By Fat

One of my favorite takes on this debate, from a software developer: http://byfat.xxx/chomsky (SFW even though it's on an .xxx domain) (It is "this debate" in a broader sense, not this specific debate, which I also happen to love. I both agree with you that it is amazing how everyone sees what they want to see in that debate, and also am in the "lol Chomsky got owned so hard he didn't even know what was going on" camp.)

>I cannot be anything but skeptical here. Who's to say what Camus would have said if actually asked this questions? Nobody, but that's beside the point. It's not supposed to be a seance, but a made up conversation (plus, the answers are adapted from the writer's own work). A "discussion" with the writer similar to the way an author discusses with their ideas by reading their books and getting to understand their way of thinking. >Certainly not with an absolute degree with confidence. Yeah, but no such degree of confidence is promised -- or even expected from the readers to have. Approach this similar to how one would approach this guy's writing about Hemingway's Javascript preferences: http://byfat.xxx/if-hemingway-wrote-javascript Of course Hemingway didn't have any, and never wrote JS. But the idea is to put what we know about the author (and their preferences, beliefs, mannerisms, style, etc) and apply it to how they'd answer a question or how'd they do something like writing JS. There's no absolute degree of confidence here either -- Hemingway, were he actually alive today at ~120 years old and interested in programming might surprise us all and opt for Angular. But from what we know, and to the best of our ability to interpret them, this would be his style (and "that would be what Camus would have said" in TFA case).

It is because this is that offensive to anyone who writes objective-c for a living. Really? I write objective-c for a living and I'm not finding it offensive at all. I may not agree with all of it, but rather than getting upset about it I'm trying to understand where this developer is coming from. They clearly put effort into making it, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that there must be some gains to be had here. This is all kinds of wrong. Is it correct from the language specification's point of view? Does the compiler allow it? Does it generate correct bytecode? It seems it might not align with your code style or even widely accepted "best practices" but it's probably not all kinds of wrong. That level of rigor might be appropriate for certain environments (health care, flight control, etc) but not all software needs to be held to that standard. The reaction in this thread seems awfully similar to The Great Javascript Semicolon Wars that took place earlier this year. [Y]ou must consider how it fits into that surrounding code. Perhaps this library is meant to shift the way that new code is written. Maybe it'll get some of those bazillion smart people working on other libraries to see a different way to do things. Relax. Don't get upset. It's not meant as an affront to your style or sensibilities. Consider this by @fat [1]: Projects with the most radically unique styles often have the highest internal standards for code quality and…

http://blog.codinghorror.com http://lea.verou.me/ http://ejohn.org/ http://byfat.xxx/ http://www.windytan.com/ http://meowni.ca/ and many others

>I certainly don't feel entitled to anything concerning OSS, no need for an ad hominem ;) No ad hominem here, it's entitlement. And even if you personally have a more nuanced understanding, what you've written will encourage people who do not. http://byfat.xxx/what-is-opensource-and-why-do-i-feel-so-guilty (Skip to nineteen minutes in.) https://github.com/wpeterson/emoji/issues/23 For larger context of these, their relevant HN threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10093332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8712035

More/better examples: http://byfat.xxx/if-hemingway-wrote-javascript I think the Hemingway example is especially well done, in particular the lack of comments and "request was made but not good."