I agree with your (Jacques's) larger point, but I think this is a bit of a mountain out of a molehill especially this bit - "It's just a good old hanging party in disguise." Really? .
Every community in the world has fierce discussions about the comparative merits and demerits of the various tools used.
I know martial artists who have fierce debates about which martial art styles are "best" while agreeing that it is the fighter not the style that is ultimately important.
I disagree with this bit of your argument too.
"Real Programmers (TM) can do their work in any environment, they will have their preferences but for the most part they'll be language agnostic because they have learned over the years that the tool is less important than he or she that wields it."
The best programmers I know are not language agnostic at all. They have marked language preferences to the point where they will go out of the way to work with the "best" languages they know. The tool is less important than the wielder, sure but the best wielders try very hard to use the best tools, which is hardly "agnostic".
If this were true, PG could have written HN in PHP. PHP is perfectly adequate for the functionality of HN. The best programmers go for their preferred tools (to the point of buildig new ones if necessary) rather than "agnostically" select whatever will do the job. I suspect COBOL would "suffice" for most business apps, for e.g. and perl for most web apps. If one thinks all langauges are "equal" ins some abstract sense, why bother inventing new ones.
Now if you are saying that one shouldn't actively going about criticizing/putting down other people (as distinct from the languages/tools/ etc they use), than I agree. I hope we never come to a politically correct era where all of us mumble pious homilies about how all languages are Turing Equivalent etc.
All that said, I think your frame of "features from other languages that i would like in my favorite language" is brilliant. Good thinking.
> I disagree with this bit of your argument though.
Good, let's see if we can both learn something :)
> The best programmers I know are not language agnostic at all.
I agree with that, it is just that they will be capable of doing the job in any language, it is their preference to do it in the one that they think is suited best for the job.
> They have marked language preferences to the point where they will go out of the way to work with the "best" languages they know.
Absolutely.
> The tool is less important than the wielder, sure but the best wielders try very hard to use the best tools, which is hardly "agnostic".
Ok, point taken. What I meant with agnostic is that it is a point of personal preference, not dogmatic. I'm not sure which word fits better there than agnostic.
> f this were true, PG could have written HN in PHP. PHP is perfectly adequate for the functionality of HN.
Who knows, it might even be better suited than arc :)
(side note, HN seems to be crashing an awful lot lately, in spite of reduced length of the lists for the new, home and submissions pages).
"What I meant with agnostic is that it is a point of personal preference, not dogmatic."
I wonder if even this is true though. Very strong personal preferences for one tool or language over another can look like dogma to outsiders. What makes something "dogma" is ignorant adoption of a view point or preference and then blindly parroting it and actively demonizing people who choose other tools.
The best programmers (the subset we are talking about) don't blindly adopt (or maintain) their preference for a specific language out of ignorance. Linus Torvalds, for example, has a very strong anti C++ bias [1]. That doesn't make him not part of the set of "best programmers".
Again I agree with your larger point of going around bashing other people because they have different tastes from yours being an unproductive exercise.
"I would hate to program in PHP (or even, I think PHP sucks as a programming language because of reasons x y z) and would much prefer to use Python (or arc or whatever) " is very different from "People who use PHP are idiots and should be burned at the stake".
Actually I am fine with that headline ("PHP must die").
I didn't bother reading the article, because I know all the arguments about what is broken in PHP (and also what is not) and it was unlikely I would learn anything new and I have better things to spend my time on. I just read it as saying something like "Shaolin Kung Fu should die" It is just an opinion about a tool, not necessarily a correct one.
Now if he had said "PHP programmers must die", then sure, I can see why that would bother people.
Every community in the world has fierce discussions about the comparative merits and demerits of the various tools used.
I know martial artists who have fierce debates about which martial art styles are "best" while agreeing that it is the fighter not the style that is ultimately important.
I disagree with this bit of your argument too.
"Real Programmers (TM) can do their work in any environment, they will have their preferences but for the most part they'll be language agnostic because they have learned over the years that the tool is less important than he or she that wields it."
The best programmers I know are not language agnostic at all. They have marked language preferences to the point where they will go out of the way to work with the "best" languages they know. The tool is less important than the wielder, sure but the best wielders try very hard to use the best tools, which is hardly "agnostic".
If this were true, PG could have written HN in PHP. PHP is perfectly adequate for the functionality of HN. The best programmers go for their preferred tools (to the point of buildig new ones if necessary) rather than "agnostically" select whatever will do the job. I suspect COBOL would "suffice" for most business apps, for e.g. and perl for most web apps. If one thinks all langauges are "equal" ins some abstract sense, why bother inventing new ones.
Now if you are saying that one shouldn't actively going about criticizing/putting down other people (as distinct from the languages/tools/ etc they use), than I agree. I hope we never come to a politically correct era where all of us mumble pious homilies about how all languages are Turing Equivalent etc.
All that said, I think your frame of "features from other languages that i would like in my favorite language" is brilliant. Good thinking.