they know very little about computation or computers, and yet they wrote a bunch of code and made tons of money anyway; that is simply irrelevant to a discussion about understanding "the nature of computation". (Yes: I have purposely ignored all of the mentions of an improved CS curriculum in my primary comments here. All of that conversation was off-topic for the argument being made by both the original paper and Rob's response: it doesn't contribute in any way to the argument about whether knowing OOP or not knowing OOP has anything to do with how to best understand "the nature of computation", if nothing else as the things you learn first are often, in pedagogic contexts, either approximations or downright incorrect, and are later updated or replaced by later teachings.)

by jwdunne 14y ago

robomartin 14y ago

> He is most definitely not an idiot Thanks. The way I look at it, those who read HN and can filter out the BS don't need anyone to tell them when a post is bad or useless. And, yes, I have been an idiot on HN a few times. It happens mostly when I, against my better judgement, choose to enter into political discussions. I should not do that. I am trying hard not to discuss politics on HN. My views come from years of having skin in the business trenches. You'll never never find me self describe as a democrat or republican. On HN my views tend to run contrary to the <conjecture>mostly liberal leaning</conjecture> audience here. It's really easy to come off as an idiot if you are not careful. We are all idiots at something. When it comes to technology and using it to create products and build a business I am nothing but pragmatic. You use what you have at hand and make the best of it. Case in point: Objective-C. I don't like it. Yet, if I wanted to write native iOS apps it really is the only choice. The frameworks that try to avoid it are always fraught with issues. So, I learned it and use it every day. It's about putting out a product and not about polishing the wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers in your toolbox. That's not to say that if a new approach or better tools surface I ignore them. Not so. I love good tools.

saurik 14y ago

While I agree that the form of this comment was too harsh (so, your second paragraph largely rings true for me), I was wondering why robomartin's comment was at the top in the first place: it starts with a general insult to commenters ("C'mon kids. Not again.") and then continues with a "proof by how much money I made using it" against the apparent strawman "if you don't use OOP you can't do things that are useful (such as make a lot of money)". The article that Rob Pike was responding to, and Rob Pike's response, were about whether people who use (or do not use) OOP somehow fundamentally better understand "the nature of computation". There are people out there, some of whom I have on my list of "personal heroes", whom are quite clear when asked that they know very little about computation or computers, and yet they wrote a bunch of code and made tons of money anyway; that is simply irrelevant to a discussion about understanding "the nature of computation". (Yes: I have purposely ignored all of the mentions of an improved CS curriculum in my primary comments here. All of that conversation was off-topic for the argument being made by both the original paper and Rob's response: it doesn't contribute in any way to the argument about whether knowing OOP or not knowing OOP has anything to do with how to best understand "the nature of computation", if nothing else as the things you learn first are often, in pedagogic contexts, either approximations or downright incorrect, and are later updated or replaced by later teachings.)