> The last time I remember seeing someone say "RTFM" is probably something like 2006? in the freenode bash IRC room. Where are you frequenting that you see such things?
I can definitely find more but this is what 5 minutes of searching turned up, and while many of them come from the same thread, I can find way more where that came from.
There's legitimately a vocal contingent online that wants to gatekeep around PL usage. Note the language there: "inferior language and ecosystems", "Rob Pike doesn't trust programmers to be good", "The entire attitude is an apology for the bare fact that Go doesn’t have error-handling syntax", "perhaps we care a little too much about ordinary users?" These aren't solidarity-building statements. They're about flaming, expressing intransigent opinions, and gatekeeping.
> I don't know any haskellers who I would think say or think the things you say. Most of them realize that they're into a niche thing. I think most of them want the good things of haskell to be shared to the larger community, but we just don't know how to get there from here.
When I said "PL enthusiasts" or "suckless", I don't necessarily mean to say every, or even most, PL enthusiasts fall into that bucket. Likewise devs interested in simple architectures aren't all in the "suckless" camp. Like I said, there's plenty of folks doing great work exploring things like ML-based functional programming or simple, composable designs. What there also is though is a vocal community, probably a minority, of folks who _do_ create a tribe of gatekeepers. As I was saying in my last post, these folks are usually the Very Online type as most folks trying to actually get things done spend less time inciting flamewars and more time actually writing code.
But my post is more about this strain of very (online) visible toxicity in programming. Taking opinionated, intransigent positions is disturbingly common in programming and I largely think it's a practice holding the state of the art back.
I see. When I read your statement, I interpreted it as statement about a majority of devs in such communities.
I actually came into the haskell community expecting MORE of such behavior, becuase I think common wisdom is that Haskell is full of gatekeeprs. I've been quite surprised by how little of it there actually are.
I'm not sure I totally grok your point re: golang. Just go read Rob pike's statement. That doesn't mean much about golang per se; he may have been attempting to make something suitable primarily for beginners, and hit upon some kind of impossibly powerful design (i'm thinking like scheme or something). But I hear about how bad golang code has to be, and well it makes me very sad.
Of course, golang does solve actual very real problems, and failing to acknowledge this is holding back the industry 100%. It also meets people where they are, not where the language author is, which is of course something we really need to come to terms with as a group of people who want to push the industry forward.
> I see. When I read your statement, I interpreted it as statement about a majority of devs in such communities.
> I actually came into the haskell community expecting MORE of such behavior, becuase I think common wisdom is that Haskell is full of gatekeeprs. I've been quite surprised by how little of it there actually are.
Yeah I don't mean to imply that this is something specific to the Haskell or PL community. More that there is a strain of vocal gatekeeping in the field of software dev as a whole, and it finds most purchase in niche communities like PL enthusiasts or simplicity enthusiasts, probably often because small communities don't always have the time/manpower to create consistent messaging and guidelines.
> I'm not sure I totally grok your point re: golang. Just go read Rob pike's statement. That doesn't mean much about golang per se; he may have been attempting to make something suitable primarily for beginners, and hit upon some kind of impossibly powerful design (i'm thinking like scheme or something). But I hear about how bad golang code has to be, and well it makes me very sad.
I just linked those posts from a thread I found, it's not really a point I'm trying to make myself, though hating on Go is a common sport for folks who write in niche languages. (So P(niche language writer | hater) is high, not that P(hater | niche language writer) is high.)
> Of course, golang does solve actual very real problems, and failing to acknowledge this is holding back the industry 100%. It also meets people where they are, not where the language author is, which is of course something we really need to come to terms with as a group of people who want to push the industry forward.
Right and that's all I mean. I firmly believe that choosing a PL is often a complicated decision and is often driven more by the problem domain than anything else. But the toxic gatekeeping around the dialogue ends up making everyone defensive and has people take increasingly intransigent positions, which leads to silly divides instead of folks working together to advance SOTA.
Just a cursory search, nothing specific:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28831243
https://lobste.rs/s/yjvmlh/go_ing_insane_part_one_endless_er...
https://lobste.rs/s/yjvmlh/go_ing_insane_part_one_endless_er...
https://lobste.rs/s/yjvmlh/go_ing_insane_part_one_endless_er...
https://lobste.rs/s/d1tk0e/overhead_returning_optional_value...
https://lobste.rs/s/cpfajx/java_16_gets_records_jep_395#c_dr...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29006854
I can definitely find more but this is what 5 minutes of searching turned up, and while many of them come from the same thread, I can find way more where that came from. There's legitimately a vocal contingent online that wants to gatekeep around PL usage. Note the language there: "inferior language and ecosystems", "Rob Pike doesn't trust programmers to be good", "The entire attitude is an apology for the bare fact that Go doesn’t have error-handling syntax", "perhaps we care a little too much about ordinary users?" These aren't solidarity-building statements. They're about flaming, expressing intransigent opinions, and gatekeeping.
> I don't know any haskellers who I would think say or think the things you say. Most of them realize that they're into a niche thing. I think most of them want the good things of haskell to be shared to the larger community, but we just don't know how to get there from here.
When I said "PL enthusiasts" or "suckless", I don't necessarily mean to say every, or even most, PL enthusiasts fall into that bucket. Likewise devs interested in simple architectures aren't all in the "suckless" camp. Like I said, there's plenty of folks doing great work exploring things like ML-based functional programming or simple, composable designs. What there also is though is a vocal community, probably a minority, of folks who _do_ create a tribe of gatekeepers. As I was saying in my last post, these folks are usually the Very Online type as most folks trying to actually get things done spend less time inciting flamewars and more time actually writing code.
But my post is more about this strain of very (online) visible toxicity in programming. Taking opinionated, intransigent positions is disturbingly common in programming and I largely think it's a practice holding the state of the art back.