8 ms·

Just for a moment, consider who this man is and what he has done. We would all do well to take a step back and consider his manner of response. Notice that he c

by ghc 14y ago

Just for a moment, consider who this man is and what he has done. We would all do well to take a step back and consider his manner of response. Notice that he continued learning new languages after creating Erlang (instead of just evangelizing it at the one true language). He did not immediately say "choose these three languages" as if they were the only ones you could possibly learn. Does it really help our profession/hobby at all if we engage in language-elitism and snark? Even on Hacker News I've seen vitriol directed at Ruby, Python, Javascript, Haskell, to name a few recent targets. All languages have their place, even if that place is only as a lesson for future language designers. Encouraging people to build stuff, whatever the language, whatever the library, whatever the framework; that is what we should be doing. IF someone wants suggestions, or help deciding what to use, that is fine, but criticizing someone for the language or framework they use has become all too common and a stain on the character of our community. That's not to say honest criticism is unwelcome: All languages/libraries/frameworks/software can improve. But to belittle people for the choices they make, or to segregate ourselves into voluntary language-ghettos we are compelled to stay in by the force of public opinion...that goes against the spirit of what people like Armstrong worked hard to build. Maybe it started with "Worse is Better", maybe it started with alt.religion.emacs being taken a little too seriously, but it has been perpetuated by all of us, even Paul Graham (in Beating the Averages). At some point, this has to stop. We, as a community, must grow to support the betterment of hacking by creating and encouraging creation; not by petty vitriol and conformism based on fashion. Now, I've strayed pretty far from the point of the post itself, but Armstrong closed with such a salient point: If we stopped bickering so much about what is the "right language", "right framework", "right library" and instead encouraged particular protocols and documentation standards we'd all be better off for it.

davidw 14y ago
> If we stopped bickering so much about what is the "right language", "right framework", "right library" Programmers are sometimes maximizers rather than satisficers for this kind of thing. We don't want to know if something is ok and will get the job done, we want the best one. I think people argue for their language out of some sense of the network effects involved: if I can get more people using my language, there will be more libraries, more people to ask about problems, more people to hire/to hire me, more books, and so on and so forth. So I think there is some economic rationality to it.
- nialo 14y ago
  I don't think it's anywhere near that complicated. People argue about languages because languages become part of their identity: It's common to think of oneself as for example a "Lisp Programmer". And if a language is part of your identity than people saying less than amazing things about that language feels like an attack on you personally, and very quickly the discussion devolves into an argument that has nothing in particular to do with the actual languages as such. (http://paulgraham.com/identity.html http://paulgraham.com/identity.html talks about this some, I'm sure there are other better references I can't find right now.)
  - andreipop 14y ago
    I think you are bang on about this. The problem is one of identity. We will protect anything that we attach to our identity because we perceive any attack on it as an attack on us. To have intelligent, unemotional conversations that has to be decoupled. In general it can lead to problems if we map our identity externally - whether to a programming language, or something else - of course this is easier to preach than to practice.
  - emmett 14y ago
    But why do programming languages become part of people's identity so readily, whereas many other things do not? (What do programming languages, operating systems, and text editors all have in common? They're big parts of people's identities...)
    - munificent 14y ago
      Can you point out some things that don't become part of people's identity? My experience is that anything that someone spends more than a tiny amount of time with immediately starts becoming part of who they are. The boundary of our self is constantly spreading outwards onto the things around us. Seems to be part of human nature.
      - emmett 14y ago
praptak 14y ago
> Even on Hacker News I've seen vitriol directed at [...] To be fair, the author himself is pretty vitriolic about C++: "I saw C++ coming and read the book - or at least tried to read the book - there's a dent in the wall behind my piano, where the book hit the wall - Improvements to C should make things easier not more complicated, I thought"
- ghc 14y ago
  You are absolutely correct, of course. But he was sharing his personal frustrations with C++, not engaging in the programming equivalent of "slut-shaming" someone for using C++. That's an important distinction that I think has been lost with the HN community. Without criticism, nothing would get better, but if you criticize someone for making something or making a choice, you might just encourage them to stop being a maker. And that's sad for all of us.
  - mattgreenrocks 14y ago
    I've yet to see anyone who 'slut-shames' based on language produce anything of value. The wanna-be makers project their own failings more readily.
    - hmsimha 14y ago
      Either you don't consider linux to be 'anything of value' or you haven't read Linus Torvalds' take on c++ http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus
      - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
        This is amazingly both of the above points 1. A clear and succinct citicism directed at the failings of a language in technical terms 2. Attacking a maker and telling them not to make stuff. However. Like Stallman, we take the rough with the smooth with Torvalds. Some people earn it.
PurplePanda 14y ago
Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within the Tao. But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it. The Tao Of Programming verse 1.3
- gordonguthrie 14y ago
  In order to write invent COBOL Rear Admiral Grace Hopper had to invent programming languages, compilers, linkers and the entire modern IT industry - and then she had to implement them, without a programming language or a compiler or a linker. That is the TAO of COBOL - the mother of us all.
  - shaunxcode 14y ago
    It is also important to remember that COBOL was the result of design by committee in the attempt to please all parties and not her opus. This is an incredible book about her life and contribution: http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Information-Lemelson-Studies-Innovation/dp/0262517264 http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Information-Lemelson-Studies...
    - gordonguthrie 14y ago
      I know - I was simplyfing a bit for dramatic effect. Book looks interesting, will check it out.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Often that purpose is to say "don't do it this way".
rdtsc 14y ago
This man is a legend. Not just being the father of Erlang (and that's probably enough to make him a legend). But it really is his attitude and his desire to never stop learning, never settle. He is still working and tinkering. https://github.com/joearms?tab=activity https://github.com/joearms?tab=activity He is also a regular at the Erlang mailing list: http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/ http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/
- ds13 14y ago
  A must watch talk, on joearms thinking and humour. talk is about on writing C compiler. http://www.infoq.com/presentations/ECC-Fun-Writing-Compilers http://www.infoq.com/presentations/ECC-Fun-Writing-Compilers
pekk 14y ago
I thought this site was for the betterment of startup entrepreneurs, not hacking.
- nik61 14y ago
  ... and the site's name is?
- nsmartt 14y ago
  On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jhuni 14y ago
I don't share your strong focus on "encouraging creation." I think it is more important that we encourage cooperation and sharing then creation. We have no shortage of software being created the problem is we still are extremely bad at fitting things together.
- andrewflnr 14y ago
  Fitting things together is important, but it exists entirely for the purpose of creating things, which is ultimately in service of end users. Fitting things together is mostly an implementation detail.
  - jhuni 14y ago
    Creating things is just fitting together new things. Rather then fitting together many new things that may overlap already existing things we should focus on fitting together an efficient unified system that use resource sharing to ensure a minimum of bloat. In death of the desktop, interface expert Aza Raskin mentioned that his computer has seven copies of the spellcheck program with seven slightly different implementations of the English language. Building a user interface based upon command sharing rather then bloated applications will ultimately benefit end users.
    - andrewflnr 14y ago
      Obviously better interop is a Good Thing, but we're talking about relative weights of good things. My point is that it's nonsensical to ascribe "fitting together" a higher weight than "creation", because "fitting together" is a subset of "creation". Now as to the manner of creation: you're reacting against the "just hack it together" philosophy of ghc. But the alternative in ghc's mind, I think, was people not creating anything for fear of not getting it right, or not knowing that building something for themselves is even a possibility. Sub-optimal creation is usually better than nothing, especially when nobody else has to use it. Fitting stuff together is hard, especially now when we don't have good protocols. While we're working on those, telling people who just need to get stuff done to "wait until we figure some stuff out" is not acceptable. Those people (who may not even be "Programmers") and their products will still benefit from "fitting things together" to some degree that depends on the application (OS or fart app?), but that needs to be balanced against the need to actually finish at some point, all of which is in the service of some non-software need. They just need to get it done with whatever works, whether it's Haskell, PHP, or a spreadsheet. That, I think, is the point ghc was getting at.
douglasisshiny 14y ago
I'm just (re)learning to code after doing a bit in college (c/c++), currently learning Ruby (and Rails). As a regular reader of HN, I see posts about how great Erlang is, Scala, Haskell, Python, etc. And they do seem to be great languages. And I want to learn them. But as the author points out (and as I have come to realize), regardless of my desire to learn all these things (right now!), it would almost seem fruitless to quit on Ruby/Rails after about 6 months. The large point is, regarding langugage/framework bashing, people put in so much time into a particular language. You almost have to buy into it. I guess some people just become zealots.
- Joeri 14y ago
  The advantage of programming long enough is that your 'primary' language changes several times, and each time you get less zealoty about it. Having learned a bunch of languages myself i would recommend beginners to learn a language thoroughly before moving on. Otherwise you don't assimilate the style of a language and end up writing fortran in c, or c in c++. The qualitative differences between languages don't become obvious until you understand why their common style is what it is.
  - douglasisshiny 14y ago
    Makes sense.
sw007 14y ago
Most sensible comment I have seen on HN for some while. "At some point, this has to stop. We, as a community, must grow to support the betterment of hacking by creating and encouraging creation; not by petty vitriol and conformism based on fashion." Well said
JPKab 14y ago
I found it revealing that he appeared to not only like Javascript, but liked it better than Python and Ruby. Interesting. I personally have grown to love coding in Javascript, but I'm a dumbass who doesn't know Lua, Erlang, Haskell, etc. It would be interesting to hear his perspective on JS.
- tokipin 14y ago
  just a note: Lua is basically a very cleaned up version of Javascript. if their APIs were the same you could practically do a literal transcription between them and most programs would run with little alteration. that includes things like object literals (lua tables). example: (function(a, b) { return a * b; })(1) //valid javascript (NaN) (function(a, b) return a * b end)(1) //valid lua (runtime error)
  - interpol_p 14y ago
    I love Lua because of it's reluctance to use symbols (such as braces). It's mostly an aesthetic thing. I think it looks great.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  I know quite a few languages, and I like Javascript. It has a nice mix of functional, procedural, and object oriented aspects. Once upon a time, it was a horrible language to work in (with browser differences making it infinitely worse); but now, I find I like it. Now, that said, given the choice, I'd choose coffescript. It gives many of the same benefits in a more concise format. It has its warts as well, though, reflecting its desire to stay as close to a concise-javascript as possible.
  - zackmorris 14y ago
    I feel like coffeescript largely exists because of early mistakes in javascript, like no heredoc and places where they weakened the language to make it more convenient, like this one I just discovered today (with workarounds) http://stackoverflow.com/a/14510952/539149 http://stackoverflow.com/a/14510952/539149 and js has a ton of problems because it separated Array and Object, but overall I think it's still probably my favorite language right now. I like lua too but it's less pure, so aspects of it remind me of older languages like pascal.
saraid216 14y ago
Ironically, he takes a swipe at PHP. And the swipe is a bit silly since PHP does have a strlen function.
- mmcnickle 14y ago
  His point is that "Learn X in 10 minute" type books are so superficial as to miss even basic string functions.
- Joeri 14y ago
  Except strlen does not give you the length of a string, but the size of a string (in bytes), unless ofcourse mbstring's func_overload directive is enabled.
lucian303 14y ago
"If we stopped bickering so much about what is the "right language", "right framework", "right library" and instead encouraged particular protocols and documentation standards we'd all be better off for it." Yes, then we'd stop architecting projects and start the by writing code before even understanding the problem. The OP might be a "legend," but this is only his way of thinking and honestly, it won't work for most out there. I agree as far as segregating languages, but I have yet to meet someone who could master more than 2-3 languages at a time. I mean master, not have "some proficiency in." They do exit, and they are rare, like the OP. These are the type of people that create languages. And that's awesome. The rest of us can disagree with him all we want. There are no gods in software development, only lesser failures. Everyone writes shitty code.
peterwwillis 14y ago
There's a reason engineering students flunk out in high numbers: if they don't know their stuff they'll build buildings that kill people. We should be encouraging people to learn stuff before they attempt building it.

by ghc 14y ago

davidw 14y ago

> If we stopped bickering so much about what is the "right language", "right framework", "right library" Programmers are sometimes maximizers rather than satisficers for this kind of thing. We don't want to know if something is ok and will get the job done, we want the best one. I think people argue for their language out of some sense of the network effects involved: if I can get more people using my language, there will be more libraries, more people to ask about problems, more people to hire/to hire me, more books, and so on and so forth. So I think there is some economic rationality to it.

nialo 14y ago
I don't think it's anywhere near that complicated. People argue about languages because languages become part of their identity: It's common to think of oneself as for example a "Lisp Programmer". And if a language is part of your identity than people saying less than amazing things about that language feels like an attack on you personally, and very quickly the discussion devolves into an argument that has nothing in particular to do with the actual languages as such. (http://paulgraham.com/identity.html http://paulgraham.com/identity.html talks about this some, I'm sure there are other better references I can't find right now.)
- andreipop 14y ago
  I think you are bang on about this. The problem is one of identity. We will protect anything that we attach to our identity because we perceive any attack on it as an attack on us. To have intelligent, unemotional conversations that has to be decoupled. In general it can lead to problems if we map our identity externally - whether to a programming language, or something else - of course this is easier to preach than to practice.
- emmett 14y ago
  But why do programming languages become part of people's identity so readily, whereas many other things do not? (What do programming languages, operating systems, and text editors all have in common? They're big parts of people's identities...)
  - munificent 14y ago
    Can you point out some things that don't become part of people's identity? My experience is that anything that someone spends more than a tiny amount of time with immediately starts becoming part of who they are. The boundary of our self is constantly spreading outwards onto the things around us. Seems to be part of human nature.
    - emmett 14y ago

praptak 14y ago

> Even on Hacker News I've seen vitriol directed at [...] To be fair, the author himself is pretty vitriolic about C++: "I saw C++ coming and read the book - or at least tried to read the book - there's a dent in the wall behind my piano, where the book hit the wall - Improvements to C should make things easier not more complicated, I thought"

ghc 14y ago
You are absolutely correct, of course. But he was sharing his personal frustrations with C++, not engaging in the programming equivalent of "slut-shaming" someone for using C++. That's an important distinction that I think has been lost with the HN community. Without criticism, nothing would get better, but if you criticize someone for making something or making a choice, you might just encourage them to stop being a maker. And that's sad for all of us.
- mattgreenrocks 14y ago
  I've yet to see anyone who 'slut-shames' based on language produce anything of value. The wanna-be makers project their own failings more readily.
  - hmsimha 14y ago
    Either you don't consider linux to be 'anything of value' or you haven't read Linus Torvalds' take on c++ http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus
    - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
      This is amazingly both of the above points 1. A clear and succinct citicism directed at the failings of a language in technical terms 2. Attacking a maker and telling them not to make stuff. However. Like Stallman, we take the rough with the smooth with Torvalds. Some people earn it.

PurplePanda 14y ago

Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within the Tao. But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it. The Tao Of Programming verse 1.3

gordonguthrie 14y ago
In order to write invent COBOL Rear Admiral Grace Hopper had to invent programming languages, compilers, linkers and the entire modern IT industry - and then she had to implement them, without a programming language or a compiler or a linker. That is the TAO of COBOL - the mother of us all.
- shaunxcode 14y ago
  It is also important to remember that COBOL was the result of design by committee in the attempt to please all parties and not her opus. This is an incredible book about her life and contribution: http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Information-Lemelson-Studies-Innovation/dp/0262517264 http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Information-Lemelson-Studies...
  - gordonguthrie 14y ago
    I know - I was simplyfing a bit for dramatic effect. Book looks interesting, will check it out.
dredmorbius 14y ago
Often that purpose is to say "don't do it this way".

rdtsc 14y ago

This man is a legend. Not just being the father of Erlang (and that's probably enough to make him a legend). But it really is his attitude and his desire to never stop learning, never settle. He is still working and tinkering. https://github.com/joearms?tab=activity https://github.com/joearms?tab=activity He is also a regular at the Erlang mailing list: http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/ http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/

ds13 14y ago
A must watch talk, on joearms thinking and humour. talk is about on writing C compiler. http://www.infoq.com/presentations/ECC-Fun-Writing-Compilers http://www.infoq.com/presentations/ECC-Fun-Writing-Compilers

pekk 14y ago

I thought this site was for the betterment of startup entrepreneurs, not hacking.

nik61 14y ago
... and the site's name is?
nsmartt 14y ago
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jhuni 14y ago

I don't share your strong focus on "encouraging creation." I think it is more important that we encourage cooperation and sharing then creation. We have no shortage of software being created the problem is we still are extremely bad at fitting things together.

andrewflnr 14y ago
Fitting things together is important, but it exists entirely for the purpose of creating things, which is ultimately in service of end users. Fitting things together is mostly an implementation detail.
- jhuni 14y ago
  Creating things is just fitting together new things. Rather then fitting together many new things that may overlap already existing things we should focus on fitting together an efficient unified system that use resource sharing to ensure a minimum of bloat. In death of the desktop, interface expert Aza Raskin mentioned that his computer has seven copies of the spellcheck program with seven slightly different implementations of the English language. Building a user interface based upon command sharing rather then bloated applications will ultimately benefit end users.
  - andrewflnr 14y ago
    Obviously better interop is a Good Thing, but we're talking about relative weights of good things. My point is that it's nonsensical to ascribe "fitting together" a higher weight than "creation", because "fitting together" is a subset of "creation". Now as to the manner of creation: you're reacting against the "just hack it together" philosophy of ghc. But the alternative in ghc's mind, I think, was people not creating anything for fear of not getting it right, or not knowing that building something for themselves is even a possibility. Sub-optimal creation is usually better than nothing, especially when nobody else has to use it. Fitting stuff together is hard, especially now when we don't have good protocols. While we're working on those, telling people who just need to get stuff done to "wait until we figure some stuff out" is not acceptable. Those people (who may not even be "Programmers") and their products will still benefit from "fitting things together" to some degree that depends on the application (OS or fart app?), but that needs to be balanced against the need to actually finish at some point, all of which is in the service of some non-software need. They just need to get it done with whatever works, whether it's Haskell, PHP, or a spreadsheet. That, I think, is the point ghc was getting at.

douglasisshiny 14y ago

I'm just (re)learning to code after doing a bit in college (c/c++), currently learning Ruby (and Rails). As a regular reader of HN, I see posts about how great Erlang is, Scala, Haskell, Python, etc. And they do seem to be great languages. And I want to learn them. But as the author points out (and as I have come to realize), regardless of my desire to learn all these things (right now!), it would almost seem fruitless to quit on Ruby/Rails after about 6 months. The large point is, regarding langugage/framework bashing, people put in so much time into a particular language. You almost have to buy into it. I guess some people just become zealots.

Joeri 14y ago
The advantage of programming long enough is that your 'primary' language changes several times, and each time you get less zealoty about it. Having learned a bunch of languages myself i would recommend beginners to learn a language thoroughly before moving on. Otherwise you don't assimilate the style of a language and end up writing fortran in c, or c in c++. The qualitative differences between languages don't become obvious until you understand why their common style is what it is.
- douglasisshiny 14y ago
  Makes sense.

sw007 14y ago

Most sensible comment I have seen on HN for some while. "At some point, this has to stop. We, as a community, must grow to support the betterment of hacking by creating and encouraging creation; not by petty vitriol and conformism based on fashion." Well said

JPKab 14y ago

I found it revealing that he appeared to not only like Javascript, but liked it better than Python and Ruby. Interesting. I personally have grown to love coding in Javascript, but I'm a dumbass who doesn't know Lua, Erlang, Haskell, etc. It would be interesting to hear his perspective on JS.

tokipin 14y ago
just a note: Lua is basically a very cleaned up version of Javascript. if their APIs were the same you could practically do a literal transcription between them and most programs would run with little alteration. that includes things like object literals (lua tables). example: (function(a, b) { return a * b; })(1) //valid javascript (NaN) (function(a, b) return a * b end)(1) //valid lua (runtime error)
- interpol_p 14y ago
  I love Lua because of it's reluctance to use symbols (such as braces). It's mostly an aesthetic thing. I think it looks great.
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
I know quite a few languages, and I like Javascript. It has a nice mix of functional, procedural, and object oriented aspects. Once upon a time, it was a horrible language to work in (with browser differences making it infinitely worse); but now, I find I like it. Now, that said, given the choice, I'd choose coffescript. It gives many of the same benefits in a more concise format. It has its warts as well, though, reflecting its desire to stay as close to a concise-javascript as possible.
- zackmorris 14y ago
  I feel like coffeescript largely exists because of early mistakes in javascript, like no heredoc and places where they weakened the language to make it more convenient, like this one I just discovered today (with workarounds) http://stackoverflow.com/a/14510952/539149 http://stackoverflow.com/a/14510952/539149 and js has a ton of problems because it separated Array and Object, but overall I think it's still probably my favorite language right now. I like lua too but it's less pure, so aspects of it remind me of older languages like pascal.

saraid216 14y ago

Ironically, he takes a swipe at PHP. And the swipe is a bit silly since PHP does have a strlen function.

mmcnickle 14y ago
His point is that "Learn X in 10 minute" type books are so superficial as to miss even basic string functions.
Joeri 14y ago
Except strlen does not give you the length of a string, but the size of a string (in bytes), unless ofcourse mbstring's func_overload directive is enabled.

lucian303 14y ago

"If we stopped bickering so much about what is the "right language", "right framework", "right library" and instead encouraged particular protocols and documentation standards we'd all be better off for it." Yes, then we'd stop architecting projects and start the by writing code before even understanding the problem. The OP might be a "legend," but this is only his way of thinking and honestly, it won't work for most out there. I agree as far as segregating languages, but I have yet to meet someone who could master more than 2-3 languages at a time. I mean master, not have "some proficiency in." They do exit, and they are rare, like the OP. These are the type of people that create languages. And that's awesome. The rest of us can disagree with him all we want. There are no gods in software development, only lesser failures. Everyone writes shitty code.

peterwwillis 14y ago

There's a reason engineering students flunk out in high numbers: if they don't know their stuff they'll build buildings that kill people. We should be encouraging people to learn stuff before they attempt building it.