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LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

antirez.com

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Re: LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

#91

Post by [deleted] »

master-litty wrote: post #90
smsm42 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do these political police stand to gain from all of this? A warm fuzzy feeling of seemingly contributing to the Forces of Good and fighting the Forces of Evil. Some launch rockets to the Moon, some create beautiful art, some create awesome software. Some instead bully people to not use certain words. The consider it their contribution to the society. Unfortunately, as more and more people fold to their pressur…

It's creating a culture that is welcoming to more individuals, regardless of sex, race, and background. It's not bullying. In fact, I'd say active code maintainers who receive these requests and don't _reasonably_ accommodate them are the real bullies.

[deleted]

Re: LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

#92

Post by quanticle »

bovermyer wrote: post #11

We seem to be losing our playfulness. In light of that, I'm going to take some time today to do something random, just for fun, and share it with others.

>We seem to be losing our playfulness.

I think that's a good thing. The early hackers could get away with being playful because their work was, in the grand scheme of things, not actually all that important. No businesses were using their code to run payroll and inventory systems. No hospitals were using their code to make treatment decisions. No oil refineries were using their code to runs pumps and valves.

However, as more and more things have become computerized, it's important that we, as a profession, recognize the increasing responsibility that has been placed upon our shoulders. It is time to put away childish things, and focus on what really matters: building fast, reliable, secure software.

I'm not opposed to antirez coming up with a new playful hack to celebrate each edition of Redis. But why does it have to be part of the Redis codebase? Why does it have to be invocable with a Redis command?

Re: LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

#93

Post by malvosenior »

master-litty wrote: post #90
smsm42 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do these political police stand to gain from all of this? A warm fuzzy feeling of seemingly contributing to the Forces of Good and fighting the Forces of Evil. Some launch rockets to the Moon, some create beautiful art, some create awesome software. Some instead bully people to not use certain words. The consider it their contribution to the society. Unfortunately, as more and more people fold to their pressur…

It's creating a culture that is welcoming to more individuals, regardless of sex, race, and background. It's not bullying. In fact, I'd say active code maintainers who receive these requests and don't _reasonably_ accommodate them are the real bullies.

Creating and maintaining an open source project is an act of generosity. Making demands on open source maintainers and "shaming" them into political actions in no way creates a welcoming culture, quite the contrary.

If you don't like the code, fork it if you must but don't harass the creator of the thing you get to use for free.

Re: LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

#94

Post by malvosenior »

quanticle wrote: post #92
bovermyer wrote: post #11

We seem to be losing our playfulness. In light of that, I'm going to take some time today to do something random, just for fun, and share it with others.

>We seem to be losing our playfulness. I think that's a good thing. The early hackers could get away with being playful because their work was, in the grand scheme of things, not actually all that important. No businesses were using their code to run payroll and inventory systems. No hospitals were using their code to make treatment decisions. No oil refineries were using their code to runs pumps and valves. However,…

> No businesses were using their code to run payroll and inventory systems. No hospitals were using their code to make treatment decisions. No oil refineries were using their code to runs pumps and valves.

I think you have this very wrong. Until personal computers went mainstream, all programming was for business (or the military, or research).

It's great that a ton of businesses are benefiting for free from antirez's work (including my own) but we owe him and all the other creators/maintainers of the OSS software we use a debt of gratitude. If antirez wants whimsy in the code base, more power to him.

Re: LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

#95

Post by smsm42 »

master-litty wrote: post #90
smsm42 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do these political police stand to gain from all of this? A warm fuzzy feeling of seemingly contributing to the Forces of Good and fighting the Forces of Evil. Some launch rockets to the Moon, some create beautiful art, some create awesome software. Some instead bully people to not use certain words. The consider it their contribution to the society. Unfortunately, as more and more people fold to their pressur…

It's creating a culture that is welcoming to more individuals, regardless of sex, race, and background. It's not bullying. In fact, I'd say active code maintainers who receive these requests and don't _reasonably_ accommodate them are the real bullies.

> It's creating a culture that is welcoming to more individuals

Somehow I feel less welcome in a culture where there are lots of people vigilantly seeking offense where none ever was and waiting to pounce on the use of every word they can find any reason, real or imaginary, to feel slighted with. In fact, I feel a strong desire to not touch such a culture with a ten foot pole. I am glad to contribute my time and my effort to open source (and I regularly do), but I would not want to be a target of hate mob trying to ruin my life or argue with concern trolls, that's just not how I want to spend my life.

> It's not bullying

You do what they want, or they'll hurt you and your project. How it's not bullying?

> In fact, I'd say active code maintainers who receive these requests and don't _reasonably_ accommodate them are the real bullies.

You may say whatever you want, but you will be wrong. Actual bullies are those who try to force people to behave to their liking with threats and hurt. No amount of redefining terms will change that. If you threaten to hurt someone in any way - virtually or physically - over some words that they say or don't say to your liking - you are a bully. It's not hard to see.

Re: LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

#96

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

lettergram wrote: post #84
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact of the matter is, virtually no one has been or is a slave why do you believe that?

I think it's supposed to mean: "virtually _no one alive_ has been.."

That's a pretty strange thing to believe as well.

One source puts the number of humans alive in 2016 that have been or are currently slaves by some definition at 40.3 million.

https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/global-find...

Re: LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

#97

Post by bigiain »

malvosenior wrote: post #94
quanticle wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We seem to be losing our playfulness. I think that's a good thing. The early hackers could get away with being playful because their work was, in the grand scheme of things, not actually all that important. No businesses were using their code to run payroll and inventory systems. No hospitals were using their code to make treatment decisions. No oil refineries were using their code to runs pumps and valves. However,…

> No businesses were using their code to run payroll and inventory systems. No hospitals were using their code to make treatment decisions. No oil refineries were using their code to runs pumps and valves. I think you have this very wrong. Until personal computers went mainstream, all programming was for business (or the military, or research). It's great that a ton of businesses are benefiting for free from antirez'…

I also think quanticle is wrong, but for quite different reasons.

I didn't start programming as "a profession", and have zero desire to "put away childish things".

Sure, I get paid (and paid well) to do some of this stuff, and accept "the increasing responsibility" while doing it at work on someone else's dime.

But...

I do it for a living because I enjoy doing it for fun - and as a result of that I'm good at it. I started programming in high school because I was intensely curious about how computers worked, and how other people made them do "interesting things", and how I could do similar or radically different "interesting things" myself. I still (when I'm not too burned out solving work's problems, which are "in the grand scheme of things, not actually all that important") retain that curiosity and the hubris to think "I could do that. In fact, it'd be _more_ hilarious if they'd done it differently... _I_ could do it better!"

Businesses benefiting from my work, or payroll systems/hospitals/oil-refineries using any of my creativity or problem-solving is - for me - purely a side effect of the whimsy and childishness that makes me interested in and good at what I do.

I realise this is a very personal point of view - and I recognise there are people out there (including some of my co workers) who pursued CompSci or other IT related degrees based purely on potential career earnings, and I don't for a minute look down on them or their motivations. But I recognise around me people - like antirez - that obviously share some of my joy and delight in the ability to "just make computers do interesting shit for the hell of it".

(To be honest, I'm in one of my "burnt out by work" patches right now, and this piece by antirez has inspired me to get back to my notebook and pinboard bookmarks, to do something hardware/software related which is completely useless, apart from making me and perhaps a few friends smile...)

Re: LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

#98

Post by QuinnWilton »

antirez wrote: post #59
danesparza wrote: post #56

Wow! "should be replaced by a new implementation at each new version of Redis" I hope he at least lets you invoke these commands with a version at least. I'd hate to let a work of art go unappreciated.

Yep! That's the idea. If you write LOLWUT version 5 you'll see past versions.

I think it's also kind of poetic if the old versions stop being supported entirely. Then each piece of art is a snapshot of the whims of the Redis maintainers at that point in time, without any pretensions as to the art's usefulness.

Re: LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

#99

Post by bigiain »

malvosenior wrote: post #83
mperham wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it confusing and nonsensical. As they say, naming is hard and using the correct term is a worthy refactoring IMO.

As you know, the term has been in use for decades and no one was confused. It's ok to say you find it offensive. I don't agree but it's a more honest take then all of the sudden finding a term that's been in use for 50+ years "confusing". In no way was the term master/slave stopping anyone from understanding how to implement functionality with Redis. There may even be a more accurate term for Redis' architecture, gre…

> As you know, the term has been in use for decades and no one was confused. It's ok to say you find it offensive.

I don't think that's a powerful argument _against_ the change antirez has chosen to make. There are a lot of other terms that were in common use for decades, that confused no-one, that reasonable people have stopped using because they're offensive to other groups of people.

Re: LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

#100

Post by malvosenior »

bigiain wrote: post #99
malvosenior wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you know, the term has been in use for decades and no one was confused. It's ok to say you find it offensive. I don't agree but it's a more honest take then all of the sudden finding a term that's been in use for 50+ years "confusing". In no way was the term master/slave stopping anyone from understanding how to implement functionality with Redis. There may even be a more accurate term for Redis' architecture, gre…

> As you know, the term has been in use for decades and no one was confused. It's ok to say you find it offensive. I don't think that's a powerful argument _against_ the change antirez has chosen to make. There are a lot of other terms that were in common use for decades, that confused no-one, that reasonable people have stopped using because they're offensive to other groups of people.

That's my argument against saying the term master/slave is confusing. Like you said, some people found it offensive, there's no credible argument that says it was confusing (although people are trying to make it).

My argument against making the change is that it's high risk for a functional NOOP.

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