So, is this essay also considered harmful by self-reference?
Yes, it is considered harmful to the "Considered Harmful" essays.
“Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
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Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
#12Thank you
Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
#13Indeed. I'm over these as well as any of the, "Why I quit X technology" or similarly titled essays. Oh and the "Open letter to Big Corp". You're not that important. I don't really care why you quit using X. I don't need validation from some blog about what technology to use or not use. I can evaluate X technology on my own, thank you.
The information from those articles isn't the problem. Just the writing style.
They often want to tell you "We're switching from X to Y, because our use-cases aren't that of X (anymore)"
But they write it like "We're switching from X to Y and you should too, because X is really bad for everyone!"
If you ignore the holier-than-you writing style, and try to read these articles like the first example, they have some useful information :)
Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
#14So, is this essay also considered harmful by self-reference?
Another possible title: How to Argue Against Yourself For Fun and Profit.
Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
#15The thing that always bothered me about "Considered harmful" titles is that, when you title your own article that, you're just pompously referring to yourself in the third person.
The reason they are in the passive voice is that the original "considered harmful" essay was a letter to the editor, and therefore was titled not by the author, but by the editor[1]. Therefore, to expand out the subject of the sentence, the title was actually saying "Go To Statement Considered Harmful [by Edsger Dijkstra]".
[1]: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD13xx/EW...
Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful
Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
#16[deleted]
Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
#17The grammatical construction "Blah Blah Considered Harmful" has always bugged me...it doesn't seem proper. Shouldn't it be something like "Blah Blah Should Be Considered Harmful"?
Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
#18For example, a piece titled "'Considered Harmful' Essays Considered Harmful" would very likely be a case of using the "considered harmful" format to draw attention for its own sake. We will ignore such essays in this commentary. Now I'm just confused.
He ignored his own essay, so even the actual substance of the essay could be considered an existential threat to the essay. I have to wonder though if he ignored his own argument whilst in the process of writing his article, because if he truly did so then it probably should have been a dissertation on modalities which I'm sure we all could have readily ignored without doing ourselves much harm. Thus defeating the point of the article, leading to a resurgence of interest in Structuration.
Or to put it more simply: this essay is a plot by the intelligentsia to make us reason like a madman.
Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
#19The thing that always bothered me about "Considered harmful" titles is that, when you title your own article that, you're just pompously referring to yourself in the third person. The reason they are in the passive voice is that the original "considered harmful" essay was a letter to the editor, and therefore was titled not by the author, but by the editor[1]. Therefore, to expand out the subject of the sentence, the…
Glad to see this, as I was surprised that there was an entire post about the harm that "considered harmful" essays caused without even citing the original reference that started the whole hoopla, the very-opinionated, very-brilliant and very-legendary Edsger Dijkstra.
Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
#20The grammatical construction "Blah Blah Considered Harmful" has always bugged me...it doesn't seem proper. Shouldn't it be something like "Blah Blah Should Be Considered Harmful"?
Technically speaking, if anyone has ever said that Blah Blah is harmful, than it has been considered harmful. The latter construction with Should Be is a more polite form, but the former is also correct if it's ever been true once.