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Someone posts a really neat language tool, and the top-voted post is not talking about the technical merits or interest of the tool, but is instead a pretentious rant about how real language is what ordinary people speak and understand. You know, phrases like "Cartesian attitudes" and "identical system using shared constructions". This is the descriptivist-approved language for the masses. Using 'whereas' instead of 'while' is an elitist habit that must be stopped, whereas name-dropping dead philosophers out of context is the mark of a humanist.

Anyway, I'm primarily interested in hacking, not in seeing some angry nerd on the Internet make excuses to take down someone else's technically challenging work.



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