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Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus

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Re: Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus

#161

Post by lani »

flatline3 wrote: post #148
overgard wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see where you're getting "emotional arguments" from, the entire piece seemed more about scratching an intellectual itch more than anything else. On the other hand, it seems quite apparent he pushed the wrong emotional button on your end. I mean his reframing is "dangerous"? Seriously? Who is in "danger"? And in danger of what? Having a contradictory viewpoint?

> I mean his reframing is "dangerous"? Seriously? Who is in "danger"? And in danger of what? Danger of breaking down rational discourse and forward progress by reframing the debate in terms that leave no room for rational discourse. He's not discussing cost/benefits or reasoned analysis; he takes those as a given and attempts to recast engineering discussion as a political left vs right, with all the emotional baggag…

irrational ideas are the work of the Devil !

Re: Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus

#162

Post by zaptheimpaler »

swah wrote: post #69

I tend to relate to conservative with "small government", and in that light Lua would be a conservative language, because it has a small core and doesn't try to do too much. His conservative definition is seems to be "everything that is wrong with the world" or something. --------- Also, this older rant reads to me as Yegge saying that this "conservative guy" was responsible for Google's success: "I've been debating…

Thank you for the link to the older Yegge article. I REALLY needed that to remind me I'm stupid again.

Re: Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus

#163

Post by lani »

mathgladiator wrote: post #147
flatline3 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yegge took a massive shit on technical discourse, and if not countered, the ramifications thereof could be felt for years . His influence is disproportional to his value, and I am extremely disappointed to see anyone here taking his emotional arguments seriously. Unless firmly censured, I expect to see Yegge's ridiculous viral meme of "liberal vs. conservative" spread and repeated by inexperienced developers indefini…

Most technical discourse turns into religious zealotry, and I think Yegge's observations are relatively true. For instance, look at all the debates on static typing versus dynamic typing. If you break it down, it boils down to aesthetics and fuzzy feeling. It really does. Interestingly, as I've aged, I've realized that our tools don't matter. All code turns into shit. At the end of the day thou, once you pick your to…

"our tools don't matter. All code turns into shit " - most hilarious phrasing. I've recently adapted this philosophy and this helps me ship !! ps : any chance of getting to see your blog archives ? pps : this whole response thread has turned very religious !!!

Re: Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus

#165

Post by overgard »

flatline3 wrote: post #148
overgard wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see where you're getting "emotional arguments" from, the entire piece seemed more about scratching an intellectual itch more than anything else. On the other hand, it seems quite apparent he pushed the wrong emotional button on your end. I mean his reframing is "dangerous"? Seriously? Who is in "danger"? And in danger of what? Having a contradictory viewpoint?

> I mean his reframing is "dangerous"? Seriously? Who is in "danger"? And in danger of what? Danger of breaking down rational discourse and forward progress by reframing the debate in terms that leave no room for rational discourse. He's not discussing cost/benefits or reasoned analysis; he takes those as a given and attempts to recast engineering discussion as a political left vs right, with all the emotional baggag…

None of that has any meaning to me. "Leaves no room for rational discourse". How? What does that even mean? How is he blocking anyone? It's his opinion, he's not stopping anyone from making a counterpoint. "Cost/Benefit analysis". Have you done one? What would it even mean in this context? Would such an exercise even be meaningful? (Not snark, honest question)

You obviously disagree with his viewpoint/conclusion. Cool. So do I, somewhat, for very different reasons. Calling it "dangerous" just adds a lot of hyperbole that doesn't need to be there.

Re: Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus

#166

Post by pjscott »

flatline3 wrote: post #148
overgard wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see where you're getting "emotional arguments" from, the entire piece seemed more about scratching an intellectual itch more than anything else. On the other hand, it seems quite apparent he pushed the wrong emotional button on your end. I mean his reframing is "dangerous"? Seriously? Who is in "danger"? And in danger of what? Having a contradictory viewpoint?

> I mean his reframing is "dangerous"? Seriously? Who is in "danger"? And in danger of what? Danger of breaking down rational discourse and forward progress by reframing the debate in terms that leave no room for rational discourse. He's not discussing cost/benefits or reasoned analysis; he takes those as a given and attempts to recast engineering discussion as a political left vs right, with all the emotional baggag…

Would you be happier if he'd used different words? If, instead of talking about "politics" between "liberals" and "conservatives", he had made the same post about "differences in taste" between "caution-focused" and "momentum-focused" programmers? Because, you know, he could have said it that way, and it would have made as much sense, while probably being a hell of a lot less controversial -- but it would be the same blog post!

(Personally, I think I would have been happier if he'd used different words to say the same thing.)

Re: Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus

#167

Post by pjscott »

dasil003 wrote: post #116
kstenerud wrote: post #71

What "politics" I adopt depends mostly on what I'm building. If it's a library that someone else will use, I try to play as conservatively as possible, and I fully expect that despite my best efforts those developers will uncover lots of bugs regardless. If it's a mission critical application, I'll also be conservative. The more pain there is in fixing things later, the more careful I'll be up front. When I'm writing…

This is essentially what I commented on G+ and what I came here to say. A programmer who does not understand the tradeoffs of liberalism vs conservatism as Yegge defines them is not a good engineer. At best they might be talented at doing things a very specific way, sort of like a designer whose stuff all looks the same and is often inappropriate for the job at hand. Such a person is more an artist than a designer, a…

Actually, I'm pretty sure you could make a good case for log processing in Haskell. There are some businesses with lots of log data, containing any number of dimensions along which you might legitimately want to slice and dice, with their formats and schemas changing over time. Haskell's type checking is really good at catching the type of bugs that tend to crawl out of this kind of application, and its speed is a good thing when you're dealing with a whole lot of logs.

Re: Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus

#168

Post by pjscott »

ziadbc wrote: post #7

Who is more of a 'liberal' programmer, RMS or Linus. Think about it. In my estimation, if the answer here is unclear, then this metaphor breaks hard.

GNU and Linux both seem to fall into the "conservative" side of Yegge's taxonomy. Do you disagree?

Re: Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus

#169

Post by alinajaf »

duaneb wrote: post #126
alinajaf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haskell is more liberal than ruby (functional programming) Not according to the article, which is what my comment was in response to. > I think any correlation says more about age than it does about politics. Quite possible, I'm 26.

> Not according to the article, which is what my comment was in response to. I see. Yes, Haskell meets all the criteria for a conservative language, emphasizing safety, and verifiability, and automated testing. However, purely anecdotally, I can't think of a single person I've worked for that uses C++ approving of Haskell because it is so radically different. But perhaps this doesn't matter.

I tend to agree, on my own personal scale of liberal/conservative (which has little to do with type systems), I'd rank Haskell as fantastically liberal. You could probably enumerate the companies that use it in production on one hand.
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