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Invisible wrote:
> Tell me, how many Holy Wars have you seen fought over whether strawberry
> icecream is better or worse than chocolate icecream? Uh, none.
But how many Holy Wars have been fought over which invisible friend is more
real? How many Holy Wars have been fought over whether the brother of the
friend of the invisible friend was more right than the pupil of the friend
of the invisible man? Europe is covered in statues celebrating the
beheading of people for not believing *this* man was better friends with his
delusions than *that* man.
In other words, you understand that "Holy War" is a mocking reference,
right? Anyone who calls it a Holy War already understands this?
> Nobody *cares* what you think is the best icecream, because everybody realises
> that IT DOESN'T MATTER.
This isn't true. It doesn't matter because there's enough of each person
eating each flavor that there's no risk that flavor will become unavailable
in the future.
The people screaming "Language X is best!" are the people who really like X
and who want to work with it in their next job, but who are afraid it won't
be available to them because other technical or management people will
decide against it on reasons of popularity. (How often I've heard "We can't
use utterly appropriate language X because it's too hard to find programmers
that know it, so let's use POS Y that has taken over the world due to
historical and irrelevant reasons.)
> As far as I'm aware, no mechanic actually
> gives a **** about the difference.
Of course they do. They don't fight over it because the tool is simple.
Imagine whether a professional race car driver could argue over the merits
of air-cooled turbo injection versus water-cooled turbo injection. The car
is just a tool for the driver, after all.
> What you *do* sometimes see is wars fought over styles and fashions.
Because, again, this is enforcing your choices on someone else. People
aren't arguing over the utility. They're arguing over whether you should
follow their fashion or vice versa. The fashion doesn't matter - what
matters is who the third parties will see as more fashionable.
Bloods vs Crypts is tribal stuff, not fashion.
> Stuff like the Mods vs the Rockers.
I assume that's the UK version of Bloods vs Crypts?
> 2. Some programming languages definitely *are* "better" than others, in
> an objective way.
>
> For example, take BASIC. [...] The 1980s was a decade of 8-bit home computers
> running BASIC. It's a great language for non-experts
You just obviated your own claim here. Do you want to teach first-year
programming in BASIC on a 8-bit computer, or C++? Objectively, BASIC is
better for that, and indeed that's exactly BASIC's target audience.
> Determining which programming language is superior requires real insight
> and intelligence. And if you fail to see why one language is better than
> another, basically that means that YOU'RE STUPID.
And now you understand all the other Holy Wars too. ;-)
> Truth is, if you compare almost any pair of complex objects, usually one
> is so clearly superior to the other that there's nothing to argue about,
Except, you know, Holy stuff.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Le_Forgeron wrote:
> You forgot a significant part: "for a given purpose."
And, even more important, "said purpose possibly including things you don't
care about." Like whether there's someone to sue if it screws up. Or the
licensing cost. Or whether the great hordes of unwashed novices can
understand it.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Invisible wrote:
> BASIC is worse than just about any modern language for any conceivable
> purpose (rather than, as I said, simple programs written by beginners).
Except that *is* the purpose. Do you even remember what the "B" in BASIC
stands for?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Invisible escreveu:
>> Do you think only Windows got windows?
>
> In general, Unix people seem to have a mindset of "must avoid GUI at any
> cost".
no, the Unix mindset is that everything should be a text file and all
programs should be able to process text files and return text output.
html and Tcl/Tk made that possible for GUIs as well... :)
> I mean, seriously, there are things you could *genuinely* criticise
> Haskell for. But "it was designed by a committee" is a pretty pathetic
> one to choose. "Lisp was designed by divine revelation, while Haskell is
> a sad modern language with a complex and incoherant design that has no
> soul to it." Er, yeah, *right*. Get over yourself.
actually, Common Lisp (which is the one true Lisp) was designed by a
large committee of old industry farts. Scheme was designed by a
professor and his pupil in the 70s and has ever since received valid
input from various other professors and pupils, which decide on which
features to enter the standard by voting.
In general, I tend to dig best languages not designed by committee...
even benevolent dictator model is better. :)
OTOH, haskell, as scheme, is a language focused more on programming
language theory research rather than practical, industry-wide goals...
--
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9
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And lo On Mon, 04 Oct 2010 10:03:29 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> did
spake thusly:
> Holy Wars. Computer nerds seem to be having them all the time.
>
> Basically what most of these arguments boil down to is "my favourite
> tool for X is the best - and you should all agree with me".
>
> Now, think about that for a moment. "My favourite"??
>
> Tell me, how many Holy Wars have you seen fought over whether strawberry
> icecream is better or worse than chocolate icecream? Uh, none. Nobody
> *cares* what you think is the best icecream, because everybody realises
> that IT DOESN'T MATTER. It's just a personal preference that doesn't
> make any difference to anything.
>
> Then again, icecream isn't a tool. So how about real tools?
>
> Well, I don't know any mechanics *personally*. But I've yet to see a
> bunch of them get into an irate shouting match about whether an
> adjustable spanner is better or worse than a well-made fixed spanner.
> You can see how there would be merits to both, and how some people might
> prefer one to the other, and they *could* spend months debating it...
> it's just that they don't. As far as I'm aware, no mechanic actually
> gives a **** about the difference. Given the option, they just use
> whatever tool they prefer, and if there isn't an option, why argue about
> it? It's just a tool.
Yet you see heated debates about whether this braking system is better
than that braking system; or this engine configuration is better than that
one. I think anything that can be differentiated in many ways with no
objective measurement method will be argued about.
Before anyone chimes in that you can measure a braking system you'll get
someone saying "Ah yes but this one is better when it's wet and you're in
a heavier car that's traveling at over 50mph"
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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On 04/10/2010 08:29 PM, nemesis wrote:
> In general, I tend to dig best languages not designed by committee...
> even benevolent dictator model is better. :)
In general, I don't give a fig how the language was designed, I just
care about what the end result is like.
(In a similar way, I don't care who wrote a song, I just care what it
sounds like.)
> OTOH, haskell, as scheme, is a language focused more on programming
> language theory research rather than practical, industry-wide goals...
Uh... that's slightly amusing, if you think about it.
Haskell was created explicitly because there were already a half-dozen
identical languages with different syntax, and this was diluting efforts
to use them. So Haskell was created as one standard language to replace
all the others. Which is a pretty practical reason, actually...
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>> Tell me, how many Holy Wars have you seen fought over whether
>> strawberry icecream is better or worse than chocolate icecream? Uh, none.
>
> But how many Holy Wars have been fought over which invisible friend is
> more real?
All of them, AFAIK.
It seems that all of the big arguments aren't about anything objective,
they're about what people believe.
> The people screaming "Language X is best!" are the people who really
> like X and who want to work with it in their next job, but who are
> afraid it won't be available to them because other technical or
> management people will decide against it on reasons of popularity. (How
> often I've heard "We can't use utterly appropriate language X because
> it's too hard to find programmers that know it, so let's use POS Y that
> has taken over the world due to historical and irrelevant reasons.)
Well, I suppose. (Or just the people who like to feel smug for having
found the best tool first...)
>> As far as I'm aware, no mechanic actually gives a **** about the
>> difference.
>
> Of course they do. They don't fight over it because the tool is simple.
> Imagine whether a professional race car driver could argue over the
> merits of air-cooled turbo injection versus water-cooled turbo
> injection. The car is just a tool for the driver, after all.
While I'm sure many race car drivers have opinions about whether
air-cooled or water-cooled is best, you never see them *argue* about it.
They might say "my personal opinion is X", but you never see this "X is
best, and anybody who says different is WRONG!" stuff.
>> 2. Some programming languages definitely *are* "better" than others,
>> in an objective way.
>>
>> For example, take BASIC. [...] The 1980s was a decade of 8-bit home
>> computers running BASIC. It's a great language for non-experts
>
> You just obviated your own claim here. Do you want to teach first-year
> programming in BASIC on a 8-bit computer, or C++? Objectively, BASIC is
> better for that, and indeed that's exactly BASIC's target audience.
For the fifty-eighth time, I clearly and obviously meant that BASIC is
useless *as a programming language*. If you want to argue about its
utility as a teaching aid, that's a different debate. (And, obviously,
I'd suggest a logic or functional language as a first language, and
everybody else would tell me I'm wrong.)
>> Determining which programming language is superior requires real
>> insight and intelligence. And if you fail to see why one language is
>> better than another, basically that means that YOU'RE STUPID.
>
> And now you understand all the other Holy Wars too. ;-)
Well, yeah, those are probably a bit more complex though. Nobody says
"Python is an inferior language because Chinese people use it", for example.
>> Truth is, if you compare almost any pair of complex objects, usually
>> one is so clearly superior to the other that there's nothing to argue
>> about,
>
> Except, you know, Holy stuff.
That would be the other half of that sentence, yes.
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>> Well, I don't know any mechanics *personally*. But I've yet to see a
>> bunch of them get into an irate shouting match about whether an
>> adjustable spanner is better or worse than a well-made fixed spanner.
>> You can see how there would be merits to both, and how some people
>> might prefer one to the other, and they *could* spend months debating
>> it... it's just that they don't. As far as I'm aware, no mechanic
>> actually gives a **** about the difference. Given the option, they
>> just use whatever tool they prefer, and if there isn't an option, why
>> argue about it? It's just a tool.
>
> Yet you see heated debates about whether this braking system is better
> than that braking system; or this engine configuration is better than
> that one.
Really? That's news to me.
I'm sure many interested people have an *opinion* about such things, but
I've never seen anybody actually *argue* about it.
> I think anything that can be differentiated in many ways with
> no objective measurement method will be argued about.
Well, yeah. Anything that somebody actually cares about, at least.
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Haskell was created explicitly because there were already a half-dozen
> identical languages with different syntax, and this was diluting efforts
> to use them. So Haskell was created as one standard language to replace
> all the others. Which is a pretty practical reason, actually...
that's very Common Lispy. Scheme varies from implementation to implementation,
since the standard is pretty bare...
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>> Haskell was created explicitly because there were already a half-dozen
>> identical languages with different syntax, and this was diluting efforts
>> to use them. So Haskell was created as one standard language to replace
>> all the others. Which is a pretty practical reason, actually...
>
> that's very Common Lispy. Scheme varies from implementation to implementation,
> since the standard is pretty bare...
On the other hand, Haskell has had type classes since version 1.0, and
AFAIK no other language of this sort has those. So it was innovative
right from the beginning. (Also, AFAIK, it was the first FP language to
utilise monads to solve the I/O problem.)
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