4 ms·
A traditional alternative to considered-harmful titles is titles of the form "Why X is not my favorite thing-that-X-is". The classic example is Brian Kernighan'
by pjscott 11y ago
A traditional alternative to considered-harmful titles is titles of the form "Why X is not my favorite thing-that-X-is". The classic example is Brian Kernighan's article "Why Pascal is not my favorite programming language", but it works for just about anything. "Why git flow is not my favorite versioning method" works fine. "Why considered-harmful essays are not my favorite method of critique" is less cute, but quite polite. "Why goto is not my favorite control-flow construct" might be pushing it, though.
- ak39 11y agoThanks for the Kernighan reference. It is probably the single most important reason behind the ignorant meme in tech/programming circles that Object Pascal / Delphi (not Pascal!) is an obsolete language. :-(
- Joeri 11y agoI hadn't read it before, but almost none of the critiques in that article apply to delphi, so someone who takes it as a serious modern day critique clearly knows nothing about delphi.
- jonsen 11y agoRight. I just found this comment: "It only took some minor additions and extensions to turn Pascal into something that was found useful for industrial strength programming. Witness Turbo Pascal and VAX Pascal, for example. Kernighan's paper could have taken the angle of "What Pascal Needs to Become a Very Useful Language," which would have come across as less angry."
- dimino 11y agoYeah, I think "I don't like this" should be different from "this is actually bad in tangible and measurable ways". "Stuck Accelerator Pedals in Toyotas Considered Harmful" makes sense, but "Why stuck accelerator pedals in Toyotas are not my favorite accelerator pedals" isn't really descriptive of the issue, although is kind of funny as a title. To put it another way, there is a place for both titles, but "Considered Harmful" should be reserved for dispassionate analysis.