On: Hofstadter on Lisp (1983)

[BoiledCabbage]

> HackerNews sadly never fails to disappoint.

FYI, that means the opposite of how you used it.

"Never fails to disappoint" is an idiom that means a person or thing consistently disappoints.

[lproven → BoiledCabbage]

I was grappling -- and failing -- to parse that comment. Thank you for explaining.

To unpack the explanation, because I was wondering how the very negative statement could be misinterpreted:

"Never" is a negative; "fails" is a negative; in English, two negatives cancel out.

"Never fails to disappoint" means "always disappoints".

[blenderob → BoiledCabbage]

But they said "sadly". They said "HackerNews sadly never fails to disappoint".

If they really meant the opposite that "HackerNews never disappoints" why would that be "sad"?

But since they said "sadly" I think they really meant what they wrote which is that HN consistently disappoints them. Maybe they meant that the Lisp articles on HN do not go into describing exactly how "code as data" works in actual practical matters and that is consistently disappointing? And they are finally happy when someone explained "code as data" to them in the comments section?