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Congratulations to PommeDeTerre for providing the perfect example of the sort of comments that are so condescending. I hope that he/she meant it in jest.

PommeDeTerre 13y ago
No, I'm completely serious. Can you explain how my last comment was "condescending"? It's not "condescending" to express an idea that differs from that of somebody else. It's not "condescending" to disagree with a claim made by somebody else. It's not "condescending" to give examples why a claim somebody else made may not be true. The commenter I replied to suggested that certain technologies were "new". I disagreed, and provided reasons why I don't consider them new, based on other technologies that I, and very likely others here, have used in the past. If you wish to discuss those technologies and their novelty, I'd welcome such discussion. If you disagree with my claims, that's fine. I'm just not certain how you accusing me of being "condescending", without even giving any evidence to back up this claim, is productive.
- thedanfilter 13y ago
  To clarify, to me, each particular statement was condescending to the developers of those products. The comments are condescending because you imply that there is no difference between them and the technologies you listed. In reality, most advances are made incrementally, and if one wants to make such an advance then one often needs to reimplement some, or all, aspects of what has been done before. "What" a tool does is often irrelevant. Often advances occur in "How". And "How" is often either hard to communicate, not desirable to communicate (I.e. for competitive advantage), or not particularly interesting, but vitally important. Indeed, often existing technologies need to be trimmed back to provide a more useful subset - asm.js comes to mind. However, obviously the person you replied to was using those as _examples_. Your reply completely missed the point he was trying to make that new things, I.e. things that are not the same as other things, are used by people regardless of how similar they may be to other things.
- deleted 13y ago
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- xtrumanx 13y ago
  I agree with you PommeDeTerre. It's hard for me to take this meme of "HN is full of negativity" seriously when I constantly see people (like thedanfilter above) complain about comments whose only faults are that they aren't full of glowing praise.
  - mratzloff 13y ago
    This is a quintessential "middlebrow dismissal", taking an uninteresting point, dismissing it with trivial technicalities, and pretending it added anything to the conversation. The conversation then gets sidetracked to debate semantics or pedantic details. I've started down-voting these types of posts.
    - xtrumanx 13y ago
      Presumably you are referring to PommeDeTerre's comment as "middlebrow dismissal" and I don't believe his intent was to sidetrack the debate with semantic and pedantic details. His comment is a new branch in the comment tree. If you find this branch uninteresting you're free to not follow it. Sometimes some really interesting conversations appear a few branches deep in the comment trees that are completely off-topic. I know where you're coming from and I've seen people use that "middlebrow dismissal" tactic you've described when passionately debating. I totally don't think that was PommeDeTerre's intent. It looked to me that he just believed that the examples akkartik were bad enough to warrant pointing out. He didn't attempt to tie that into completely dismissing akkartik whole comment. And for the record, I don't agree with PommeDeTerre's comment at all because I think he missed the point akkatrik was making when he listed his examples.
      - mratzloff 13y ago
        > And for the record, I don't agree with PommeDeTerre's comment at all because I think he missed the point akkatrik was making when he listed his examples. But that's my point. It's happening right now in this thread. :-)
- gverri 13y ago
  You are being COMPLETELY condescending. All the technologies you cited are AWESOME. And I would be screwed if they weren't. Everyday I have to thank all the wonderful minds that bothered to come up with easier and more elegant solutions to problems that made me pull my hair out on the past. To say they are more of the same is untrue and very mean.

PommeDeTerre 13y ago

No, I'm completely serious. Can you explain how my last comment was "condescending"? It's not "condescending" to express an idea that differs from that of somebody else. It's not "condescending" to disagree with a claim made by somebody else. It's not "condescending" to give examples why a claim somebody else made may not be true. The commenter I replied to suggested that certain technologies were "new". I disagreed, and provided reasons why I don't consider them new, based on other technologies that I, and very likely others here, have used in the past. If you wish to discuss those technologies and their novelty, I'd welcome such discussion. If you disagree with my claims, that's fine. I'm just not certain how you accusing me of being "condescending", without even giving any evidence to back up this claim, is productive.

thedanfilter 13y ago
To clarify, to me, each particular statement was condescending to the developers of those products. The comments are condescending because you imply that there is no difference between them and the technologies you listed. In reality, most advances are made incrementally, and if one wants to make such an advance then one often needs to reimplement some, or all, aspects of what has been done before. "What" a tool does is often irrelevant. Often advances occur in "How". And "How" is often either hard to communicate, not desirable to communicate (I.e. for competitive advantage), or not particularly interesting, but vitally important. Indeed, often existing technologies need to be trimmed back to provide a more useful subset - asm.js comes to mind. However, obviously the person you replied to was using those as _examples_. Your reply completely missed the point he was trying to make that new things, I.e. things that are not the same as other things, are used by people regardless of how similar they may be to other things.
deleted 13y ago
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xtrumanx 13y ago
I agree with you PommeDeTerre. It's hard for me to take this meme of "HN is full of negativity" seriously when I constantly see people (like thedanfilter above) complain about comments whose only faults are that they aren't full of glowing praise.
- mratzloff 13y ago
  This is a quintessential "middlebrow dismissal", taking an uninteresting point, dismissing it with trivial technicalities, and pretending it added anything to the conversation. The conversation then gets sidetracked to debate semantics or pedantic details. I've started down-voting these types of posts.
  - xtrumanx 13y ago
    Presumably you are referring to PommeDeTerre's comment as "middlebrow dismissal" and I don't believe his intent was to sidetrack the debate with semantic and pedantic details. His comment is a new branch in the comment tree. If you find this branch uninteresting you're free to not follow it. Sometimes some really interesting conversations appear a few branches deep in the comment trees that are completely off-topic. I know where you're coming from and I've seen people use that "middlebrow dismissal" tactic you've described when passionately debating. I totally don't think that was PommeDeTerre's intent. It looked to me that he just believed that the examples akkartik were bad enough to warrant pointing out. He didn't attempt to tie that into completely dismissing akkartik whole comment. And for the record, I don't agree with PommeDeTerre's comment at all because I think he missed the point akkatrik was making when he listed his examples.
    - mratzloff 13y ago
      > And for the record, I don't agree with PommeDeTerre's comment at all because I think he missed the point akkatrik was making when he listed his examples. But that's my point. It's happening right now in this thread. :-)
gverri 13y ago
You are being COMPLETELY condescending. All the technologies you cited are AWESOME. And I would be screwed if they weren't. Everyday I have to thank all the wonderful minds that bothered to come up with easier and more elegant solutions to problems that made me pull my hair out on the past. To say they are more of the same is untrue and very mean.