Wat (2012) [video]

The WAT talk was rhetorically nice because it managed to joke about weird corners of the language without going into ranty programmer mode, but opted for a more gentle style of bemused boggling.

It also kind of cemented for me that weird edge cases don't actually matter in practice (in my experience), and that a language can have lots to make fun of while still being lovely to use.

Re: Wat (2012) [video]

#5

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 9:00 AM UTC

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #4

The WAT talk was rhetorically nice because it managed to joke about weird corners of the language without going into ranty programmer mode, but opted for a more gentle style of bemused boggling. It also kind of cemented for me that weird edge cases don't actually matter in practice (in my experience), and that a language can have lots to make fun of while still being lovely to use.

[deleted]

Re: Wat (2012) [video]

#6

Post by neonihil » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC

This is so good!

Re: Wat (2012) [video]

#7

Post by sph » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 9:09 AM UTC

WAT is classic and very funny, but I recommend all software engineers to watch all of Gary Bernhardt's talks on his website: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks

His talk about "Boundaries" taught me one of the most illuminating concepts I've learned in my career, about separation of concerns, functional core & imperative shell, unit testing, etc., and radically changed the way I write code - the talk uses Ruby as an example, but can be applicable to any language under the sun.

In fact, watch all five of them, they all reach this outstanding level of being educational, interesting and funny at the same time.

Re: Wat (2012) [video]

#8

Post by jwilk » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 9:09 AM UTC

"A few programming languages quirks" makes it sound less exciting than it actually is.

As per HN Guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>, please don't editorialize titles.

Re: Wat (2012) [video]

#9

Post by s3tz » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 9:37 AM UTC

sph wrote: post #7

WAT is classic and very funny, but I recommend all software engineers to watch all of Gary Bernhardt's talks on his website: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks His talk about "Boundaries" taught me one of the most illuminating concepts I've learned in my career, about separation of concerns, functional core & imperative shell, unit testing, etc., and radically changed the way I write code - the talk uses Ruby a…

I'd argue for making this mandatory in your onboarding. It can help so much more than random training sessions and seniors mentioning this in code review. It's a simple shift in thinking that most people should just get.

Re: Wat (2012) [video]

#10

Post by pydry » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 9:43 AM UTC

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #4

The WAT talk was rhetorically nice because it managed to joke about weird corners of the language without going into ranty programmer mode, but opted for a more gentle style of bemused boggling. It also kind of cemented for me that weird edge cases don't actually matter in practice (in my experience), and that a language can have lots to make fun of while still being lovely to use.

>It also kind of cemented for me that weird edge cases don't actually matter in practice

I had the exact opposite impression. Indeed, this stuff is the cause of so much that gets attributed to something else (e.g. JavaScript framework churn being attributed to culture).

The problems caused by these issues compound as you work your way up the stack.