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Can't say I agree with this. Haskell embodies a lot of fairly advanced and much more formally rigorous concepts than most programming languages. It may be that there's a corresponding payoff in concision or correctness but Haskell has this reputation for a reason.
"There are no clubs that will make you “elite”. In fact, there are no “elite” clubs."
But, of course this is not true, there are clubs for which membership shows eliteness. This is not a physical property, it is agreed upon by the relative strata of society.
Similarly, there definitely are elite languages, i.e. ones for which understanding and use confers some sort of eliteness to the programmer. This is different from being a good (or great) programmer, so the examples of great programmers he's known is irrelevant. Eliteness, to me, is not the same as coolness or the next big thing either, i.e. for most people Lisp (or a dialect, say, Scheme) is elite although it's old.
I blame the Internet. No, seriously. Sites like HN and Reddit tend to have a vocal crowd who decide that certain languages and tools are the domain of the elite. This groupthink is religiously defended through self-righteous blog posts ("I switched from Java to C and became a better person!!!") and comment threads. Inevitably, posters go looking for something that the True Language is known to do well, and then overg…
Lisp may be superior to Blub. But if Blub has excellent libraries X,Y, and Z that make solving your problem a lot easier, using Lisp may be a no-go - unless you can interoperate with Blub code from Lisp -- something that a virtual machine like the JVM makes very easy without having to write bindings.
I blame the Internet. No, seriously. Sites like HN and Reddit tend to have a vocal crowd who decide that certain languages and tools are the domain of the elite. This groupthink is religiously defended through self-righteous blog posts ("I switched from Java to C and became a better person!!!") and comment threads. Inevitably, posters go looking for something that the True Language is known to do well, and then overg…
Well said. A lot of people on HN (including PG) like to diss Java as some backward corporate language. The fact that you can run Lisp on the JVM (clojure) shows that such criticisms are shallow. Lisp may be superior to Blub. But if Blub has excellent libraries X,Y, and Z that make solving your problem a lot easier, using Lisp may be a no-go - unless you can interoperate with Blub code from Lisp -- something that a vi…
The JVM, on the other hand, is great, and lots of great tech has come out of it. I haven't seen too many people disparaging the JVM. There is also quite a lot of useful, stable library code in the Java universe.
I blame the Internet. No, seriously. Sites like HN and Reddit tend to have a vocal crowd who decide that certain languages and tools are the domain of the elite. This groupthink is religiously defended through self-righteous blog posts ("I switched from Java to C and became a better person!!!") and comment threads. Inevitably, posters go looking for something that the True Language is known to do well, and then overg…
What a completely ridiculous waste of time!
The mature "elite" programmer knows that solving problems is more important than the underlying technology.
There was that article from pud a few weeks ago talking about "you won't like my back-end", where he details how he uses a Microsoft stack, including IIS. So many people were responding with how much better LAMP was, etc. But the funny thing is that pud has made more money and acquired more customers than 99% of the people who responded. He is solving customer problems and being rewarded with money, and not engaging in useless pissing contests over which technology is better, and I admire that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well said. A lot of people on HN (including PG) like to diss Java as some backward corporate language. The fact that you can run Lisp on the JVM (clojure) shows that such criticisms are shallow. Lisp may be superior to Blub. But if Blub has excellent libraries X,Y, and Z that make solving your problem a lot easier, using Lisp may be a no-go - unless you can interoperate with Blub code from Lisp -- something that a vi…
J2EE (what most people are referring to when they talk about Java sucking) is a really awful, verbose thing to write programs in, and I had those feelings well before I started reading articles about it. It's not a shallow criticism. The JVM, on the other hand, is great, and lots of great tech has come out of it. I haven't seen too many people disparaging the JVM. There is also quite a lot of useful, stable library c…
I blame the Internet. No, seriously. Sites like HN and Reddit tend to have a vocal crowd who decide that certain languages and tools are the domain of the elite. This groupthink is religiously defended through self-righteous blog posts ("I switched from Java to C and became a better person!!!") and comment threads. Inevitably, posters go looking for something that the True Language is known to do well, and then overg…
I have to agree. The Internet somehow does create these weird pissing contests where people seem to want to show that they are cool and everyone else sucks. For example, in an internal mailing list where I work, there is currently a thread between two idiots over whether iPhone or Android is superior. What a completely ridiculous waste of time! The mature "elite" programmer knows that solving problems is more importa…
LAMP is better because only losers use stuff from MS. This is the sort of argument that you see alot of on the internet.
So I say that even a notoriously difficult language like Haskell is only difficult because you haven’t learned it yet. Can't say I agree with this. Haskell embodies a lot of fairly advanced and much more formally rigorous concepts than most programming languages. It may be that there's a corresponding payoff in concision or correctness but Haskell has this reputation for a reason.
By the way, I think the linked article was rather mundane. Many programming articles and blog posts seem to moot fairly uninteresting problems and are littered with empty catch phrases and notions. They remind me of books about the latest management techniques. What is the point of an article like this? I feel like I've gained nothing from reading it.
There is no discussion about the meaning or definition of the term "elite". If you consider that "elite", in the realm of sociology, describes the aggregation of people of above-average qualification within a certain functional context ("performance elite"), the term will often be used to describe the tools and techniques these elites use to achieve and maintain their status.
Elites, like many social groups, find means to separate themselves from other groups, they create informal habits and rituals, formulate means for the establishment of their group identity and so on.
This sort of has a 'straw-man' feel to me. I've never heard the "Elite Programming Language" term before I saw it deconstructed in this essay. Most discussion around programming languages I see these days is centered around assessment of developer skills. This is understandable -- we're going through a period of massive technical talent shortage. Almost all tips we read through places like HN, including PG's notes, r…
Google search for "elite programming language" -"elite programming language fallacy" [1] (to avoid links to this post) yields eight results. It seems the term "elite programming language" was coined by the author in order to knock it down, which is one type of a straw-man argument. [1] https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%22elite+programming+l...