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If you view eating as a nutrient-delivery process, then yes, you are wrong to despise mashed potatoes. On the other hand, if we view eating as a recreational a
by tmorton 13y ago
If you view eating as a nutrient-delivery process, then yes, you are wrong to despise mashed potatoes. On the other hand, if we view eating as a recreational activity, then you should eat whatever you want. On the gripping hand, tastes can be changed fairly easily - if you eat mashed potatoes a couple of dozen times, you'll learn to tolerate them.
So is programming about pleasure? About delivering business value? Are we artists, engineers, factory workers, craftsmen? How much weight do we give to the programmer's preferences, versus practices that seem to produce better results on average?
But those are not the important questions. The problem is that we can't even begin to answer those questions, because we don't know what is effective "on average", or how to measure those results.
- mpyne 13y ago> On the gripping hand, tastes can be changed fairly easily - if you eat mashed potatoes a couple of dozen times, you'll learn to tolerate them. My parents used to be proponents of that idea as well, until they encountered me. They did at least get a cool story out of it which they relate everything Thanksgiving, about the time 10-year-old me grew a pair and simply tossed the mashed potatoes in the trash instead of sitting at the table for 2 hours.
- Sophistifunk 13y agoIt's true, with the one caveat that you actually have to want to learn to like it, you can't be forced into it by your parents once you're older than 2 or 3. The social difficulty of not eating potatoes is what set me down that path initially :)