why ; ?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote in message 
news:g003u3$1g02$1 at digitalmars.com...
> "Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 at gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:fvvtu6$16tq$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> Where in my post did you read that I said "[we should] go around
>> assuming that all opposing viewpoints are always equally valid"? I know
>> what I wrote and that ain't it.
>>
>
> Where in my post did you read that I said "You said that we should go 
> around assuming that all opposing viewpoints are always equally valid"? ;)
>
> But you did say "this whole thread is ridiculous", even though we 
> discussed other issues besides "semicolon-oriented language" vs. 
> "newline-oriented language". If you really meant just the particular 
> branch of the thread you replied to and not actually the whole thread, 
> then ok, fair enough.
>
>> If you decide to discuss next which editor is better: vi[m] or emacs
>> (since as you say, this is "potentially helpful/productive" in your
>> opinion) than count me out since yet again this comes down to personal
>> preference.
>
> Sure. After all, nobody would say that you were obligated to participate. 
> Feel free to pick and choose which discussions you wish to participate in. 
> I do that, just as I image most of the others here do.
>
>> PS: it's amazing how such smart people can waste so much time and energy
>> debating such unimportant issues as the semicolon at the end of
>> statements with such a passion.
>
> One could make the same claim about meta-debates, such as this. (I'm not 
> actually making that claim though. I don't personally mind the occasional 
> meta-debate.)
>
> Besides, I think it's good to periodically challenge, and be challenged 
> by, each others viewpoints. This way we don't stagnate, isolated in the 
> world of our own preferences, possibly even blind to the occasional 
> mistaken assumption. For all I know, someone might say something that 
> makes me think of Python in a new way and I decide "Wow, this is my new 
> preference. I like Python better than D. If I had just agreed to disagree 
> then my eyes never would have been opened to this."
>
> As real-world examples, when I first started reading about Python, I had a 
> knee-jerk reaction and decided "this is garbage, I'm not going near it", 
> and that was that. But a couple weeks ago I was talking to a friend who 
> liked Python, we disagreed, but still discussed, and I realized that 
> Python did have some good functional-ish features - things that even my 
> favorite language, D, could use to borrow. And I also came to the 
> conclusion that it really wouldn't kill me, at the very least, to write a 
> quck little prototype, script, etc., in Python every now and then. All 
> this even though I still consider, for example, the rationale behind 
> Python's indentation to be logically flawed and inappropriate for large 
> projects. In much the same way, my friend ended up getting interested in D 
> (To paraphrase: "Wow, a static typed, non-VM language without the muss and 
> fuss of C/C++, who knew?").
>
> If we had just decided "these are matters of preference, discussing it is 
> ridiculous", and avoided what seemed like a pointless discussion, then 
> where would we both be right now? Sitting in our own happy ignorance.
>

I just re-read what I wrote here and realized it came across a little bit 
hippy-ish. Anybody: feel free to sprinkle in a few "fuck"s or "damnit"s as 
you read it. ;)