8 ms·
I couldn't help but notice this phrase: [X] is nice but [Y] will get you most of the way and [dealing with the difference] is simple. reads a lot like the Blu
by smosher 13y ago
I couldn't help but notice this phrase:
[X] is nice but [Y] will get you most of the way and [dealing with the difference] is simple.
reads a lot like the Blub conceit. I'm not accusing you of that, but I do disagree that OO can give you what pattern matching typically does.
- colinkahn 13y agoWhat is the blub conceit? Google searched it and got nothing.
- smosher 13y agoThe important bit is: As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power continuum, he knows he's looking down. Languages less powerful than Blub are obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub. From PG's Beating the Averages (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)
- coldtea 13y agoA "my language is more expressive than yours" version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoI live ok without pattern matching and I build compilers/runtimes for a living; is that blub conceit? I also have no problem with the expression problem. C# has partial classes anyways, which work even if type checking is non-modular. Of course, I would like it if C# support some form of pattern matching, but not enough to switch over to F# (whose pattern matching isn't as rich as Scala's, anyways).
- smosher 13y ago> I live ok without pattern matching and I build compilers/runtimes for a living; is that blub conceit? No, I would have quoted it the first time if it was. But if you want to repeat that again you will certainly sound conceited.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoOK, I have no idea what point you are trying to make then. Please forgive my ignorance on your social conventions.
- smosher 13y agoThe point was simply that what you wrote is how a very bad argument starts. I took care to point out I wasn't accusing you of that but you have reacted defensively anyway. It's my fault for trying to engage an HN-er in a form of discourse other than debate.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoIf its a meta comment, just say so directly. It is a bit difficult to decode these comments sometimes, especially when defending OOP.
- coldtea 13y ago>reads a lot like the Blub conceit Perhaps. But then again the "Blub conceit" is nothing that exists in real life as a proven fact of computer science. It's just an argument expressed in an essay. Not some kind of formal logical error.
- smosher 13y agoWhat's your point?
- coldtea 13y agoMy point, which is pretty obvious, is that it "reading like the Blub conceit" doesn't mean anything at all with regards to its correctness. Might as well say "your argument reads a lot as something that an unbeliever in the flying spaghetti monster would say".