On Friday, 27 March 2015 at 03:53:36 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
That kind of articles are bad for the image of the D community
Nick S:
No. Just...no.
I'm honestly *really* tired of general society's (seemingly?)
increasing intolerance FOR intolerance.
Some things ARE bad. Some ideas are dumb ideas (ie without
merit). Some features are bad features. Some products really
are crappy products. Calling it out when you see it, using a
frank explanation of your reasoning, isn't bad, it's
productive.
Excellence is incompatible with tolerating mediocrity or what
is appalling, and what I have seen is that there are aesthetic
aspects to creative endeavours not conventionally thought of as
having an aesthetic element, and it is in the nature of such
things that one cannot and should not tolerate what one
perceives to be ugly in a creative endeavour. If one is driven
mostly by ROI rather than high feelings, one doesn't get to
excellence. So it is my belief that dealing with creative
people means dealing with a certain ... intensity.
That (on the aesthetic aspects of technical fields) is not just
my opinion, but also (I think) that of a certain Mr W Bright,
judging by his comments on how good code should look and on
good aircraft design, although he presented this in his usual
low-key manner. I was looking for a language that was
beautiful, as well as powerful, and for whatever it is worth,
this was a factor of high appeal with D.
It's also the view of Feynman, not to mention many great minds
of the past. Ie it is limiting to insist on data before
forming a strong opinion about something (which is not to say
that one may not change one's mind in the face of contrary
data).
"You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you
get it right, it is obvious that it is right—at least if you
have any experience—because usually what happens is that more
comes out than goes in. ...The inexperienced, the crackpots,
and people like that, make guesses that are simple, but you can
immediately see that they are wrong, so that does not count.
Others, the inexperienced students, make guesses that are very
complicated, and it sort of looks as if it is all right, but I
know it is not true because the truth always turns out to be
simpler than you thought." - Feynman via Wikiquote (but the
same idea comes across in his books).
To discourage dissent, objections, or complaints is to rob
ourselves of potential improvement. *That's* what critique and
complaints and objections ARE: Recognition of the potential
for improvement. There *cannot* be progress and improvement
without first identifying existing faults. If nobody ever
identified and voiced criticism of punchcards, for example,
we'd all still be stuck in the world of 1950's computing.
Excellently put. (And, I would add, a constructive draw
towards what is generative - not just fault-finding).
It's not as if "the D crowd" doesn't critique itself and it's
own language just plenty, so it's not like there's any
hypocrisy here. And I'm certainly not willing to accept that
programmers should be viewed as being part of distinct
mutually-exclusive factions based on some single-language
allegiance. I'm a D guy. I also happen to be a fan of Nemerle.
And both languages have things I hate. So scratch the "it's
the D crowd" idea.
Interesting - what should I read about Nemerle, and what is it
best at ?
And seriously, the article in question barely mentions D at
all.
So no, this is NOT some sort of "D community piece attacking
another language" as some comments seem to imply. It is merely
an isolated critique of one language by someone who happens to
be *using* the given language.
There are some very interesting psychological dynamics in the
reaction to this kind of piece. For me it was key that
although it was clearly written in a humorous tone, and
hurriedly, he seemed to speak from the heart - it is refreshing
to see such work even when one doesn't agree with it.
BTW since when has linking to something been an endorsement of
it?
Interesting. Have you read Oscar Wilde? Your comments remind me
of him somehow. I was just thinking yesterday how working with D
makes me happy whereas working with other (lower) languages makes
me grumpy. Going down to the punchcard level (PHP, JS etc.) is
boring and doesn't do justice to the human mind. Whenever I use
D, I am confident that I can map a complicated reality onto a
machine, it inspires me and it challenges me. Primitive languages
discourage me. So there's more to productivity than meets the eye
when looking at numbers. Numbers are insignificant, they can
prove anything you want, and you can tweak them any way you want.
"Eat shit, a million flies can't be wrong!", as they say.
It's one thing to be productive in terms of maintaining and
selling apps and another in terms of being innovative. You can
sell a million records by sticking to well-trodden paths
(dum-dum-dum-di-dum) or you can be a Mozart, a Beethoven, a Miles
Davis or a Hendrix and just say "I'm gonna do my own thing!".
Sure, it involves what is commonly perceived as "arrogance", but
it's not.