5 ms·

"quitting articles or conversations because of some remark" This is the problem with the internet and with political discourse in the 21st century: as soon as

by niggler 14y ago

"quitting articles or conversations because of some remark" This is the problem with the internet and with political discourse in the 21st century: as soon as someone says something that seems off-kilter, even if it is technically correct, people stop listening/reading.

tptacek 14y ago
It's not correct. He's making an allusion to lisp and imputing to it the notion that everything is a linked list, which is not true. The article is a comparative discussion of programming languages. Earlier, it calls critics of the focal language in the article "idiots". That was OK with me while the author had credibility. It simply lost credibility for me at the point where it asserted that Lisp programmers don't use hash tables. Apparently, I missed that Go could have, but didn't, support a syntax with shell shebangs at the tops of files so it could be used for utility scripts. I feel like I probably made the right call stopping where I did. ;)
- coldtea 14y ago
  >Earlier, it calls critics of the focal language in the article "idiots". No, he only calls critics of SPECIFIC aspects of the language (aspects inconsequential and prone to bike-shedding) idiots. >It simply lost credibility for me at the point where it asserted that Lisp programmers don't use hash tables. You weren't supposed to read his article as coming from a Lisp expert, seeing that Lisp wasn't the main focus at all. Heck, you weren't even expected to read the article as coming from a Go expert. Just as an article from a guy that tried Go and shares what he thinks of it. >It simply lost credibility for me at the point where it asserted that Lisp programmers don't use hash tables. Would an article by Einstein on relativity "lose credibility" for you if he makes some ignorant remarks about some aspects of mathematics in it?
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Uh, yes? EXTREMELY yes?
  - coldtea 14y ago
    Well, lots of important contributions in some fields have erroneous and ignorant remarks on other fields. If that (instead of careful consideration on their own merits and in their main focus) makes them "lose credibility", then well, I guess you should have more patience and tolerance for errors.
    - spacemanaki 14y ago
      But it was an article about the merits of one programming language, in which the author made erroneous and ignorant remarks about another programming language, and other ignorant remarks about programming language features (mild ones like associating static typing with verbosity). It's not as if they made some flawed remarks about mathematics or electrical engineering, which truly are different fields. For me, it detracted from the author's credibility, because they apparently don't have a breadth of experience with programming languages, so why should I take their opinions about this one particular language very seriously?
  - klibertp 14y ago
    I thought about it some more and now I know why I was irritated by this remark. I just felt this remark was exactly the same thing as some jerks bulling a kid with glasses (or the fat one) in school. There is that social situation where you're new to the group and don't really know what's expected of you, what you should do. But you'd like to fit in. It's after initial introductions and you know the group's members names, but they're not that happy about you hanging around them. Some of them seem hostile, others just indifferent. So naturally you want to avert their attention and, if possible, show them that you have much in common. And that's when this unpopular, fat or whatever, kid happens to fall just in front of you. Of course you will be laughing, at the very least, and it's quite possible that you'll be calling the kid an idiot with others. You know, maybe you're not fully accepted into the group yet, but at least you're not him. And you can laugh with your buddies, this matters too. I find this remark exactly the same kind of thing. I read it as: "ok, so you may use PHP, or maybe Java, that's all cool because hey, at least we're not lispers! We're all one big, happy programming family (except for the lispers, of course, who don't even know what a hash is)!" I don't like this. I wrote "PHP" because it's a popular target of the same bullying tactic. And Java, too, just in the other circles. I don't like it in these cases either, despite the fact that I don't use either PHP nor Java and frankly I don't think they're great. They may not be, but bullying is a bit below what I want to see in a technical article - or in real life.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      In fairness, Lisp is the goofy looking kid everyone bullied in school who had secretly trained at a Shaolin monastery.
  - kenko 14y ago
    "You weren't supposed to read his article as coming from a Lisp expert, seeing that Lisp wasn't the main focus at all." Then why did he make snide, ignorant allusion to Lisp? "You shouldn't hold that comment against him; he doesn't know what he's talking about and you shouldn't expect him to" is an odd defense.
    - earthboundkid 14y ago
      (Author here.) I find it odd that everyone thinks the remark is a criticism of Lisp. It's a criticism of Haskell. Lisp had a good excuse for focusing on linked lists back in the day. Then Clojure improved on it by promoting hashes to first class constructs. But Haskell is stuck in the past, at least as far as first class syntax goes.
      - FreeFull 14y ago
        The only thing that elevates lists above other data structures in Haskell syntax-wise is the "" and [] sugar for constructing them. Haskell's type system allows you very easily to construct your own data types. For example, an unbalanced binary tree would be defined as data Tree a = Leaf a | Branch a (Tree a) (Tree a) deriving (Eq, Show) I admit that the easiest way to construct a hashmap, using fromList [(key,value),(otherkey,othervalue)], isn't as pretty as Clojure's syntax.
  - Tloewald 14y ago
    The comparison with Einstein is a bit of a stretch. Surely Einstain has a fair aomount of credibility going in.
- earthboundkid 14y ago
  (Author here.) Actually, the remark was a complaint about "Learn You a Haskell," which I have been working through, on the grounds that it's NOT Lisp, so they shouldn't pretend like head/tail are the holy grail of data structure design.

by niggler 14y ago

tptacek 14y ago

It's not correct. He's making an allusion to lisp and imputing to it the notion that everything is a linked list, which is not true. The article is a comparative discussion of programming languages. Earlier, it calls critics of the focal language in the article "idiots". That was OK with me while the author had credibility. It simply lost credibility for me at the point where it asserted that Lisp programmers don't use hash tables. Apparently, I missed that Go could have, but didn't, support a syntax with shell shebangs at the tops of files so it could be used for utility scripts. I feel like I probably made the right call stopping where I did. ;)

coldtea 14y ago
>Earlier, it calls critics of the focal language in the article "idiots". No, he only calls critics of SPECIFIC aspects of the language (aspects inconsequential and prone to bike-shedding) idiots. >It simply lost credibility for me at the point where it asserted that Lisp programmers don't use hash tables. You weren't supposed to read his article as coming from a Lisp expert, seeing that Lisp wasn't the main focus at all. Heck, you weren't even expected to read the article as coming from a Go expert. Just as an article from a guy that tried Go and shares what he thinks of it. >It simply lost credibility for me at the point where it asserted that Lisp programmers don't use hash tables. Would an article by Einstein on relativity "lose credibility" for you if he makes some ignorant remarks about some aspects of mathematics in it?
- tptacek 14y ago
  Uh, yes? EXTREMELY yes?
- coldtea 14y ago
  Well, lots of important contributions in some fields have erroneous and ignorant remarks on other fields. If that (instead of careful consideration on their own merits and in their main focus) makes them "lose credibility", then well, I guess you should have more patience and tolerance for errors.
  - spacemanaki 14y ago
    But it was an article about the merits of one programming language, in which the author made erroneous and ignorant remarks about another programming language, and other ignorant remarks about programming language features (mild ones like associating static typing with verbosity). It's not as if they made some flawed remarks about mathematics or electrical engineering, which truly are different fields. For me, it detracted from the author's credibility, because they apparently don't have a breadth of experience with programming languages, so why should I take their opinions about this one particular language very seriously?
- klibertp 14y ago
  I thought about it some more and now I know why I was irritated by this remark. I just felt this remark was exactly the same thing as some jerks bulling a kid with glasses (or the fat one) in school. There is that social situation where you're new to the group and don't really know what's expected of you, what you should do. But you'd like to fit in. It's after initial introductions and you know the group's members names, but they're not that happy about you hanging around them. Some of them seem hostile, others just indifferent. So naturally you want to avert their attention and, if possible, show them that you have much in common. And that's when this unpopular, fat or whatever, kid happens to fall just in front of you. Of course you will be laughing, at the very least, and it's quite possible that you'll be calling the kid an idiot with others. You know, maybe you're not fully accepted into the group yet, but at least you're not him. And you can laugh with your buddies, this matters too. I find this remark exactly the same kind of thing. I read it as: "ok, so you may use PHP, or maybe Java, that's all cool because hey, at least we're not lispers! We're all one big, happy programming family (except for the lispers, of course, who don't even know what a hash is)!" I don't like this. I wrote "PHP" because it's a popular target of the same bullying tactic. And Java, too, just in the other circles. I don't like it in these cases either, despite the fact that I don't use either PHP nor Java and frankly I don't think they're great. They may not be, but bullying is a bit below what I want to see in a technical article - or in real life.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    In fairness, Lisp is the goofy looking kid everyone bullied in school who had secretly trained at a Shaolin monastery.
- kenko 14y ago
  "You weren't supposed to read his article as coming from a Lisp expert, seeing that Lisp wasn't the main focus at all." Then why did he make snide, ignorant allusion to Lisp? "You shouldn't hold that comment against him; he doesn't know what he's talking about and you shouldn't expect him to" is an odd defense.
  - earthboundkid 14y ago
    (Author here.) I find it odd that everyone thinks the remark is a criticism of Lisp. It's a criticism of Haskell. Lisp had a good excuse for focusing on linked lists back in the day. Then Clojure improved on it by promoting hashes to first class constructs. But Haskell is stuck in the past, at least as far as first class syntax goes.
    - FreeFull 14y ago
      The only thing that elevates lists above other data structures in Haskell syntax-wise is the "" and [] sugar for constructing them. Haskell's type system allows you very easily to construct your own data types. For example, an unbalanced binary tree would be defined as data Tree a = Leaf a | Branch a (Tree a) (Tree a) deriving (Eq, Show) I admit that the easiest way to construct a hashmap, using fromList [(key,value),(otherkey,othervalue)], isn't as pretty as Clojure's syntax.
- Tloewald 14y ago
  The comparison with Einstein is a bit of a stretch. Surely Einstain has a fair aomount of credibility going in.
earthboundkid 14y ago
(Author here.) Actually, the remark was a complaint about "Learn You a Haskell," which I have been working through, on the grounds that it's NOT Lisp, so they shouldn't pretend like head/tail are the holy grail of data structure design.