On Thu, 2015-03-26 at 12:33 -0700, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> On 3/26/2015 1:44 AM, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> > I know it's a bit unfair in places and it's got a click bait title
> > but who
> > cares? I got my point across and I think people understand where
> > i'm coming
> > from. It seems to have got really popular and I've been swamped
> > with mail, etc.
> > I think it's the most read article i've ever written. ha! :o)
> 
> You've managed to get 376 points and 663 comments, which is probably a record for any Reddit D related article!
> 
> For better or worse, you've clearly struck a nerve.

Welcome to the world of guerilla marketing.

(Almost) All publicity is good publicity.

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Wednesday, 25 March 2015 at 21:00:37 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
wrote:
> https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/30ad8b/why_gos_design_is_a_disservice_to_intelligent/
>
> Andrei

Wow this bad, almost like "Shots Fired".

Although you can tell hes trying to say something by using a
vertical line of imports on go and a horizontal line of imports
on D to make it look shorter...

On Thu, 26 Mar 2015 13:17:47 -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

> Of course I'm not saying that makes trolling "good" (although I'm absolutely *amazed* that so many on reddit actually see your article as trolling - it obviously isn't, they clearly didn't even read it. Some of them even think *you're* the one who's calling many programmers "lesser" rather than Rob Pike)

that's why i never read comments. especially comments on sites like HN or reddit.

On Thu, 26 Mar 2015 12:27:13 +0000, Chris wrote:

> ... or Google abandons Go! Ha ha ha.

they almost did that with Dart, so they have no language to replace Go right now. i think that Go programmers are safe for three or five years.

On Thursday, 26 March 2015 at 22:43:06 UTC, ketmar wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Mar 2015 12:27:13 +0000, Chris wrote:
>
>> ... or Google abandons Go! Ha ha ha.
>
> they almost did that with Dart, so they have no language to replace Go
> right now. i think that Go programmers are safe for three or five years.

average Google product lifespan is something like 4 years.

On 03/26/2015 06:36 PM, ketmar wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Mar 2015 13:17:47 -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>
>> Of course I'm not saying that makes trolling "good" (although I'm
>> absolutely *amazed* that so many on reddit actually see your article as
>> trolling - it obviously isn't, they clearly didn't even read it. Some of
>> them even think *you're* the one who's calling many programmers "lesser"
>> rather than Rob Pike)
>
> that's why i never read comments. especially comments on sites like HN or
> reddit.
>

I always tell myself to avoid them, but I usually can't help browsing at least a few anyway :) I see reddit more as a topic-driven discussion board though, rather than a comment section, but I'll grant it's a rather blurry line.

YouTube comments are notorious for being the real bad ones though. Those ones are easy enough to avoid reading!

On 3/26/2015 12:40 PM, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> (Almost) All publicity is good publicity.


I attended a presentation at NWCPP on Go last week. I have never written a Go program, so filter my opinion on that.

It seems to me that every significant but one feature of Go has a pretty much direct analog in D, i.e. you can write "Go" code in D much like you can write "C" code in D.

The one difference was Go's support for green threads. There's no technical reason why D can't have green threads, it's just that nobody has written the library code to do it.

On Friday, 27 March 2015 at 01:47:57 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 3/26/2015 12:40 PM, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
>> (Almost) All publicity is good publicity.
>
>
> I attended a presentation at NWCPP on Go last week. I have never written a Go program, so filter my opinion on that.
>
> It seems to me that every significant but one feature of Go has a pretty much direct analog in D, i.e. you can write "Go" code in D much like you can write "C" code in D.
>
> The one difference was Go's support for green threads. There's no technical reason why D can't have green threads, it's just that nobody has written the library code to do it.

vibe has (experimental?) green threads, doesn't it?
I don't keep up with vibe, so I may be wrong.

>> That kind of articles are bad for the image of the D community

Nick S:
> No. Just...no.
>
> I'm honestly *really* tired of general society's (seemingly?) increasing intolerance FOR intolerance.
>
> Some things ARE bad. Some ideas are dumb ideas (ie without merit). Some features are bad features. Some products really are crappy products. Calling it out when you see it, using a frank explanation of your reasoning, isn't bad, it's productive.

Excellence is incompatible with tolerating mediocrity or what is appalling, and what I have seen is that there are aesthetic aspects to creative endeavours not conventionally thought of as having an aesthetic element, and it is in the nature of such things that one cannot and should not tolerate what one perceives to be ugly in a creative endeavour.  If one is driven mostly by ROI rather than high feelings, one doesn't get to excellence.  So it is my belief that dealing with creative people means dealing with a certain ... intensity.

That (on the aesthetic aspects of technical fields) is not just my opinion, but also (I think) that of a certain Mr W Bright, judging by his comments on how good code should look and on good aircraft design, although he presented this in his usual low-key manner.  I was looking for a language that was beautiful, as well as powerful, and for whatever it is worth, this was a factor of high appeal with D.

It's also the view of Feynman, not to mention many great minds of the past.  Ie it is limiting to insist on data before forming a strong opinion about something (which is not to say that one may not change one's mind in the face of contrary data).

"You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right—at least if you have any experience—because usually what happens is that more comes out than goes in. ...The inexperienced, the crackpots, and people like that, make guesses that are simple, but you can immediately see that they are wrong, so that does not count. Others, the inexperienced students, make guesses that are very complicated, and it sort of looks as if it is all right, but I know it is not true because the truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought." - Feynman via Wikiquote (but the same idea comes across in his books).

> To discourage dissent, objections, or complaints is to rob ourselves of potential improvement. *That's* what critique and complaints and objections ARE: Recognition of the potential for improvement. There *cannot* be progress and improvement without first identifying existing faults. If nobody ever identified and voiced criticism of punchcards, for example, we'd all still be stuck in the world of 1950's computing.

Excellently put.   (And, I would add, a constructive draw towards what is generative - not just fault-finding).

> It's not as if "the D crowd" doesn't critique itself and it's own language just plenty, so it's not like there's any hypocrisy here. And I'm certainly not willing to accept that programmers should be viewed as being part of distinct mutually-exclusive factions based on some single-language allegiance. I'm a D guy. I also happen to be a fan of Nemerle. And both languages have things I hate. So scratch the "it's the D crowd" idea.

Interesting - what should I read about Nemerle, and what is it best at ?
>
> And seriously, the article in question barely mentions D at all.
>
> So no, this is NOT some sort of "D community piece attacking another language" as some comments seem to imply. It is merely an isolated critique of one language by someone who happens to be *using* the given language.

There are some very interesting psychological dynamics in the reaction to this kind of piece.  For me it was key that although it was clearly written in a humorous tone, and hurriedly, he seemed to speak from the heart - it is refreshing to see such work even when one doesn't agree with it.

BTW since when has linking to something been an endorsement of it?

On Thursday, 26 March 2015 at 19:37:30 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> On Thursday, 26 March 2015 at 19:16:54 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
>> You're making a big assumption about which programmers and projects count and which don't. I wonder if outside of Google
>
> It doesn't matter what the programmers think, what matters is how the development environment affects the project in measurable terms. Having all kinds of features does not necessarily benefit projects. That's the difference between a fun toy language and one aiming for production and maintenance.

Programming is - for now - still a human activity, and what is important in human activities may not always be measured, and what may be easily measured is not always important.  That doesn't mean one should throw away the profiler and go back to guessing, but it does suggest caution about adopting the prestigious techniques of the natural sciences and applying them to a domain where they don't necessarily fully belong.

I say this as someone coming from the financial markets, where we have all experienced quite recently the effects of mistaking being quantitative for thinking soundly - what happened ought not to have been a surprise, and of those who saw 2008 coming and spoke publicly about it, I don't think a single one based their view on the quant especially.  Yet the field of macroeconomics is much more fully developed than that of assessing programmer productivity and quality of output.

It is not scientific to depend on an approach that has not yet proven itself in practical terms over the course of time and in different environments.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/



Laeeth.