On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 11:10:53 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

I believe what counts is the strength of the signal, hard data or anecdotal. You mentioned software process improvement, so let's take an example of an useful idea there: unit testing.

Yeah, I have no hard data on their usefulness, only anecdotal experience that dmd/DRuntime/Phobos unit tests regulary prevent introducing bugs. The cause and effect are so clear there that I definitely believe they help a lot with program reliability, even if they aren't worth it for every project.

So yes, an anecdotal forum theory about language adoption can be believable in principle. But the average case is nowhere near transparent enough to be considered anything more than noise. The writer may personally have good reasons to trust his/her theory, but at least as likely is that they're just making something up because they don't know. It's usually impossible to tell from outside.

On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 12:09:38 UTC, Dukc wrote:

As I already said, this not a black/white issue. It is not a single factor issue.

If you choose to ignore all perspectives then you cannot make any judgement at all. Then you cannot design. Cannot improve. If you look at a situation from many perspectives then you can make judgments and weigh them. Is the outcome certain? Obviously not. No design outcome is certain!

Just because you don't feel you can evaluate the usefulness of a perspective does not mean that this is the general case for everybody else. The more experience you get the better judgment you can make. The more perspectives you use when analysing, the more likely you are to make a good judgement.

It is only impossible to make judgements from the outside because you choose to place yourself on the outside.

On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 12:19:01 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

I believe we both agree on the basic principle of usefulness of a viewpoint:

Backed up by arguments that can be judged, useful.
Not backed up, or backed up by only non-judgeable arguments, garbage. Ten or hundred of such viewpoints, still just as garbage.

I am saying that the standard Reddit ramble about language adoption belongs to the latter category, and I believe you think it might belong to the former if the one evaluating has enough experience?

The reason I believe a large majority of such posts are worth nothing is that we have a tendency to make up reasons for even utterly random stuff.

On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 12:39:28 UTC, Dukc wrote:

Meaning, you should not give any "authority" weight to the viewpoint of a random poster, unless they can show their viewpoint to be founded.

On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 12:58:36 UTC, Dukc wrote:

But you shouldn't give "authority" to research results either, because the context is different and the research results could come from "tunnel vision".

The viewpoint of a random poster could provide a perspective you had not thought about and that gives you a new angle to analyse your design.

If you are unhappy with a situation then you need to change. You cannot predict the outcome of the change, but by using multiple perspectives you:

1. Get an idea of which directions you can make changes in.
2. Can consider more potential outcomes of the changes you make.

But if you don't make any changes (because there is no data), then the situation is highly unlikely to improve.

The core of design: you don't know the outcome, the outcome is one or multiple hypotheses. But if you look at it from multiple angles then you have a better grasp of where this could head.

On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 13:11:26 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

You're saying that the forum ranting may be valuable because it might give you ideas, even if it conveys no trustworthy data? Okay, granted. If that's all you claim, we don't disagree after all.

I guess my stance came out as "talking about language adoption is strictly negative, unless you have exceptional arguments", and you felt a need to rebut that. That wasn't quite what I said but thanks for the clarification anyway. I admit that I probably was in the need for that clarification myself.

On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 13:26:10 UTC, Dukc wrote:

Why would it be negative?

Ok, so to go deeper into what "design is".

It is perfectly reasonable to claim that we cannot make any certain predictions about outcome, so we have to rely on hypotheses.

Then we need to consider two types of hypotheses:

1. hypotheses about possible negative effects of the design change
2. hypotheses about possible positive effects of the design change

Then you can evaluate various designs and make trade-offs. You don't need to know the exact outcome, but in order to plan ahead you benefit from having a good grasp on possible positive and negative outcomes. Both in order find the right design and in order to plan ahead beyond that.

If a possible positive effect does not happen, the negative impact is low.

If we overlook a possible negative impact then he negative impact can be quite high.

So, when we design for change it isn't critical that the positive outcome did not occur, but it is critical to avoid negative outcomes. So yes, enabling more potentially positive outcomes and minimizing potentially negative outcomes will over several iterations make for a better situation (from a statistical perspective).

On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 13:39:28 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

I'm sorry, I'm not sure why you're explaining design theory to me? I thought we were not talking about design?

On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 16:11:02 UTC, Dukc wrote:

I think so? We are basically discussing which design aspects influence adoption?

Visions are designed. A process is designed (or should be). Webpages are designed. Documentation is designed. Language features are designed.

On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 16:18:03 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

I see - that is what this thread is about after all. But you didn't finish your explanation to make any point about language adoption.