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

[Chris via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Friday, 27 March 2015 at 03:53:36 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>>> 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?

Interesting. Have you read Oscar Wilde? Your comments remind me 
of him somehow. I was just thinking yesterday how working with D 
makes me happy whereas working with other (lower) languages makes 
me grumpy. Going down to the punchcard level (PHP, JS etc.) is 
boring and doesn't do justice to the human mind. Whenever I use 
D, I am confident that I can map a complicated reality onto a 
machine, it inspires me and it challenges me. Primitive languages 
discourage me. So there's more to productivity than meets the eye 
when looking at numbers. Numbers are insignificant, they can 
prove anything you want, and you can tweak them any way you want. 
"Eat shit, a million flies can't be wrong!", as they say.

It's one thing to be productive in terms of maintaining and 
selling apps and another in terms of being innovative. You can 
sell a million records by sticking to well-trodden paths 
(dum-dum-dum-di-dum) or you can be a Mozart, a Beethoven, a Miles 
Davis or a Hendrix and just say "I'm gonna do my own thing!". 
Sure, it involves what is commonly perceived as "arrogance", but 
it's not.