On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 12:31 PM, Shlomi Fish <shlo...@iglu.org.il> wrote:
> On Sunday 11 Apr 2010 18:45:33 Chris Prather wrote:
>> On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Shlomi Fish <shlo...@iglu.org.il> wrote:
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > I hope I'm not going to start a flamewar or appear as too domineering
>> > (which I know has been an ongoing problem with me) but I'd like to make
>> > the proposal in the subject:
>> >
>> > {{{
>> > Let's start referring to Moose as "the modern Perl 5 Object System"
>> > instead of "the post-modern Perl 5 Object System".
>> > }}}
>> >
>> > The reason is that "post-modern" tends to have very bad connotations in
>> > art and philosophy, outside the narrow context of Larry Wall's
>> > presentation "Perl, the first post-modern language", which even many
>> > Perl programmers are not familiar with, and may give people who are
>> > first introduced to the topic the wrong idea.
>>
>> [citation needed]
>>
>> When I was in University, admittedly a few years ago now, Post
>> Modernism and one of it's tools Deconstructionism was very much the
>> rage. In the years since I have left university I haven't seen these
>> bad connotations. Do you have references?
>>
>
> Here's a translation of a transcript of an IRC conversation on Freenode's
> #linux.il :
>
> <<<<<<<<<<
> <tzafrir_laptop> rindolf,
> http://whatsup.org.il/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=6551
> <tzafrir_laptop> What do you mean by "A post-modern object system"? It sounds
> like something dangerous to me.
> <tzafrir_laptop> A non-objective Object system.
> <rindolf> It's a translation from English.
> <rindolf> have you read the rest?
> <tzafrir_laptop> yes.
> <elad661> Post-modern. Why? Is being modern not good enough for them?
> <tzafrir_laptop> A modern system does not have a destructor.
> <tzafrir_laptop> http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/פוסט_מודרניזם
> http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/דקונסטרוקציה [Note: there are probably links to
> translations in the Hebrew wikipedia page]
> <tzafrir_laptop> In any case, there are quite a few people for whom "post-
> modern" is a very fishy describer.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>
> Furthermore, there's this article called "Post-modernism : 8 follies" (in
> Hebrew - maybe Google translate will be able to make something mildly usable
> out of it.):
>
> http://www.e-mago.co.il/e-magazine/postmodernism.html
>
> I'm not quoting what it says there because, while I agree with the headings of
> the contents in the article that I skimmed, such philosophy like that is
> dangerously off-topic and flammatory here. It is possible that all this is
> more relevant to Israeli intelligentsia than it is to other people worldwide.
>
> Nevertheless, one of my points was that everyone understand immediately what
> you mean by "a modern object system" while "a post-modern object system" will
> make people wonder why we added the "post-" and whether we refer to post-
> modern art or post-modern culture.
>
>> >On the other hand saying that Moose is a *modern* Object System
>> >
>> > will normally immediately give people the right idea.
>> >
>> > I know that it's cute to call Moose the "post-modern OOP system" but it
>> > may either make people wonder what the hell we mean, or may even give
>> > the wrong impression, so I suggest we drop it.
>>
>> One of the few popular posts in my blog explained this in detail. I
>> refer you to http://chris.prather.org/why-moose-is-post-modern.md.html.
>> Do you have evidence that it *is* making people wonder what the hell
>> we mean?
>
> See above.
This looks to be contextual to Israel.
I don't read Hebrew, so I'm basing this on the Google Translation, but
the paper in particular seems to be hyperbolic with it's attacks. I
certainly believe in a post modern relativist world but I also fully
embrace the idea of an objective reality, and find it unconscionable
revisionism to deny Holocost. I'm fairly certain my professors at
University, as well as John's, would agree. Using that as an attack on
the concept of post modernism to me seems to be excessive in the same
manner as Godwin's law.
The example of tzafrir_laptop's comments are again based on a Israeli
context. I suspect that in translations from English to Hebrew we will
probably want to drop the "post" from post-modern because *in that
context* things are, as you say, perceived poorly.
>>
>> > I don't mind working on the patch to the site and to Moose.pm to change
>> > all "post-modern"'s to "modern"'s, but I'd like to know it would be
>> > accepted first.
>>
>> I for one like the Post-Modern epithet. Trying to suggest a package
>> named Moose will somehow seem more serious by changing "post modern"
>> to "modern" is I think ridiculous.
>
> Why do you think so?
Because until you pointed me to two incidents that in your experience,
Israeli culture seems to frown upon post-modernism I firmly believed
that if someone were to object to something as being "un-professional"
it would have been the name _Moose_.
>> In four years I have only felt the
>> need to defend the "Post Modern" description once (last April), and
>> that was because the people questioning Moose had (what I felt was) a
>> misunderstanding of the concept of Post Modernity[1].
>
> Sometimes once is too much. What about all the people who got the wrong idea,
> thought Moose was not serious and decided that it's not for them?
By that logic we should rename Moose to "Perl Object System". I also
look forward to your conversation with the Perl 5 Porters about
renaming Perl to "Important Business Language".
I'm (hopefully obviously) being sarcastic here. People make decisions
about things for many many conscious and unconscious reasons.
Sometimes they influenced by a rational examination of the choices
offered, sometimes they are based upon the contextual zeitgeist of
their culture, sometimes they are just feeling bad that day and
everything they look at is crap.
I think that Post-Modern is a fitting description of Moose in the
en-US world. Obviously this may not be true in he-IL.
>>
>> Ultimately if people are objecting to Moose because it claims to be
>> Post Modern, they have deeper issues, and probably need to seek
>> professional help.
>>
>
> I don't object to Moose because it is "post-modern" because I know it just
> means "modern" with a more cutesy and artsy and domain-specific-knowledge-
> requiring name. But many people will likely either wonder what we mean or
> reject it entirely. And no, that does not make them mentally ill[Professional
> Help] , just more reluctant to try Moose, or have a "WTF?" moment.
Actually it does not "just mean 'modern'" for all of the reasons I
suggest in my blog post, and all of the reasons Larry outlined in his
keynote. It means post-modern.
> Regards,
>
> Shlomi Fish
>
>> -Chris
>>
>> [1] I honestly shouldn't have bothered, but someone was *wrong* on the
>> internet.
>
> [Professional Help] - why do people keep suggesting that a person should see
> "professional help" for every little irrational whim or personality quirk?
> Many people are perfectly sane yet exhibit many personality quirks. That only
> makes them more interesting.
>
> My mother told me that there was a study that tried to find out how many
> people in a study were normal. They eliminated people based on non-normality
> criteria and ended up with a small percent of people who were fully normal.
> And all of these people, without exception, turned out to be completely boring
> people.
>
> And I'm saying that as a person who *is* seeing a therapist and likely suffers
> from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder , and even got into a few
> manias.
A) I was trying to inject a bit of levity into this conversation. I
see I failed.
B) I was actually considering suggesting Tamarou LLC as a source of
"Professional Help" learning Moose. I felt that would ruin the "joke".
Thank you for assuming that I was intentionally insulting.
-Chris
