

Why I hate (programming language) advocacy [2000] - j_baker
http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/12/advocacy.html

======
lmkg
Money quote:

> Apparently it was inconceivable that there might be two right ways to do
> something.

And he's speaking to a Perl audience.

I think that tribalism is a pretty good term to describe the phenomenon. When
you start taking something as part of your identity (be it programming
languages or sports teams or bands), you wrap your ego up in it. The result is
that every statement about your tribe, or another tribe, becomes a value
statement, regardless of how objective it should be.

~~~
brehaut
To make matters worse, us nerds have been confusing value and identity ever
since we were shown objects. Bah-dom-bom.

------
hzzn
I remember first reading this not long after it was originally written. This
article made a significant impact on me, and contributed significantly to my
maturation as a programmer.

I thought then (and still believe today) that the basic gist of this piece
applies to a broad range of topics. People can get tribalistic and territorial
about just about anything, software and sports don't even scratch the surface.

~~~
hzzn
Also, Perl sucks.

~~~
hzzn
I'm guessing from the down-votes that folks have taken my "Perl sucks" comment
at face value. (Or maybe they just don't think I'm funny, which puts them in
good company; my girlfriend doesn't think I'm very funny either.)

I suppose the joke would have been more obvious if I had added something along
the lines of _Python FTW SUCKAS! ;) :D ;)_.

~~~
ramchip
Implying that _Python FTW SUCKAS! ;) :D ;)_ would have been upvoted more than
what you posted is IMHO quite insulting to HN posters.

It has its up and downs, but overall HN is a bit more serious than Reddit &
friends. Humour will only get voted up if it's somewhat original/clever.

~~~
hzzn
(I realize--hope?--that everyone else has moved on from this thread.)

"what you posted is IMHO quite insulting to HN posters"

If it is insulting even with my comment _just above that_ praising an article
that itself criticizes the very kind of tribalistic behavior I was ironically
exhibiting, then maybe more of those voting should have read the article
itself and taken its message to heart.

------
Jach
This is a nice article. I've felt like there's been too much language advocacy
and (inevitably) bashing on HN recently. And it's direct, too, not just
incorrectly inferred. (As the Perl guy in the beginning of the article did
when the author spoke about ML.)

------
Raphael_Amiard
>I don't want to be stuck with Perl 5.6.0 for the next ten years either.

Golden quote :)

Very nice article by the way. Sums up a lot of things in a concise and
reasonable way. It truely applies to lots of people

------
j_baker
One interesting point: it talks about Perl 6. And it was written in 2000....

I didn't realize it's been in the works for _that long_.

~~~
angelbob
Yup. It's changed design pretty drastically in that time, though. Now it takes
a lot more from Haskell than it used to, for instance.

~~~
camccann
It also includes support for computations on quantum superpositions of
multiple values! Truly, it is ahead of its time.

------
techiferous
<http://isrubybetterthanpython.com>

~~~
donw
As a long-time Rubyist, I find this kind of stuff... well, stupid. Python has
some bits that I _really_ wish we had in Rubyland, things like sane namespaces
and the massive pile of libraries. Being able to pluck from SciPy for doing
numerical analysis is an amazing boon, and outside of Python, I can't think of
a single language that provides the same set of mathematical tools that you
get from SciPy.

At the same time, I don't like syntactic whitespace, or the 'only one way to
do things' philosophy, and I prefer Ruby's more functionally-oriented approach
(e.g., blocks) to Python's more procedural feel. But these are just personal
preferences, not objective reasons to choose Ruby over Python.

Trying to ask 'which is better' is pointless; they're both very good dynamic
languages, and you should use whichever you prefer.

~~~
techiferous
Ahem...that's a _humor_ web site...

~~~
j_baker
I downvoted it as well. Not because it's trolling or anything like that. I
downvoted it because, well, it just isn't very funny. This is the third page
like that I've seen this week.

~~~
techiferous
Downvoting a humor site because it isn't funny... _that_ makes sense. :)
Here's an upvote. :)

