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Yes, I really think that the article "Programming Without Variables" does not deserve the first page of HN, but I do not have enough karma to mod it down. The t

Yes, I really think that the article "Programming Without Variables" does not deserve the first page of HN, but I do not have enough karma to mod it down. The title refers to an interesting subject, but the content is almost only about technicalities in converting a loop into a recursive, then into a tail recursive function. The level is so poor, it is really deceptive.

gknoy 13y ago
Many of the readers here are programmers; a well written article (or blog post, even) about coding in a way which lets your compiler use tail recursion optimizations is Pretty Interesting to many of us, even if we already know in our hearts that recursion can be efficient. The fact that he's doing this in a non-lisp makes it more accessible to some, and just interesting to others. I think that's OK to have on the HN front page, even if it's not something you personally find interesting. Try considering that HN is a resource to more than just you or just me. Consider that some programmers here might be more or less experienced than us, and that it's possible this might be the window into "oh, hey, recursion!" that some new programmer needed in order to discover a new avenue of learning. In that light, this is a pretty worthy article on HN. I especially like that he goes into implementation detail, rather than just saying, "Duh, use tail recursion", and thus ends up explaining how to actually do it well (in case a reader didn't know).
jfarmer 13y ago
The "level is so poor?" I don't know what that could possibly mean except "This article is beneath me." Well, that's fine. It was written for folks who had never thought about the relationship between iteration and recursion in this way and is clearly angling towards introducing something like a point-free style. Perhaps there are more people like than on HN than you thought. Both your original comment and this one are prototypical examples of a middlebrow dismissal. You're not actually saying anything about the article, but you're telling us a lot about how good you think your taste is.

gknoy 13y ago

Many of the readers here are programmers; a well written article (or blog post, even) about coding in a way which lets your compiler use tail recursion optimizations is Pretty Interesting to many of us, even if we already know in our hearts that recursion can be efficient. The fact that he's doing this in a non-lisp makes it more accessible to some, and just interesting to others. I think that's OK to have on the HN front page, even if it's not something you personally find interesting. Try considering that HN is a resource to more than just you or just me. Consider that some programmers here might be more or less experienced than us, and that it's possible this might be the window into "oh, hey, recursion!" that some new programmer needed in order to discover a new avenue of learning. In that light, this is a pretty worthy article on HN. I especially like that he goes into implementation detail, rather than just saying, "Duh, use tail recursion", and thus ends up explaining how to actually do it well (in case a reader didn't know).

jfarmer 13y ago

The "level is so poor?" I don't know what that could possibly mean except "This article is beneath me." Well, that's fine. It was written for folks who had never thought about the relationship between iteration and recursion in this way and is clearly angling towards introducing something like a point-free style. Perhaps there are more people like than on HN than you thought. Both your original comment and this one are prototypical examples of a middlebrow dismissal. You're not actually saying anything about the article, but you're telling us a lot about how good you think your taste is.