3 ms·

It's not about love. Applied to programming tools beauty/ugliness describes a set of special qualities: expressiveness, readability and mathematical symmetry of

It's not about love. Applied to programming tools beauty/ugliness describes a set of special qualities: expressiveness, readability and mathematical symmetry of it's structure. The process involving the tool which lacks this qualities is more prone to human errors. Also a bit of emotional attachment to the things you do everyday is good for your mental health. The lack of it is a sign you should change your job or even occupation.

smsm42 13y ago
The problem is that if you look into the things these qualities applied to, you'd find that correlation between virtually any objectively measurable quality and love feelings expressed is minimal to non-existent. There's no objective measure by which you can conclude Ruby (as an example) is "more readable" than PHP. Of course, you can say "it's easier for me to read Ruby", but that's different thing - it's pretty easy for me to read Russian, but that doesn't mean I get to claim Russian language is superior to Mandarin, which I can't read at all, or to English, which I can read as easy, but probably appreciate the subtle meanings of it less. Yet more it doesn't make sense to me to express visceral hate for Mandarin each time it is mentioned anywhere or express my loathing and disgust to anybody that keeps using it, despite its obvious unsuitability to any practical purpose.
- jonahx 13y ago
  > There's no objective measure by which you can conclude Ruby (as an example) is "more readable" than PHP. Of course there is. You could, for example, survey developers who had experience with both and ask them. If you wanted to be more scientific, you could randomly select a group of freshman computer students, randomly assign half to a ruby group and half to a php group. Teach the ruby group ruby for year 1 and php for year 2, and vice versa for the php group. Then survey everyone. The point is you are trying to make this into an amorphous philosophical issue, when in fact it's a practical question that does have an answer. This is not scientific, but it is a personal observation: Most (not all, but most) of the developers I've met who make the arguments you are making and defend php as "just as good as any other language" and dismiss its detractors as hipster bandwagon followers don't actually have that much experience working with a language like python or ruby. It's rare to find people with lots of experience in both php and ruby/python who prefer php. Again, that's not "proof," but it's what I've observed personally.
  - smsm42 13y ago
    >>> Of course there is. You could, for example, survey developers So objective measure is which language is preferred by more people? I'm not sure how it is an objective measure but I'm pretty sure PHP would win on that. >>> If you wanted to be more scientific, you could Nobody even did that. I still encounter a lot of people speaking as if they personally did. >>> don't actually have that much experience working with a language like python or ruby That's meaningless argument because it can not be disproven by any possible means - for each counterexample I provide of people that know a lot of languages and still think PHP is ok you'd say "well, and I know hundred PHP developers who don't know any other language". Maybe you do, maybe you don't - how anybody could consider that an objective measure of anything or a measure of anything except the characteristic of people you are surrounding yourself with? >>> It's rare to find people with lots of experience in both php and ruby/python who prefer php. What is rare? I know a number of people who could work very well in any common language, but that means nothing - I could also write "I know hundreds of people that know all languages in the world and prefer PHP". Your personal acquaintances don't like PHP, so what? My personal acquaintances don't speak Mandarin. Does it mean nobody speaks Mandarin or Mandarin is a failed language? It just says something about me, not about Mandarin.

smsm42 13y ago

The problem is that if you look into the things these qualities applied to, you'd find that correlation between virtually any objectively measurable quality and love feelings expressed is minimal to non-existent. There's no objective measure by which you can conclude Ruby (as an example) is "more readable" than PHP. Of course, you can say "it's easier for me to read Ruby", but that's different thing - it's pretty easy for me to read Russian, but that doesn't mean I get to claim Russian language is superior to Mandarin, which I can't read at all, or to English, which I can read as easy, but probably appreciate the subtle meanings of it less. Yet more it doesn't make sense to me to express visceral hate for Mandarin each time it is mentioned anywhere or express my loathing and disgust to anybody that keeps using it, despite its obvious unsuitability to any practical purpose.

jonahx 13y ago
> There's no objective measure by which you can conclude Ruby (as an example) is "more readable" than PHP. Of course there is. You could, for example, survey developers who had experience with both and ask them. If you wanted to be more scientific, you could randomly select a group of freshman computer students, randomly assign half to a ruby group and half to a php group. Teach the ruby group ruby for year 1 and php for year 2, and vice versa for the php group. Then survey everyone. The point is you are trying to make this into an amorphous philosophical issue, when in fact it's a practical question that does have an answer. This is not scientific, but it is a personal observation: Most (not all, but most) of the developers I've met who make the arguments you are making and defend php as "just as good as any other language" and dismiss its detractors as hipster bandwagon followers don't actually have that much experience working with a language like python or ruby. It's rare to find people with lots of experience in both php and ruby/python who prefer php. Again, that's not "proof," but it's what I've observed personally.
- smsm42 13y ago
  >>> Of course there is. You could, for example, survey developers So objective measure is which language is preferred by more people? I'm not sure how it is an objective measure but I'm pretty sure PHP would win on that. >>> If you wanted to be more scientific, you could Nobody even did that. I still encounter a lot of people speaking as if they personally did. >>> don't actually have that much experience working with a language like python or ruby That's meaningless argument because it can not be disproven by any possible means - for each counterexample I provide of people that know a lot of languages and still think PHP is ok you'd say "well, and I know hundred PHP developers who don't know any other language". Maybe you do, maybe you don't - how anybody could consider that an objective measure of anything or a measure of anything except the characteristic of people you are surrounding yourself with? >>> It's rare to find people with lots of experience in both php and ruby/python who prefer php. What is rare? I know a number of people who could work very well in any common language, but that means nothing - I could also write "I know hundreds of people that know all languages in the world and prefer PHP". Your personal acquaintances don't like PHP, so what? My personal acquaintances don't speak Mandarin. Does it mean nobody speaks Mandarin or Mandarin is a failed language? It just says something about me, not about Mandarin.