Does political orientation affect language choice ?
Fergus Henderson
IMHO, yes, there is a correlation. Furthermore, people's political
orientation also influences language design and evolution.
If you want to understand how people's political orientations are formed
and how political decisions are made, read George Lakoff's brilliant book
"Moral Politics". I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Political orientation is in a very large part determined by people's
basic morals and the different weighting that they give to different
moral principles. Many of the most highly emotive and longest running
debates in the programming language groups come when the application of
different moral principles leads to different conclusions.
For example, here are two moral principles identified by Lakoff:
The Principle of Reward and Punishment
--------------------------------------
People who do the wrong thing deserve to be punished.
People who do the right thing deserve to be rewarded.
It is immoral to punish someone for doing the right thing.
It is immoral to reward someone for doing the wrong thing.
The Principle of Altruism and Harm Minimization
-----------------------------------------------
People who do the wrong thing need help.
People who do the right thing are usually
capable of looking after themselves.
It is immoral to harm those who need help.
It is a moral imperative to help those who need help.
Most people would agree that there is some validity to both of these
principles. However, sometimes we are forced to choose between the two.
People whose politics are to the right of the spectrum tend to give
greater weight to the first of these principles, and those on the left
give greater weight to the second. (This is barely scratching the
surface of Lakoff's work, which goes a lot further in explaining
*why* people favour different principles. See the book for details.)
Some of the arguments for and against strong type systems can be
phrased in ways that directly appeal to these principles.
For example, one argument against the use of strong static type systems
is that it encourages a lack of discipline. Without static typing,
programmers who make mistakes are punished for them, and as a result,
they learn the discipline necessary to write correct code.
Static typing eliminates this, rewarding those who do the wrong thing.
Furthermore, some static type systems restrict language expressiveness,
which punishes those users who have done nothing wrong (written no type
errors). As you can see from these arguments, strong static typing
can be considered to violate the Principle of Reward and Punishment.
On the other hand, there are also some strong arguments that it
conforms to the Principle of Altruism and Harm Minimization.
The relative weight people place on these principles thus affects
their choice of programming language as well as their political
orientation.
[There are also some interesting observations which could be made
regarding Lakoff's observations about the differences between American
and European variants of conservative politics, and how these differences
have influenced the success of programming languages like C and C++
in the USA and hence (because of the USA's pivotal role in the software
industry) in the world. But to give the background to these arguments,
I'd have to explain too much of the stuff in Lakoff's book, and Lakoff
himself does a much better job of that than I would. So unless there
are readers here who are already familiar with Lakoff's work, I'll
have to leave it.]
--
Fergus Henderson <f...@cs.mu.oz.au> | "I have always known that the pursuit
The University of Melbourne | of excellence is a lethal habit"
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh> | -- the last words of T. S. Garp.
Andreas Rossberg
>
> For example, here are two moral principles identified by Lakoff:
>
> The Principle of Reward and Punishment
> --------------------------------------
> People who do the wrong thing deserve to be punished.
> People who do the right thing deserve to be rewarded.
> It is immoral to punish someone for doing the right thing.
> It is immoral to reward someone for doing the wrong thing.
>
> The Principle of Altruism and Harm Minimization
> -----------------------------------------------
> People who do the wrong thing need help.
> People who do the right thing are usually
> capable of looking after themselves.
> It is immoral to harm those who need help.
> It is a moral imperative to help those who need help.
>
> Most people would agree that there is some validity to both of these
> principles. However, sometimes we are forced to choose between the two.
> People whose politics are to the right of the spectrum tend to give
> greater weight to the first of these principles, and those on the left
> give greater weight to the second. (This is barely scratching the
> surface of Lakoff's work, which goes a lot further in explaining
> *why* people favour different principles. See the book for details.)
>
> Some of the arguments for and against strong type systems can be
> phrased in ways that directly appeal to these principles.
Interesting point, for which I find strong empirical evidence in our
group. ;-)
- Andreas
--
Andreas Rossberg, ross...@ps.uni-sb.de
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac Man affected us
as kids, we would all be running around in darkened rooms, munching
magic pills, and listening to repetitive electronic music."
- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo Inc.
Eliot Miranda
Fergus Henderson wrote:
>
> > Does political orientation affect language choice ?
>
> IMHO, yes, there is a correlation. Furthermore, people's political
> orientation also influences language design and evolution.
>
> If you want to understand how people's political orientations are formed
> and how political decisions are made, read George Lakoff's brilliant book
> "Moral Politics". I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Amazon lists both
Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't
University of Chicago Press (Trd); ; (May 1996)
ISBN 0226467961
and
Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think
University of Chicago Press (Trd); ; 2nd edition (May 2002)
ISBN 0226467716
Which do you mean?
--
_______________,,,^..^,,,____________________________
Eliot Miranda Smalltalk - Scene not herd
Fergus Henderson
>Fergus Henderson wrote:
>>
>> If you want to understand how people's political orientations are formed
>> and how political decisions are made, read George Lakoff's brilliant book
>> "Moral Politics". I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
>
>Amazon lists both
> Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't
> University of Chicago Press (Trd); ; (May 1996)
> ISBN 0226467961
>and
> Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think
> University of Chicago Press (Trd); ; 2nd edition (May 2002)
> ISBN 0226467716
>
>Which do you mean?
Both -- the subtitle of the book changed between the first edition and
the current (second) edition. I have only read the first edition,
so I can't vouch for the second edition, but it's probably better to
buy the second edition.
Esa Pulkkinen <esa.pulkkinen>
> For example, one argument against the use of strong static type systems
> is that it encourages a lack of discipline. Without static typing,
> programmers who make mistakes are punished for them, and as a result,
> they learn the discipline necessary to write correct code.
To me, this is an argument for using strong static type systems. The
type checker punishes the programmers who make mistakes by giving out
incomprehensible error messages [and not letting the code compile], so
the programmer has no other choice than to learn how to write correct
code. OTOH, without static type systems, the programmer might never be
blamed for his errors, giving the impression that everything is fine.
But I think the argument turns around if you talk about weak static
type systems. Then your argument applies, since a weak static type
system cannot catch most errors made by real-life programmers.
But I guess I've now proven your point twice? :-)
--
Esa Pulkkinen
Donald Fisk
>
> > Does political orientation affect language choice ?
>
> IMHO, yes, there is a correlation. Furthermore, people's political
> orientation also influences language design and evolution.
Well, people often refer to strongly, statically typed
languages as "fascistic".
SOme here might be working on the assumption that there's
political and type space is one-dimensional (left-right,
strong-weak) when it's actually two dimensional: economic/
social libertarian/authoritarian, and static/dynamic strong/weak
typing. Here's the political space as I see it:
Left Right
Authoritarian Stalin Pinochet
Libertarian Stallman PJ O'Rourke
And the programming space
Weak Strong
Static BCPL Ada
Dynamic Snobol Common Lisp
We need data points: I'm roughly strong dynamic on type
issues and left of centre libertarian on political issues.
Le Hibou
--
In any large organization, mediocrity is almost by definition
an overwhelming phenomenon; the systematic disqualification
of competence, however, is the managers' own invention, for
the sad consequences of which they should bear the full blame.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, 1986.