Gary Willoughby: "Why Go's design is a disservice to intelligent programmers"

[Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d-announce]

>> That kind of articles are bad for the image of the D community

Nick S:
> No. Just...no.
>
> I'm honestly *really* tired of general society's (seemingly?) 
> increasing intolerance FOR intolerance.
>
> Some things ARE bad. Some ideas are dumb ideas (ie without 
> merit). Some features are bad features. Some products really 
> are crappy products. Calling it out when you see it, using a 
> frank explanation of your reasoning, isn't bad, it's productive.

Excellence is incompatible with tolerating mediocrity or what is 
appalling, and what I have seen is that there are aesthetic 
aspects to creative endeavours not conventionally thought of as 
having an aesthetic element, and it is in the nature of such 
things that one cannot and should not tolerate what one perceives 
to be ugly in a creative endeavour.  If one is driven mostly by 
ROI rather than high feelings, one doesn't get to excellence.  So 
it is my belief that dealing with creative people means dealing 
with a certain ... intensity.

That (on the aesthetic aspects of technical fields) is not just 
my opinion, but also (I think) that of a certain Mr W Bright, 
judging by his comments on how good code should look and on good 
aircraft design, although he presented this in his usual low-key 
manner.  I was looking for a language that was beautiful, as well 
as powerful, and for whatever it is worth, this was a factor of 
high appeal with D.

It's also the view of Feynman, not to mention many great minds of 
the past.  Ie it is limiting to insist on data before forming a 
strong opinion about something (which is not to say that one may 
not change one's mind in the face of contrary data).

"You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you 
get it right, it is obvious that it is right—at least if you have 
any experience—because usually what happens is that more comes 
out than goes in. ...The inexperienced, the crackpots, and people 
like that, make guesses that are simple, but you can immediately 
see that they are wrong, so that does not count. Others, the 
inexperienced students, make guesses that are very complicated, 
and it sort of looks as if it is all right, but I know it is not 
true because the truth always turns out to be simpler than you 
thought." - Feynman via Wikiquote (but the same idea comes across 
in his books).

> To discourage dissent, objections, or complaints is to rob 
> ourselves of potential improvement. *That's* what critique and 
> complaints and objections ARE: Recognition of the potential for 
> improvement. There *cannot* be progress and improvement without 
> first identifying existing faults. If nobody ever identified 
> and voiced criticism of punchcards, for example, we'd all still 
> be stuck in the world of 1950's computing.

Excellently put.   (And, I would add, a constructive draw towards 
what is generative - not just fault-finding).

> It's not as if "the D crowd" doesn't critique itself and it's 
> own language just plenty, so it's not like there's any 
> hypocrisy here. And I'm certainly not willing to accept that 
> programmers should be viewed as being part of distinct 
> mutually-exclusive factions based on some single-language 
> allegiance. I'm a D guy. I also happen to be a fan of Nemerle. 
> And both languages have things I hate. So scratch the "it's the 
> D crowd" idea.

Interesting - what should I read about Nemerle, and what is it 
best at ?
>
> And seriously, the article in question barely mentions D at all.
>
> So no, this is NOT some sort of "D community piece attacking 
> another language" as some comments seem to imply. It is merely 
> an isolated critique of one language by someone who happens to 
> be *using* the given language.

There are some very interesting psychological dynamics in the 
reaction to this kind of piece.  For me it was key that although 
it was clearly written in a humorous tone, and hurriedly, he 
seemed to speak from the heart - it is refreshing to see such 
work even when one doesn't agree with it.

BTW since when has linking to something been an endorsement of it?