How to Look Like an Idiot
So, you want to look like an idiot in front of other people? You've come to the right place.
Let's start with an example. You can be like this guy and get on an erlang mailing list and rant about how much you hate python and how you'll never use it because of how much you hate it. It's the most ugly language ever because it has significant whitespace. (be sure to call Guido an idiot and repeatedly talk about how idiotic that is).
Most python programmers I've spoken to admit they thought the significant whitespace was a dumb idea before actually sitting down and writing code in it. In the end, the code only works correctly when it's indented the way a good programmer would indent his code anyway.
I have seen the other side of this. Several times I have had people bring me perl code they'd written with no indentation and asked me to explain why it wasn't working. Every time, I told the programmer I couldn't read it and to go back and indent it properly before showing it to me. After a little argument, he'd storm off and indent it and generally come back to tell me he saw an obvious problem and it works now.
It's OK to sometimes want to avoid something you know little about for silly reasons, but seriously, you're not going to win respect by going to a completely unrelated forum and ranting about how much you hate something you don't understand at all.
Comments
Dustin, at September 21, 2007 4:15 p.m., said:
I do think yours is a fine argument, although it really hasn't affected me much in practice.
Your argument is welcome here. This is my web server and I brought it up.
The *primary* point I had, though, was that a ``python is ugly and I'll never use it because it makes you indent properly and Guido is an idiot'' argument doesn't belong on an erlang list.
Specifically, there aren't a lot of people looking at this page hoping to learn something about erlang or python or any other specific topic, so if you wanted to argue that ocaml is so ugly and unmaintainable that you'll never bother trying to use it, you at least wouldn't be causing a large annoyance here. I'd still disagree with my most recent consulting check in hand, though. :)
Aristotle Pagaltzis, at September 21, 2007 11:50 p.m., said:
Ah. Not only “ranting without any substantial arguments” but also “in a forum where it’s completely irrelevant”. Somehow I managed to miss that extra subtlety. I agree, that really is a fine example of being a numskull.
Aristotle Pagaltzis, at September 21, 2007 2:18 p.m., said:
Significant whitespace is still a dumb idea. The Perl code you couldn’t read? You can auto-format it using perltidy. That’s because there are lots of non-whitespace syntactical cues whereby the formatter can tell how to lay things out. With Python, that sort of thing isn’t possible at all.
You might argue that it’s not necessary, because Python that’s not indented correctly doesn’t work in the first place, so there’s no such thing as “re-indenting working code” by definition. And that would be a fine and dandy argument, except for the fact that code that’s being worked on often exists in a transitory state wherein it doesn’t parse correctly – because it’s being edited.
And significant whitespace is not very accommodating of that. F.ex. I find it hugely helpful that I can refactor by moving snippets of code around by cutting and pasting without any regard whatsoever for whether the formatting is correct. Then, *after* I am completely done with one micro-iteration of pushing bits around, I let loose the auto-formatter and get a perfectly laid out result without any manual futzing.
(Of course, you weren’t making an argument about significant whitespace. I wonder if irrelevantly picking up on your exemplary argument makes *me* an idiot?)