On: Stages of denial in encountering K

[jim-jim-jim]

Lots of OOP boilerplate makes absolutely no sense to me because I have never had to write such code. I would consider Java and C# unreadable compared to an array language.

[saagarjha → jim-jim-jim]

Boilerplate can be stripped away, though, while you can't pull meaning out of a symbol without knowing what the symbol is.

[nathell → saagarjha]

Sure you can — from repeated usage of said symbol in context. That’s how language acquisition works in toddlers.

Not saying that it’s a preferred way, though.

[saagarjha → nathell]

I would compare trying to pick up K as trying to figure out one of the clicking languages when you know Spanish, while going between most languages is like going between Spanish and Italian. You can kind of guess your way through in the latter case, while it's significantly harder to do the former unless you actually sit down and learn the language formally.

[msla → nathell]

Chomsky has an idea called "The poverty of the stimulus", where he attempts to prove his ideas about deep syntax (or whatever he calls it) by handwaving that toddlers can't possibly learn language by merely being immersed in it for a few years.

I'm not impressed with the notion as applied to toddlers, but I think it applies fairly well to learning what variables mean in a codebase. Especially one written to be terser-than-terse.