
The reason why Blub programmers have such a hard time picking up more powerful languages. - pius
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir%E2%80%93Whorf_hypothesis
======
inklesspen
Prove it. Sapir-Whorf is fun for sci-fi, but there's no evidence for anything
but the most loose variations of it.

No, the reason Blub programmers have a hard time picking up more powerful
languages is that they have invested time in their skillsets, so even if they
were to program in Lisp syntax, they'd still write Blub-in-Lisp code, not
using macros, closures, functional programming, etc. Because they never
learned about them and don't see the point.

The same thing comes up all the time in Python communities; people who don't
know Python very well write "un-Pythonic" code that doesn't take advantage of
the language's best built-in functionality like list comprehensions and
generator expressions.

Compare:

# unpythonic way of squaring each element in a list

source_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

dest_list = []

for x in range(len(source_list)):

    
    
        dest_list.append(source_list[x]*source_list[x])
    

# Pythonic way

[x*x for x in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]]

~~~
mynameishere
# unpythonic way of squaring each element in a list

...

# Pythonic way

...

# Correct way (...in any language, and if I see anything else in my co-workers
code, you damn well better believe there will be a re-write):

List dest_list = squareEachElementInList(source_list);

The problem with languages like Lisp, Haskell, Erlang, etc, is that the syntax
is completely atrocious. It's not just a matter of parenthesis or whatever.
It's a matter of eye-straining horribleness. People have little trouble
learning and using Javascript, for the simple reason that its syntax is
reasonable.

~~~
paulgb
I find LISP syntax to be quite easy on the eyes, personally. Of course, since
whitespace is unimportant in LISP, it is easy to write unreadable, non-
indented code, but it is also easy not to.

Javascript might be easy to learn, but generally people don't do very complex
things in Javascript. Actually, if you ignore the syntax, Javascript is closer
in some ways to LISP than it is to C/C++/Java.

~~~
michaelneale
I heard it described as the "soul of lisp in the body of java" ;)

------
michaelneale
I was listening to a podcast (I think) where someone who had recently studied
linguistics was saying that Sapir-Whorf has been almost discredited in
academic communities for some time, yet it lives on as a "myth" for people
outside of the academic communities.

I just can't find any reference of this. This is pretty common thing, ideas
from a long time ago tend to stay in the publics collective memory as still
being current.

The one that springs to mind is the "breathing" you see pregnant-in-labour
women doing in hollywood movies (yet this technique was thrown out decades ago
as having no effect at all). Yet it lives on in circles of people who aren't
experts and repeat it amongst themselves as if they are.

A quick search didn't yield anything like this for Sapir-Whorf though.

~~~
pius
I'd be very interested to see some references discrediting it.

~~~
michael_nielsen
Steven Pinker's wonderful book "The Language Instinct" claims the the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis is bunk. It's not the strongest part of the book, but still
well worth reading.

As a taste, Pinker tracks the evolution of the myth that the eskimos have more
words for snow than English-speakers. He explains how this myth was
manufactured by anthropologists who wanted to give credibility to Sapir-Whorf,
and eventually took on the status of a "fact", appearing in textbooks and so
on.

~~~
altay
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, in a nutshell, is "language influences thought."
The classic debunking example is the urban legend, "Eskimos have over a
hundred words for 'snow.'" This is often overextended to imply, "...and so
Eskimos must conceive of snow on a whole 'nother _level_ , dude!"

But our non-Eskimo language doesn't fundamentally limit our capacity to
comprehend the nuances of snow. We just add modifiers (e.g., 'wet' and
'fluffy') to "snow", instead of using a different word. And, actually, it
turns out the Eskimos use modifiers, too.

 _The Language Instinct_ is a great read. Pinker's got a real talent for
popular science writing that's accessible but not dumbed down. Check out his
first hit, _How the Mind Works_ , if you're interested in general cognitive
science.

~~~
rms
The Eskimo example isn't a very good one because English has lots of words for
snow/frozen things, like glacier, frost, sleet, slush, etc.

------
bootload
_"Blub programmers"_ are referenced in "Beating the averages" ~
<http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html> and describes the "Blub paradox".

    
    
       "... As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer 
       is looking down the power continuum, he knows 
       he's looking down. Languages less powerful than 
       Blub are obviously less powerful, because they're 
       missing some feature he's used to. But when our 
       hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other 
       direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't 
       realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely 
       weird languages. He probably considers them 
       about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all 
       this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is 
       good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub ..."
    

Raganwarld has a good explanation of the "Blub paradox" ~
[http://weblog.raganwald.com/2006/10/are-we-blub-
programmers....](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2006/10/are-we-blub-
programmers.html)

------
rms
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people>

~~~
rms
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61237>

