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] devnull> 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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Invisible wrote:
>> 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...)

Oh, and another frequent cause is when it's really difficult to learn a tool 
well, like C++ or vi, and someone has gone to that effort, then they either 
assume that every *other* tool will be equally difficult (if they learned 
the difficult one first) or that you'd like it just as much if only you 
understood it.  The latter being a *very* holy kind of approach.

> 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. 

Really?  How do you know?

Plus, their *job* is to argue over which is best.

> They might say "my personal opinion is X", but you never see this "X is 
> best, and anybody who says different is WRONG!" stuff.

That's a rather strong claim.

In any case, that was a kind of poor example, because everyone is trying to 
optimize for the same thing in race driving (i.e., winning the race 
according to the rules).

Do you not see arguments over which sports is best? Which brand of car is 
best? Why do you think a bunch of race car drivers wouldn't get together and 
loudly discuss whose car is better?


> useless *as a programming language*. 

Again, I disagree. First, I expect more production code has been written in 
BASIC than Haskell. Second, this would be saying that every other language 
of similar capabilities is useless as a programming language, which is 
clearly false if you look at (say) Excel macros, makefiles, or shell scripts.

> Well, yeah, those are probably a bit more complex though. Nobody says 
> "Python is an inferior language because Chinese people use it", for 
> example.

.NET is inferior because it comes from Redmond? ;-)

>>> 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.

I would disagree on that.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Invisible wrote:
> I'm sure many interested people have an *opinion* about such things, but 
> I've never seen anybody actually *argue* about it.

Do you tend to hang around with professional high-performance drivers?

I suspect the same is true of aircraft, but I don't hang out with pilots, so 
I wouldn't know.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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On Tue, 05 Oct 2010 09:21:39 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> 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.

In the right circles, you would. Race car drivers probably would say the 
same thing about programming languages - that nobody gets really 
passionate about them, and that certainly geeks won't argue about which 
is the best.

My wife's family has spent several lifetimes doing car maintenance, and 
I'm sure I could spark a debate amongst, say, my brother-in-law and my 
father-in-law. ;-)

Jim

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