Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful

meyerweb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 84 posts

Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful

#71

Post by pc2g4d »

"Considered Harmful" is a cliche but not really harmful, unless you're the author and want to be viewed as hip/cutting-edge/cool.

I'd say that driving "Considered Harmful" out of the conversation should be considered harmful. The "considered harmful" titles are great because they provide a very concise encapsulation of the contents of the essay. When I see "X considered harmful" I immediately know that the work will be arguing against X. I've read a number of these because I want to see what there is to be said against things that I often take for granted, e.g. the utility of Angular or whatever.

Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful

#72

Post by serge2k »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #3

Indeed. 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.

I still like them better than the "X is dead" followed by "long live X" that was a fad for a while.

I vote we focus on eliminating the most annoying of all title formats, the "gate" suffix.

Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful

#73

Post by serge2k »

SixSigma wrote: post #33
pidg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me reach out to you about why I left Gmail for FastMail. It's because if you're not paying for the product... you ARE the product. Yeah.

FastMail doesn't do free accounts for new signups any more, just 60 day trials. :)

the points is referring to why gmail is free.

I considering switching back anyway. Fastmail search is just awful.

Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful

#74

Post by dragonwriter »

vonmoltke wrote: post #56
dragonwriter wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone says we should write essays because it will get us noticed, make us more employable, and sharpen our writing skills. But few of us have anything important to say. The advice needs to be updated slightly, then, to clarify the apparent confusion: you should , if you can, write essays for all those reasons, but step one of writing an essay for those purposes is find something meaningful to say .

So only people with meaningful things to say or build should get noticed and hired?

> So only people with meaningful things to say or build should get noticed and hired?

...based on writing essays.

There are other ways to get noticed and hired. And, writing essays that reveal that you have nothing meaningful to say probably isn't a valuable use of time to get noticed and hired (if you are trying to get noticed and hired for a tech job, taking the same time to increase your portfolio of open source contributions you can point to is probably more valuable.)

Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful

#75

Post by chris_wot »

innguest wrote: post #43
FreakyT wrote: post #15

The 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…

> The reason they are in the passive voice is that the original "considered harmful" essay was ...written by a pompous prick (cf. with classy Alan Kay).

The article wasn't pompous, and the title was chosen by Nicholas Wirth.

Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful

#76

Post by [deleted] »

tincholio wrote: post #67
innguest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia's article on Dijkstra says: "He was the first to make the claim that programming is so inherently complex that (...)" Meanwhile Alan Kay had 12 year old kids making computer games (videos on Web Archive). Dijkstra contributed algorithms. In that sense he contributed as a mathematician. That doesn't diminish what he did. But it does not compare with what Alan Kay did for the sum of these two parts: computers…

Programming is not all of CS, and the fact that everyone and their mom are doing OO does not take away from anything of what Dijkstra said. On a more "people" level, I think that arguing for more rigor and formal approaches to programming is truly more important that creating the next generation of code monkeys. I agree that Kay's work has had much more practical influence, but I don't think it has been necessarily a…

[deleted]

Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful

#77

Post by antod »

lectrick wrote: post #19
FreakyT wrote: post #15

The 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.

Are you sure about that? Did you skip the 'What Are “Considered Harmful” Essays?' section near the top?

Seems the original reference is mentioned quite clearly. quote:

> The Jargon File has a short entry on “considered harmful” that encapsulates the genesis of such essays:

> Edsger W. Dijkstra’s note in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, “Go To Statement Considered Harmful,” fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars…. As it turns out, the title under which the letter appeared was actually supplied by CACM’s editor, Niklaus Wirth.

> The controversy resulting from the article’s publication became so heated that the CACM subsequently decided to never again publish pieces with such assertive positions.

Granted some of the links have since rotted over the last 13yrs though.

Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful

#78

Post by braythwayt »

tincholio wrote: post #36
jballanc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the "very-opinionated" point, I'm particularly fond of Alan Kay's quote: > I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.

I've always found that quote to be particularly douchey. Then again, I do think that Dijkstra's contributions to CS were more important than Kay's, too, but I suspect that I might not be in the majority there...

I think they are sufficiently different that it is not possible to compare importance on an objective basis.

Dijkstra worked in Computer Science. And the relevant quote there is that "Computer Science is no more about computers, than Astronomy is about telescopes.”

Dr. Kay did phenomenally important work with computers and programming. It’s important in its own right. Either of us could say that we prefer to dwell on the ramifications of one or the other.

I think it’s safe to say that if you took either of their contributions away outright, our world in 2015 would be much poorer for it.

Now if you want a good Dr. Kay quote, “Programming is a Pop Culture” has to be high on the list. I think he’s deeply right about that, but being right doesn’t in any way tarnish the nano-Dijkstras associated with damning the entire field.

Re: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful

#79

Post by innguest »

lectrick wrote: post #69
innguest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia's article on Dijkstra says: "He was the first to make the claim that programming is so inherently complex that (...)" Meanwhile Alan Kay had 12 year old kids making computer games (videos on Web Archive). Dijkstra contributed algorithms. In that sense he contributed as a mathematician. That doesn't diminish what he did. But it does not compare with what Alan Kay did for the sum of these two parts: computers…

Kay : Dijkstra :: Ruby : Haskell Dijkstra was correct in saying that you don't even need a computer to do "Computer Science," all you need is a pencil, paper, and a mental model of what you're trying to do given computer constraints. Dijkstra more theoretical; Kay more hands-on. I think BOTH are necessary, or at least important.

There is theoretical, and then there is theoretical: one is privately fueled and produces real-world industry-strong gems like Haskell; the other is publicly fueled and produces concepts such as self-stabilization and superstabilization.

If Dijkstra is so awesome someone should write a Wikipedia article with more important achievements and less medals.

Post reply on HN