
Five things Roger Ebert taught me about criticizing programming languages - llambda
http://raganwald.posterous.com/five-things-roger-ebert-taught-me-about-criti
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Nile_H
That's an excellent set of principles, but something I suspect is very
difficult indeed to apply in practice; I can think of unending examples of bad
criticism - even, or especially, when there are strong criticicisms to be made
- but I am struggling to think of any good example where, to use your analogy,
the critic has something to say about a work that's outside his 'preferred
genre' and even outside his personal preferences, but good in terms of the
genre that it's in and a good film to recommend to its intended audience.

Or, indeed, a bad 'film' and a negative review, in the terms of the genre and
the audience, rather than a specialist fan-base of Swedish art-house hipsters
or Laurel & Hardy obsessives.

Feel free to start the ball rolling with (say) a critique of Visual Basic for
Applications, in terms of what it's for and who will use it, rather than
complaining that it isn't C++ or Ruby.

