Tell HN: X is dead. Long live X.

#1

Post by BigCanOfTuna » Mon, Jun 27, 2011, 12:51 AM UTC

Everyone knows that X in these two sentences originally referred to "The King". However, the sentences should be interpreted as "The (old) King is dead. Long live the (new) King."

Re: Tell HN: X is dead. Long live X.

#2

Post by jamesrom » Mon, Jun 27, 2011, 1:16 AM UTC

I see this all the time. It doesn't make any sense. It's like how people say 'I could care less'.

Re: Tell HN: X is dead. Long live X.

#3

Post by rudiger » Mon, Jun 27, 2011, 1:19 AM UTC

JavaScript (the programming language) is dead. Long live JavaScript (the compilation target)!

Re: Tell HN: X is dead. Long live X.

#4

Post by veyron » Mon, Jun 27, 2011, 1:29 AM UTC

jamesrom wrote: post #2

I see this all the time. It doesn't make any sense. It's like how people say 'I could care less'.

in some languages and cultures (especially yiddish), certain expressions are understood to be sarcastic. I think 'I could care less' was originally used in this sarcastic tone (akin to 'Tell me about it' in US circles)

Re: Tell HN: X is dead. Long live X.

#5

Post by ams6110 » Mon, Jun 27, 2011, 1:31 AM UTC

I thought this was going to be a piece about X the windowing system.

Re: Tell HN: X is dead. Long live X.

#6

Post by veyron » Mon, Jun 27, 2011, 1:34 AM UTC

To my knowledge, the original phrase was intended to make the new king throned immediately after the discovery of the death of the previous king. Unfortunately there's no real atomicity in spoken language ...

As far as the idiom is concerned, it makes perfect sense if you think about the second usage as the set of problems for which the language is commonly used to solve. Take for example JavaScript:

Javascript (the original language) is dead. Long live Javascript (the successor language for the problem of client-side scripting).

This would be a great title for an article about a scripting language like coffeescript

Re: Tell HN: X is dead. Long live X.

#7

Post by stonemetal » Mon, Jun 27, 2011, 1:39 AM UTC

Sure it does. C# 2 comes out X(old King) refers to C# 1 and X(new King) refers to C# 2. It pretty much is true in the case of C# as soon as a new version is released the old version is dead, there is zero talk about the last version with everything either focused on the current release or the next release.

Re: Tell HN: X is dead. Long live X.

#8

Post by BigCanOfTuna » Mon, Jun 27, 2011, 1:57 AM UTC

stonemetal wrote: post #7

Sure it does. C# 2 comes out X(old King) refers to C# 1 and X(new King) refers to C# 2. It pretty much is true in the case of C# as soon as a new version is released the old version is dead, there is zero talk about the last version with everything either focused on the current release or the next release.

Very different. There can only be one king.

Re: Tell HN: X is dead. Long live X.

#9

Post by jordanekay » Mon, Jun 27, 2011, 2:02 AM UTC

veyron wrote: post #4

jamesrom wrote: post #2

I see this all the time. It doesn't make any sense. It's like how people say 'I could care less'.

in some languages and cultures (especially yiddish), certain expressions are understood to be sarcastic. I think 'I could care less' was originally used in this sarcastic tone (akin to 'Tell me about it' in US circles)

No, semantically "I could care less" means exactly the same as "I couldn't care less," in the very same way that in French, "Je ne sais pas" means the same as "Je sais pas." Nothing sarcastic about it.

Re: Tell HN: X is dead. Long live X.

#10

Post by BigCanOfTuna » Mon, Jun 27, 2011, 2:06 AM UTC

veyron wrote: post #6

To my knowledge, the original phrase was intended to make the new king throned immediately after the discovery of the death of the previous king. Unfortunately there's no real atomicity in spoken language ... As far as the idiom is concerned, it makes perfect sense if you think about the second usage as the set of problems for which the language is commonly used to solve. Take for example JavaScript: Javascript (the…

I could see this argument if an article was titled "Client side scripting (JavaScript) is Dead. Long live client side scripting (Ruby)" ...assuming one of the browsers yanked JavaScript in favor of Ruby.