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> At its core, yes, Yuri wanted to highlight the fact that the “power” of the language created more or less “a fractal” of type/function composition cases that made it very difficult to guarantee the correctness of a given call site. This is inherent in the language, but causes potential issues across the ecosystem and he felt that the community did not take it as seriously as he would have hoped. At least that is the takeaway I got from both talking to him and reading what he wrote.

For things like "The majority of sampling methods are unsafe and incorrect in the presence of offset axes" I agree that this is just some unfortunate combination of library code and concerns that the library authors had not considered, but the numerous correctness issues in the language and stdlib seem like they would often make it hard to figure out what exactly the problem is.

> bloody cheap, unfalsifiable, and adds little to nothing to the discussion.

Sorry about that. I'm not sure how to highlight the recurring nature of these less-than-factual posts and their effect on some members of the community while respecting the wishes of those people.




> For things like "The majority of sampling methods are unsafe and incorrect in the presence of offset axes" I agree that this is just some unfortunate combination of library code and concerns that the library authors had not considered, but the numerous correctness issues in the language and stdlib seem like they would often make it hard to figure out what exactly the problem is.

I am not sure what we are arguing here. You asked what Yuri originally wanted to highlight and I answered based on my own insights. I have re-read what he wrote and I still stand by my conclusion and I see no point in arguing back and forth as I have stated here and in a comment when Yuri’s post was originally submitted [1] that all the issues are derived from how Julia as a language handles types and dispatch. Everything beyond this is arguing minute semantics and frankly very uninteresting compared to a discussion as to whether it can be resolved and how.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31398040

> Sorry about that. I'm not sure how to highlight the recurring nature of these less-than-factual posts and their effect on some members of the community while respecting the wishes of those people.

Not sure if I can consider this an apology when you in your very next breath make exactly the same kind of vague statement that I called out in the first place. Since you apparently know these people, how about collecting their opinions and presenting them anonymised? Likewise, if there are lies spread across so many posts, why not simply collect and refute them? This all seems obvious to me, but maybe I am missing something? In fact, I find posts such as yours in very stark contrast to what Yuri wrote and accomplished with his post, so perhaps you can find inspiration there?


If the project has cultural issues that would cause severe correctness issues regardless of the language's semantics, it may not be that useful to talk about technical solutions that would let other projects without these cultural issues make a language with similar semantics and fewer correctness issues.

> Since you apparently know these people, how about collecting their opinions and presenting them anonymised

This sounds like the sort of claim that would get called out as unfalsifiable online.

> Likewise, if there are lies spread across so many posts, why not simply collect and refute them? This all seems obvious to me, but maybe I am missing something?

Is the question really "Why don't you just do a lot of work for me, for free, since I will not use a search engine?"


> If the project has cultural issues that would cause severe correctness issues regardless of the language's semantics, it may not be that useful to talk about technical solutions that would let other projects without these cultural issues make a language with similar semantics and fewer correctness issues.

How can solving – or failing to solve – a technical issue that could then lead to insights shared between communities ever be a bad thing? Maybe I am just too thick to see it? But I am ending my efforts at this point as I am not getting any closer to understanding what you are trying to convey.

As for your “comebacks”, we clearly have very different standards and expectations when it comes to discourse. Where I come from, those that bring claims are expected to also bring adequate evidence – or at the very least attempt to do so and not spread claims just to later throw their hands into the air when called out for it.




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