That's a ridiculous blanket statement to make. Changing languages can incur a very high cost. Making peace with this as an individual seems like a useful skill to acquire. If you want to insist then there's no connection to stoicism, then fine, but don't try to pass off language choice as something that's easy to change along the way.
>That's a ridiculous blanket statement to make. Changing languages can incur a very high cost.
Yes, but you can always not even get started with Go (or whatever language you don't like) to begin with, so no change cost there.
Also, you can always change organizations, especially in today's "buyer's market" IT landscape. Better than working with something that you feel makes you miserable and non-productive.
And it's best to apply the principle of charity to what one responds to. Things are not always meant at their strictest interpretation. Compared to the "things you cannot change" stoicism was concerned with (like death, your past, some genetic misfortune, etc.), a programming language is nothing especially unchangeable -- which was my point.
That said, I absolutely love your libs and programs and use them all the time :-)
> That said, I absolutely love your libs and programs and use them all the time :-)
I don't write Rust or Go code but his repo seems like it is a great showcase for both languages - from what I read, it seems Rust is a little bit more expressive than Go but, having not written anything significant in either, I'm not the best judge.
I think Rust especially should be on on my "to explore" list :)
I'm skeptical of declaring what stoicism ought to be applied to. It seems like a generic framework that works at the level of perception rather than a finite whitelist of approved things.
I would consider changing organizations to be an immense cost. It would be perfectly reasonable to apply stoic principles to make peace with language choice. Many of the costs associated from using a tool one believes is inferior are related to one's own emotional reaction to it. If you can conquer that, then you've made yourself a lot more flexible.
I can't imagine how anyone could claim that changing organizations is something that's easy. :-/
Thanks for your comment on charity. I admit that I came on a bit strong after rereading my comment. I sometimes get frustrated quite a bit with your commentary on Go, and I let it get the best of me. Sorry about that.
Much more fundamental is the idea that suffering itself is an unchangeable fact of life. This, I think, is what makes it so similar to Buddhism. Inact, suffering is a necessary contrast to bliss and one can induce bliss via temporary self-induced periods of bliss.
Perhaps then the stoic lesson is we should write some machine code from time to time to really enjoy the benefits of anything above. Or, to relate, writing a bit of Go for some time when you mostly write Haskell.
It's significantly harder for an organization of 10+ developers to change from a single language to another single language without a technically savvy and respected manager just mandating what it will be.
Only you can easily change languages...
Stoicism was referring to actual things one cannot change. Like, say, death, or their status as a roman slave.
So it's less stoicism and more "our way or the highway".