why ; ?

[Yigal Chripun]

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "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. ;) 
> 
> 

I'm glad that you realize that I was talking about "semicolon-oriented
language" vs. "newline-oriented language". I never said we shouldn't
discuss python vs. D which (again) was not discussed in this thread.
this very long discussion was about the semicolon and you already know
what I think of such discussions.

Your post actually proves my original post. If you read it again you
would realize that I said that I prefer to use the right tool for the
job, be it D, python or even VB (ok, I would probably would never use VB
if I can help it ;) ). Also, there's was link to a wiki page about the
Sapir hypothesis in there. Sapir is a linguist and he noticed that the
language used by a people affects their way of thinking. Applying this
to our discussion means that a C/C++ programmer "thinks" in a C/C++ way
and it would be harder for him to understand python vs D. Hence your
knee jerk reaction to Python as you stated above. so you see, you've
just proved my point.

--Yigal