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

[Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d-announce]

>> 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.

Only a few things, and not his writings on aesthetics - but I do 
think truth, beauty and virtue need to balance each other.  
Concentrating on prettiness alone leads to a shallow kind of 
thing becomes it becomes disconnected from the underlying 
generative spirit and eventually the life goes out of it.  So I 
suspect his perspective was rather different.

> I was just thinking yesterday how working with D makes me happy 
> whereas working with other (lower) languages makes me grumpy.

Yes - and this matters so much more than as technical people we 
give ourselves permission to realize because willpower is a 
limited resource and modern life often appears as if it is a 
conspiracy to exhaust it.  When one actually look forward to 
writing a boring script because "I can do it in D", I take 
notice.  Moving towards what is generative and away from the 
wrong kind of pain is a strategy that seems to pay off in life.

> 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.

Yes, although I must say I still prefer programming in C to VBA.  
Provided the aim is not actually to accomplish something quickly !

> 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.

Yes.  And worst of all is the self deception from believing 
analytical objectivity to be something real rather than something 
that results from unexamined implicit assumptions.  Dr Iain 
Mcgilchrist at Oxford is excellent on this topic.

That doesn't mean one should throw away the profiler, of course...

> 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.

Fully agree, although humbler initial aspirations and self 
conceptions are also compatible with a creative path.   Viz.

"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big 
and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. "