is laziness a programer's virtue?
Xah Lee
Xah Lee, 20021124
In the unix community there's quite a large confusion and wishful
thinking about the word laziness. In this post, i'd like to make some
clarifications.
American Heritage Dictionary third edition defines laziness as:
“Resistant to work or exertion; disposed to idleness.”
When the sorcerer Larry Wall said “The three chief virtues of a
programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris”, he used the word
“laziness” to loosely imply “natural disposition that results in being
economic”. As you can see now, “Resistant to work or exertion” is
clearly not positive and not a virtue, but “natural disposition that
results in economy” is a good thing if true.
When Larry Wall said one of programer's virtue is laziness, he wants
the unix morons to conjure up in their brains the following
proposition as true: “Resistant to work or exertion is a natural human
disposition and such disposition actually results behaviors being
economic”. This statement may be true, which means that human laziness
may be intuitively understood from evolution. However, this statement
is a proposition on all human beings, and is not some “virtue” that
can be applied to a group of people such as programers.
Demagogue Larry Wall is smart in creating a confusion combined with
wishful thinking. By making subtle statements like this, he semi-
intentionally confuses average programers to think that it is OK to be
not thorough, it is OK to be sloppy, it is OK to disparage computer
science. (like the incompetent unixers and perlers are)
Can you see the evil and its harm in not understanding things clearly?
This laziness quote by Wall is a tremendous damage to the computing
industry. It is a source among others that spurs much bad fashion
trends and fuckups in the industry. It is more damaging than any
single hack or virus. It is social brain-washing at work, like the
diamond company De Beers' tremendously successful sales slogan: “A
Diamond is Forever” or Apple's grammatically fantastic “Think
Different”.
The most fundamental explanation of why Larry Wall's sophistry are
damaging to society is simply this: What he said is not true and they
are widely spread and conceived as worthwhile. This is a form of mis-
information. This is a manifestation of Love without Knowledge as i
expounded before, with subtle but disastrous consequences (already).
[DISCLAIMER: all mentions of real persons are opinion only.]
----
This post is archived at:
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/perl_laziness.html
Ken Tilton
Xah Lee wrote:
> Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
>
> Xah Lee, 20021124
>
> In the unix community there's quite a large confusion and wishful
> thinking about the word laziness. In this post, i'd like to make some
> clarifications.
>
> American Heritage Dictionary third edition defines laziness as:
> “Resistant to work or exertion; disposed to idleness.”
>
> When the sorcerer Larry Wall said “The three chief virtues of a
> programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris”, he used the word
> “laziness” to loosely imply “natural disposition that results in being
> economic”. As you can see now, “Resistant to work or exertion” is
> clearly not positive and not a virtue, but “natural disposition that
> results in economy” is a good thing if true.
>
> When Larry Wall said one of programer's virtue is laziness, he wants
> the unix morons to conjure up in their brains the following
> proposition as true: “Resistant to work or exertion is a natural human
> disposition and such disposition actually results behaviors being
> economic”. This statement may be true, which means that human laziness
> may be intuitively understood from evolution. However, this statement
> is a proposition on all human beings, and is not some “virtue” that
> can be applied to a group of people such as programers.
Xah, you are losing your sense of humor. Wall listed the usually
pejorative "lazy" as a virtue simply to grab the reader, make them
think, and simply to entertain better. Surely The Great Xah understands
the virtue of flamboyant writing and does not want every word yanked
from context and slid under the microscope for dissection.
kzo
--
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
"Algebra is the metaphysics of arithmetic." - John Ray
"As long as algebra is taught in school,
there will be prayer in school." - Cokie Roberts
"Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra."
- Fran Lebowitz
"I'm an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive."
- Tim Allen
Dan Bensen
> Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
> programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris”, he used the word
> “laziness” to loosely imply “natural disposition that results in being
> economic”.
Programming by definition is the process of automating repetitive
actions to reduce the human effort required to perform them. A good
programmer faced with a hard problem always looks for ways to make
his|her job easier by delegating work to a computer. That's what Larry
means. Automation is MUCH more effective than repetition.
--
Dan
www.prairienet.org/~dsb/
Daniel Gee
active laziness. Passive laziness is what most people have. It's
active laziness that is the virtue. It's the desire to go out and /
make sure/ that you can be lazy in the future by spending just a
little time writing a script now. It's thinking about time
economically and acting on it.
Kay Schluehr
I like Larry Wall, despite being not a Perl programmer, and when he
secretly subverts the american, protestant working ethos I like him
even better :)
John Thingstad
> Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
>
> Xah Lee, 20021124
>
> In the unix community there's quite a large confusion and wishful
> thinking about the word laziness. In this post, i'd like to make some
> clarifications.
>
> American Heritage Dictionary third edition defines laziness as:
> “Resistant to work or exertion; disposed to idleness.”
>
In this context I think you can safely take it to mean:
Don't work hard, work smart.
Avoid repetitious work. If somthing seems to elaborate find a more
efficient way.
In a course I took on verifiable programming I found working with Hoare
logic
extremely tedious. So I started using rewriting loops as recursive
procedures and
using induction instead. It took about a quarter of the time as the
invariant of a loop
fell out rather naturally this way. I failed the course, but when I took
the course
over again a year later I noticed that the book had been rewritten and now
half the book
was dedicated to Generator Induction. (Seems the professor noticed I
failed in a interesting
way and figured out it was not so stupid after all.) Naturally I had no
problems the second time ;)
This is just one example but it should convey the idea.
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
Xah Lee
I want to thank you for your spirit in supporting and leading the lisp
community, in spreading lisp the language both in what you have done
technically as well as evangelization, as well as the love and
knowledge attitude towards newsgroup communities in general, in part
thru your numerous replies to my posts in the past years. (as opposed
to, the motherfucking pack of driveling and fuckface ignoramuses that
are predominate personalities in newsgroups, including some of the
fucking asshole intolerant bigwigs in the lisp newsgroup who think
themselves as the holder of justice and goodness (which has
contributed significantly to the stagnation of lisp).)
Thank you.
For those reading this, i also want to mention, that although i think
Perl is a motherfucking language on earth, and its leader and
“inventor” Larry Wall has done massive damage to the computing world,
but Perl the community is in fact very tolerant in general (which is
to Larry's credit), when compared to the motherfucking Pythoners (who
knew SHIT) as well as many of the self-appointed lisp bigwig
characters.
[disclaimer: my statement about Larry Wall is opinion only.]
With Knowledge, and, Love.
Xah
x...@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/
On Apr 15, 10:36 am, Ken Tilton <k...@theoryyalgebra.com> wrote:
> XahLeewrote:
> > Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
>
> >XahLee, 20021124
Jim Ford
> Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
>
> Xah Lee, 20021124
>
> In the unix community there's quite a large confusion and wishful
> thinking about the word laziness. In this post, i'd like to make some
> clarifications.
Years ago I used to work with someone who used to say 'I'm a lazy person
- I like to do things the easy way!'. I guess this is what Larry Wall means.
Jim Ford
James Stroud
Laziness is re-posting something dated 2002.
Jürgen Exner
> Xah Lee wrote:
PLEEEEEASE DO NOT FEED THE TROLL
jue
dbe...@eecs.wsu.edu
different...
Cor Gest
Some entity, AKA dbe...@eecs.wsu.edu,
wrote this mindboggling stuff:
(selectively-snipped-or-not-p)
> Of course, for functional languages, 'lazy' means something rather
> different...
>
lazy means: just get a post-grad to do the grunt-work for free.
Cor
--
The biggest problem LISP has is that it does not appeal to dumb people
If this failed to satisfy you try reading the Hyper-Spec or woman frig
(defvar MyComputer '((OS . "GNU/Emacs") (IPL . "GNU/Linux")))
Read the mailpolicy before mailing http://www.clsnet.nl/mail.html
Ken Tilton
John Thingstad wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 18:25:19 +0200, Xah Lee <x...@xahlee.org> wrote:
>
>> Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
>>
>> Xah Lee, 20021124
>>
>> In the unix community there's quite a large confusion and wishful
>> thinking about the word laziness. In this post, i'd like to make some
>> clarifications.
>>
>> American Heritage Dictionary third edition defines laziness as:
>> “Resistant to work or exertion; disposed to idleness.”
>>
>
> In this context I think you can safely take it to mean:
> Don't work hard, work smart.
This and several other responses miss that Xah understands that
distinction, witness this excerpt, and especially the very last clause:
> When the sorcerer Larry Wall said “The three chief virtues of a
> programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris”, he used the word
> “laziness” to loosely imply “natural disposition that results in being
> economic”. As you can see now, “Resistant to work or exertion” is
> clearly not positive and not a virtue, but “natural disposition that
> results in economy” is a good thing if true.
I will leave it to you to re-read the rest of what Xah wrote to find out
about what he was in fact complaining.
hth,kt
Ken Tilton
I understand that you mean well, but the fact is that the only NG
pollution arising from Xah's posts begins with some people abusing Xah
for perceived trolling and others who feel differenty stepping in to
support his right to post. ie, If you /really/ do not want to see a long
thread, well, don't feed it by saying don't feed it. That works for real
trolls when folks miss that they are trolling and you can draw their
attention to the trollishness, but not when someone is making a
heartfelt post, no matter what you think of it.
hth,kzo
Jürgen Exner
> Jürgen Exner wrote:
>> Ken Tilton wrote:
>>
>>> Xah Lee wrote:
>>
>>
>> PLEEEEEASE DO NOT FEED THE TROLL
>
> pollution arising from Xah's posts begins with some people abusing Xah
> for perceived trolling and others who feel differenty stepping in to
> support his right to post. ie, If you /really/ do not want to see a
> long thread, well, don't feed it by saying don't feed it. That works
> for real trolls when folks miss that they are trolling and you can
> draw their attention to the trollishness, but not when someone is
> making a heartfelt post, no matter what you think of it.
You must be new to CLPM. I suggest you read his way off-topic,
unsubstantiated, and just plain wrong posting in the archives of DejaNews.
jue
D Herring
Ken Tilton
I enjoy Xah's writings on comp.lang.lisp.
Sherm Pendley
> Jürgen Exner wrote:
>>
>> PLEEEEEASE DO NOT FEED THE TROLL
>>
> I understand that you mean well, but the fact is that the only NG
> pollution arising from Xah's posts begins with some people abusing Xah
> for perceived trolling and others who feel differenty stepping in to
> support his right to post.
Which is precisely why Xah cross-posts. His intent is to start a cross-
group argument - the very definition of trolling. He not only admits to
being a troll, he *brags* about it on his web site.
> If you /really/ do not want to see a
> long thread, well, don't feed it by saying don't feed it. That works
> for real trolls when folks miss that they are trolling
That's exactly why Jürgen posted as he did, because you've missed that
Xah is *always* trolling.
> and you can
> draw their attention to the trollishness, but not when someone is
> making a heartfelt post, no matter what you think of it.
Xah hasn't made a heartfelt post in his life. Even if his opinion of Larry
Wall's statements *were* valid, it wouldn't matter - what makes him a troll
is the way he cross-posted it to multiple irrlevant groups in an attempt to
spart an argument over it.
He's done this time and time again. Check his history on Google Groups -
you'll see.
sherm--
--
Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net
Sherm Pendley
> I enjoy Xah's writings on comp.lang.lisp.
Then you can keep him.
Followups set.
Dan Bensen
> This and several other responses miss that Xah understands that
> distinction, witness this excerpt, and especially the very last clause:
>
>> When the sorcerer Larry Wall said “The three chief virtues of a
>> programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris”, he used the word
>> “laziness” to loosely imply “natural disposition that results in being
>> economic”. As you can see now, “Resistant to work or exertion” is
>> clearly not positive and not a virtue,
Actually, I disagree with this assertion. The gung-ho kind of person
who revels in brute effort often won't even think of good programming
ideas because he|she is so intent on solving the problem through sheer
force, and also derives a sense of pride from that.
In programming, on the other hand, laziness can be an excellent
motivator in coming up with ideas. That's one thing that's so great
about Lisp. With macros and functional programming, you don't have to
type or paste in lots of similar code like you do in most other
languages. It's laziness that inspires the programmer to write more and
more abstract code. The only thing that Larry is *not* referring to is
intellectual laziness.
> I will leave it to you to re-read the rest of what Xah wrote to find out
> about what he was in fact complaining.
Xah Lee wrote:
> When Larry Wall said one of programer's virtue is laziness, he wants
> the unix morons to conjure up in their brains the following
> proposition as true: “Resistant to work or exertion is a natural human
> disposition and such disposition actually results behaviors being
> economic”. This statement may be true, which means that human laziness
> may be intuitively understood from evolution. However, this statement
> is a proposition on all human beings, and is not some “virtue” that
> can be applied to a group of people such as programers.
Laziness (physical, not intellectual) is exceedingly useful in
programming.
I also disagree with the idea that Larry is any more dangerous than
Guido, Matz, or Gosling. They're all part of a reaction against
the difficulties of C++ that started somewhere around 1990 or so.
I don't seen any merit in singling out Larry and Perl for special
treatment.
--
Dan
www.prairienet.org/~dsb/
Rob Warnock
+---------------
Indeed. See Robert A. Heinlein's short story (well, actually just
a short section of his novel "Time Enough For Love: The Lives of
Lazarus Long") entitled "The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy To
Fail". It's about a man who hated work so much that he worked
very, *very* hard so he wouldn't have to do any (and succeeded).
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <rp...@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
Torben Ægidius Mogensen
Indeed. A programmer is someone who, after doing similar tasks by
hand a few times, writes a program to do it. This extends to
programming tasks, so after writing similar programs a few times, a
(good) programmer will use programming to make writing future similar
programs easier. This can be by abstracting the essence of the task
into library functions so new programs are just sequences of
parameterized calls to these, or it can be by writing a program
generator (such as a parser generator) or it can be by designing a
domain-specific language and writing a compiler or interpreter for
this.
Torben
Pascal Bourguignon
> Laziness (physical, not intellectual) is exceedingly useful in
> programming.
>
> I also disagree with the idea that Larry is any more dangerous than
> Guido, Matz, or Gosling. They're all part of a reaction against
> the difficulties of C++ that started somewhere around 1990 or so.
> I don't seen any merit in singling out Larry and Perl for special
> treatment.
Well at least the notion of the lazy programmer is much older than
1990. In 1981 already my programming teachers were telling us that a
good programmer was an intelligent lazy programmer.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
Torben Ægidius Mogensen
> Daniel Gee <zef...@gmail.com> wrote:
> +---------------
> | You fail to understand the difference between passive laziness and
> | active laziness. Passive laziness is what most people have. It's
> | active laziness that is the virtue. It's the desire to go out and /
> | make sure/ that you can be lazy in the future by spending just a
> | little time writing a script now. It's thinking about time
> | economically and acting on it.
> +---------------
>
> Indeed. See Robert A. Heinlein's short story (well, actually just
> a short section of his novel "Time Enough For Love: The Lives of
> Lazarus Long") entitled "The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy To
> Fail". It's about a man who hated work so much that he worked
> very, *very* hard so he wouldn't have to do any (and succeeded).
You can also argue that the essence of progress is someone saying
"Hey, there must be an easier way to do this!".
Torben
Charlton Wilbur
JE> You must be new to CLPM. I suggest you read his way off-topic,
JE> unsubstantiated, and just plain wrong posting in the archives
JE> of DejaNews.
Ken Tilton fills the same role in comp.lang.lisp that Xah Lee attempts
to fill in other fora; the principal difference is that Mr Tilton
appears to be able to write coherently in English and actually
understands the subjects he trolls about well enough to throw in valid
points among the trolling.
As comp.lang.perl.misc has enough resident trolls without importing
more from elsewhere, followups have been set.
Charlton
--
Charlton Wilbur
cwi...@chromatico.net
Xah Lee
Dear tech geekers,
In a couple of posts in the past year i have crossed-posted (e.g.
recently “What are OOP's Jargons and Complexities”, “is laziness a
programer's virtue?”, “On Java's Interface (the meaning of interface
in computer programing)” ), there are a some controversy, and lots of
off-topic and careless follow ups.
I think a few things today's tech geekers should remind themselves:
• If you deem something off-topic to “your” newsgroup, and want to
tech-geek by changing the “follow-up group”, start with yourself.
Please do not cross-post yourself, and tweak the follow-up, and
proudly proclaim that you changed the follow-up as a benign gesture.
• Please remind yourself what is on-topic and off-topic. Unless you
are the auhority of a online forum, otherwise, Meta-talk, and
policing, are off-topic in general, and only tends to worsen the
forum's quality. This issue is cleared up in online communications as
early as early 1990s.
• The facility of cross-posting is a good thing as a progress of
communication technology, and the action of cross-posting is a good
thing with respect to communication. What the common tech-geekers's
sensitivity to cross-posting are due to this collective's lack of
understanding of social aspects of communication. Cross-posting isn't
a problem. The problem is the power-struggling male nature and
defensiveness in propergating the tongues of a tech geeker's own.
Tech-geeker's behavior towards cross-posting over the years did
nothing to enhance the content quality of newsgroups, but engendered
among computing language factions incommunicado, and aided in the
proliferation of unnecessary re-invention (e.g. the likes of Perl,
PHP, Python, Ruby that are essentially the same) and stagnation (e.g.
the lisp camp with their above-it attitude).
If you are a programer of X and is learning Y or wondering about Y,
please do cross-post it. If your article is relevant to X, Y, and Z,
please cross post it. If you are really anti-cross-posting, please
use a online forum that is more specialized with controlled
communication, such as mailing lists, developer's blogs, and website-
based forums.
I hope that the computing newsgroups will revive to its ancient nature
of verdant cross communication of quality content, as opposed to
today's rampant messages focused on politics, mutual sneering, closed-
mindedness, and careless postings.
References:
“Tech Geekers versus Spammers”
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/tech_geekers_vs_spammers.html
Netiquette Guidelines, 1995, by S Hambridge. (RFC 1855)
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855
D Herring
> In a couple of posts in the past year i have crossed-posted (e.g.
> recently “What are OOP's Jargons and Complexities”, “is laziness a
> programer's virtue?”, “On Java's Interface (the meaning of interface
> in computer programing)” ), there are a some controversy, and lots of
> off-topic and careless follow ups.
Please don't dismiss so many posts as being "off-topic and careless".
> I think a few things today's tech geekers should remind themselves:
>
> • If you deem something off-topic to “your” newsgroup, and want to
> tech-geek by changing the “follow-up group”, start with yourself.
> Please do not cross-post yourself, and tweak the follow-up, and
> proudly proclaim that you changed the follow-up as a benign gesture.
...
A few more points:
- I know many geeks but not so many geekers...
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=geeker
- Please topquote snippets from the threads about which you are commenting.
- Please set your newsreader to prepend "Re: " or somesuch when replying
to a toplevel post.
- Please don't preach about "meta-talk and policing" in a post which is
mostly meta-talk and preaching.
Thanks,
Daniel
Markus E Leypold
"Xah Lee" <x...@xahlee.org> writes:
> • Please remind yourself what is on-topic and off-topic. Unless you
You, Sir, ARE off-topic. I suggest you make the experiment to post
your drivel on your web site and let your fans come to you. Should be
an eye opener, this experiment.
Regards -- Markus
Ingo Menger
> If your article is relevant to X, Y, and Z,
> please cross post it.
Yeah right, and if it is not, don't post it at all. Your articles are
nothing but a bunch of unfounded allegations, moralism and your
personal notion of what alledgedly "hurts society". As such, they have
no relevance at all in technical news groups.
Markus E Leypold
Ingo Menger <quetz...@consultant.com> writes:
But we already had of topic discussions in some of those groups
(meandering into the non technical) that weren't stomped upon by the
group's subscribers. The difference in my eyes is, that Xah is a
troll. What makes Xah a troll is neither off-topic posts nor being
incoherent -- its the attitude. He's broadcasting his drivel to a
number of groups not with the intention to discuss (he hardly ever
answers to answers to his posts), but solely with the intention to
inform the world at large about his own magnificient thoughts. As also
evidenced by reposting some of his stuff (as if he had a fan community
or as if it were a FAQ) or posting stuff dated from 2002.
Trying to correct Xah's behaviour is probably impossible. People who
publish pictures of themselves as he does on the WWW probably don't
have any sense of embarrasment left -- and I consider that a necessary
part in the feedback loop which makes people change: "Look what you
did! Do you really want to look like a dolt in public?" "Umpf. No. God
that was embarrasing" <goes away with the resolution not to get into
such a situation again>.
But that won't happen to Xah.
Regards -- Markus
Mirco Wahab
> Trying to correct Xah's behaviour is probably impossible. People who
> publish pictures of themselves as he does on the WWW probably don't
you think of stuff like this
www DOT m-e-leypold DOT de SLASH leypold-small.jpg
;-)
> -- and I consider that a necessary
> part in the feedback loop which makes people change: "Look what you
> did! Do you really want to look like a dolt in public?" "Umpf. No. God
> that was embarrasing" <goes away with the resolution not to get into
> such a situation again>.
The reason why I answered your posting at all (besides
seeing your x-post going into 5 ng's) is your mentioning
of 'God'. According to christian tradition (which is
somehow on topic in a Perl group) it is exactly the
case of Jesus (imho), who was (in his context) the
"/Do you really want to look like a dolt in public/"
man par excellance. Socrates also comes into the mind ;-)
AFAIK - both were symptoms of the decline
of their societies at the time ...
Regards & sorry for scnr'ing
Mirco
remember - f'up to: comp.lang.perl.misc
Michele Dondi
<dher...@at.tentpost.dot.com> wrote:
>- Please topquote snippets from the threads about which you are commenting.
>
>- Please set your newsreader to prepend "Re: " or somesuch when replying
>to a toplevel post.
>
>- Please don't preach about "meta-talk and policing" in a post which is
>mostly meta-talk and preaching.
FYI "Please" is probably a word that XL ignores completely. Thus do
what most humans in their sane state of mind would do. Killfile it. If
for some reason you can't, then ignore it. Certainly, do not feed it.
Michele
--
{$_=pack'B8'x25,unpack'A8'x32,$a^=sub{pop^pop}->(map substr
(($a||=join'',map--$|x$_,(unpack'w',unpack'u','G^<R<Y]*YB='
.'KYU;*EVH[.FHF2W+#"\Z*5TI/ER<Z`S(G.DZZ9OX0Z')=~/./g)x2,$_,
256),7,249);s/[^\w,]/ /g;$ \=/^J/?$/:"\r";print,redo}#JAPH,
Markus E Leypold
> Markus E Leypold wrote:
>> Trying to correct Xah's behaviour is probably impossible. People who
>> publish pictures of themselves as he does on the WWW probably don't
>> have any sense of embarrasment left ...
>
> you think of stuff like this
> www DOT m-e-leypold DOT de SLASH leypold-small.jpg
> ;-)
;-) No. This actually is a picture of myself I like (very much
indeed), even if the long hair has gone now (I have to update the site
some time within the next weeks, but the original site generator has
died and the new site ain't ready yet).
No, what I mean, is what one poster already posted to c.l.f, what
you'll find looking for Xah Lee with Google image search and I won't
link here. My warning: You probably don't want to see a picture of
Xah's penis in full readiness.
That is, what I consider embarrasing.
> The reason why I answered your posting at all (besides
> seeing your x-post going into 5 ng's) is your mentioning
Your's too (you only changed the f'up) , and now I've done the
ultimate sin and reset the F'up for this answer (if you post URLs to
pictures of me, I reserve the right to say that I LIKE this picture
:-)
But that's the last x-post in this thread, I promise.
Regards -- Markus
Markus E Leypold
> The reason why I answered your posting at all (besides
> seeing your x-post going into 5 ng's) is your mentioning
So now, obeying the f'up.
Xah x-posts in 5 NGs. I'm not sure that isn't a case of escalating the
sorry state of things, but IF I feel the need to respond to that
bashing Xah, it only makes sense if I answer to everyone of these
crossposts. I feel a bit bad because of that, but every now and then I
feel the need to try to curb Xah somehow.
If you answer to that, please mail me a copy -- I'm not reading
comp.lang.perl.* :-)
> of 'God'. According to christian tradition (which is
> somehow on topic in a Perl group) it is exactly the
> case of Jesus (imho), who was (in his context) the
> "/Do you really want to look like a dolt in public/"
> man par excellance. Socrates also comes into the mind ;-)
Well, fine. But Xah is not Jesus and neither Sokrates nor Jesus where
"dolts in public". I think they were considered quite a danger by
their contemporaries -- that where both executed because they thought
and preached things that where in effect a danger to the ruling class.
Xah on the other side doesn't qualify for that.
> Regards & sorry for scnr'ing
:-)
Your forgiven. But I think we'd have to work a bit more on the
criteria for qualifying as Jesus/Sokrates/Galilei: Just being disliked
or told to shut up won't do it -- there ARE real dolts around (esp. in
usenet).
Regards -- Markus
Ingo Menger
<development-2006-8ecbb5cc8aREMOVET...@ANDTHATm-e-leypold.de> wrote:
> What makes Xah a troll is neither off-topic posts nor being
> incoherent -- its the attitude. He's broadcasting his drivel to a
> number of groups not with the intention to discuss (he hardly ever
> answers to answers to his posts), but solely with the intention to
> inform the world at large about his own magnificient thoughts.
This hits the nail on the head.
Perhaps one could understand this behaviour on cultural grounds. In
chinese culture it may be not uncommon to write something that merely
sounds like great wisdom and it is nevertheless appreciated because
it's a piece of calligraphic art.
> Trying to correct Xah's behaviour is probably impossible.
Perhaps somebody could ask the chinese government to put him in jail
for "hurting international society" :)
Lew
>> Trying to correct Xah's behaviour is probably impossible.
Ingo Menger wrote:
> Perhaps somebody could ask the chinese government to put him in jail
> for "hurting international society" :)
Y'know, even in jest, calling for an oppressive regime to suppress even
wrong-headed and self-serving garbage self-expression is immoral and horrible.
How dare you?
Free speech, free press and free expression of ideas is not something to take
so lightly.
--
Lew
George Neuner
<quetz...@consultant.com> wrote:
That's going to be tough because, according to his web page, he's
living in a Honda Civic somewhere in Illinois, USA.
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/Personal_dir/xah.html
George
--
for email reply remove "/" from address
Bruce C. Baker
"Lew" <l...@nospam.lewscanon.com> wrote in message
news:eZedncJsovLSw7jb...@comcast.com...
That's right! Momma don't allow no levity around here!
Off with Markus' head! :-D
>
> --
> Lew
Lew
>> Y'know, even in jest, calling for an oppressive regime to suppress even
>> wrong-headed and self-serving garbage self-expression is immoral and
>> horrible. How dare you?
>>
>> Free speech, free press and free expression of ideas is not something to
>> take so lightly.
Bruce C. Baker wrote:
> That's right! Momma don't allow no levity around here!
>
> Off with Markus' head! :-D
As they walked off together, Alice heard the King say in a low
voice, to the company generally, `You are all pardoned.' `Come,
THAT'S a good thing!' she said to herself, for she had felt quite
unhappy at the number of executions the Queen had ordered.
- /Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/, Lewis Carroll
Ken Tilton
Oh, not to fear, we have The Patriots Act, if Dubbya was an Emacs fan
Xah would be tanning nicely already at Gitmo.
Ken Tilton
Xah Lee wrote:
> Dear Ken,
>
> I want to thank you for your spirit in supporting and leading the lisp
> community, in spreading lisp the language both in what you have done
> technically as well as evangelization, as well as the love and
> knowledge attitude towards newsgroup communities in general, in part
> thru your numerous replies to my posts in the past years.
Hey, thx, but to me recommending Lisp is like recommending water to a
life form.
Meanwhile, the last thing anyone can doubt is that you say what you mean
and mean what you say, so all we can say about your detractors is...
> (as opposed
> to, the motherfucking pack of driveling and fuckface ignoramuses that
> are predominate personalities in newsgroups,
...OK, but we know this from long Usenet experience. Reaching
Enlightenment means smiling on these noisemakers and having compassion
for them, for they live in mean, narrow worlds and in attacking you are
only reaching for the sunlight you enjoy, in however their ignorant way.
The nice thing about this compassionate view is that it leaves you
feeling positive and at peace within yourself, whereas the "driveling
and fuckface" thing leaves you feeling negative and attacked. less good,
for my money.
ken
Ingo Menger
> Markus E Leypold
>
> >> Trying to correct Xah's behaviour is probably impossible.
> Ingo Menger wrote:
> > Perhaps somebody could ask the chinese government to put him in jail
> > for "hurting international society" :)
>
> Y'know, even in jest, calling for an oppressive regime to suppress even
> wrong-headed and self-serving garbage self-expression is immoral and horrible.
You're right. I confess this joke was going too far.
> Free speech, free press and free expression of ideas is not something to take
> so lightly.
I'm with you on this point.
But, since the biggest crime in Xah Lee's opinion apparently is
"harming" and "damaging" society through expression of ideas, it must
be possible to judge him by his own standards.
Duane Rettig
Actually, I think the phrase is a specific instance of the generic
phrase: "A good N is a lazy N." which has been around for a lot
longer; I remember in my high-school years in the late 60s my
chemistry teacher saying "A good chemist is a lazy chemist." and
noting to myself at the time that the phrase seemed a bit cliche.
--
Duane Rettig du...@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Ken Tilton
Duane Rettig wrote:
> Pascal Bourguignon <p...@informatimago.com> writes:
>
>
>>Dan Bensen <rando...@cyberspace.net> writes:
>>
>>>Laziness (physical, not intellectual) is exceedingly useful in
>>>programming.
>>>
>>>I also disagree with the idea that Larry is any more dangerous than
>>>Guido, Matz, or Gosling. They're all part of a reaction against
>>>the difficulties of C++ that started somewhere around 1990 or so.
>>>I don't seen any merit in singling out Larry and Perl for special
>>>treatment.
>>
>>Well at least the notion of the lazy programmer is much older than
>>1990. In 1981 already my programming teachers were telling us that a
>>good programmer was an intelligent lazy programmer.
>
>
> Actually, I think the phrase is a specific instance of the generic
> phrase: "A good N is a lazy N." which has been around for a lot
> longer; I remember in my high-school years in the late 60s my
> chemistry teacher saying "A good chemist is a lazy chemist." and
> noting to myself at the time that the phrase seemed a bit cliche.
>
So I turn to Google to determined exactly how cliched and what other
expansions of your template could be found, and after sorting thru the
"No-good lazy justices" hits come upon <sigh> Wall's definition:
"Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce
overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs
that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you
don’t have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great
virtue of a programmer. "
That actually seems like an awful definition, possibly because Perl does
not really support the productivity leaps possible with other languages?
It certainly seems neutral on the /quality/ of the code.
kt
--
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
"Algebra is the metaphysics of arithmetic." - John Ray
"As long as algebra is taught in school,
there will be prayer in school." - Cokie Roberts
"Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra."
- Fran Lebowitz
"I'm an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive."
- Tim Allen
David Formosa (aka ? the Platypus)
<rando...@cyberspace.net> wrote:
[...]
> Ken Tilton wrote:
[...]
>>> When the sorcerer Larry Wall said ?The three chief virtues of a
>>> programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris?, he used the word
>>> ?laziness? to loosely imply ?natural disposition that results in being
>>> economic?. As you can see now, ?Resistant to work or exertion? is
>>> clearly not positive and not a virtue,
>
> Actually, I disagree with this assertion. The gung-ho kind of person
> who revels in brute effort often won't even think of good programming
> ideas because he|she is so intent on solving the problem through sheer
> force, and also derives a sense of pride from that.
The "Worse is better" school of thought argues that this is a
legitimate way to solve problems. Indeed there is the Ken Thompson
quote "When in doubt, use brute force".
[...]
> It's laziness that inspires the programmer to write more and
> more abstract code. The only thing that Larry is *not* referring to is
> intellectual laziness.
Exactly.
Ken Tilton
David Formosa (aka ? the Platypus) wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 22:53:28 -0500, Dan Bensen
> <rando...@cyberspace.net> wrote:
> [...]
>
>>Ken Tilton wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>>>>When the sorcerer Larry Wall said ?The three chief virtues of a
>>>>programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris?, he used the word
>>>>?laziness? to loosely imply ?natural disposition that results in being
>>>>economic?. As you can see now, ?Resistant to work or exertion? is
>>>>clearly not positive and not a virtue,
>>
>>Actually, I disagree with this assertion. The gung-ho kind of person
>>who revels in brute effort often won't even think of good programming
>>ideas because he|she is so intent on solving the problem through sheer
>>force, and also derives a sense of pride from that.
>
>
> The "Worse is better" school of thought argues that this is a
> legitimate way to solve problems.
Wow, where do you get that?!
> The concept known as "worse is better" holds that in software making
> (and perhaps in other arenas as well) it is better to start with a
> minimal creation and grow it as needed.
> http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html
That's about "when to go live", not "how to program".