> If this is so stupid and obvious, why does apparently 99.99% of software designed by professional engineers seem to be designed by people completely oblivious to these ideas and considerations?
It’s similar to why a big portion of the world believes in Christianity and another portion believes in Buddhism. Basically only one or none of these religions is correct rendering at least one population of people believing in a completely made up fantasy concept.
Much of what is preached in software is religion and what is preached by the majority can be completely ludicrous. The majority believing or not knowing something doesn’t mean anything.
> It’s similar to why a big portion of the world believes in Christianity and another portion believes in Buddhism. Basically only one or none of these religions is correct rendering at least one population of people believing in a completely made up fantasy concept.
You have picked religions with as little as possible in common. It would be rather different if you had picked any two monotheistic religions for example: one could be entirely right, and that would mean the other was partially or mostly right.. Despite your choice, there are many things in common: a path to redemption, monasticism, wealth being a barrier to redemption, meditation and mysticism... its quite possible those common elements might be right.
The same with software. Some things that are widely believed may be true and other false.
Religions claim to be the absolute truth of reality. Thus since all religions have details that are conflicting and opposing if one is true all the others are false.
Parent is telling you: "if A is so simple and obvious, why does nobody do A", your counter argument: "if many people believe A it does not mean it is true". This is entirely unrelated, the point is that these things are NOT obvious to the average programmer, he/she would benefit from learning this, and claiming that these things are broadly "stupid and obvious" is petty and false.
Also, the things you're saying just don't add up with your criticism that the author is missing some fundamental part of software philosophy. If the author is only missing something, then it still makes sense for the majority to learn the things he is saying, at least, as explained by your parent.
Finally, if anything can be compared to religion, it surely is the evangelism of functional programming zealots.
Author made an argument to why does everybody do A and I said everybody doing A doesn’t mean shit and I used religion as an illustration on how everybody doing A doesn’t mean shit.
> If the author is only missing something, then it still makes sense for the majority to learn the things he is saying, at least, as explained by your parent.
Sure but from my pov he’s teaching mathematics while skipping over algebra or addition. We can all agree that something huge is missing if you don’t learn algebra or addition.
> Finally, if anything can be compared to religion, it surely is the evangelism of functional programming zealots.
I don’t deny it. Nobody can really prove their viewpoint to be true. Even the atheist is a zealot. The only way to not be a zealot is to be a zealot about being unsure of everything. But then that makes you a zealot. People insinutated a lot of things because I used religion as an analogy.
The ONLY point I was trying to make is that a majority or large group of people believing in or doing plan A doesn't mean shit for plan A.
> ... an illustration on how everybody doing A doesn’t mean shit.
I don't think you understand either the parent or me. The point is that the majority of people do something wrong that the author is trying to help prevent, so just by virtue of that being true it stops being "stupid and obvious".
> We can all agree that something huge is missing if you don’t learn algebra or addition.
We can indeed all agree on a separate topic, but that does nothing for the topic we are actually discussing. The core of your entire argument is that somehow FP is fundamental to solving complexity, you seem to think that everybody already agrees with this. We don't.
> Even the atheist is a zealot
No, he is not. Being an atheist or not is a completely internal world view, being a zealot implies being vocal and aiming to convert or convince others.
> The only way to not be a zealot is to be a zealot about being unsure of everything
No this is also not true, see above. Things are not as black and white as you think.
> People insinutated a lot of things because I used religion as an analogy.
The point of an analogy is to improve the discussion through clarity, you made a bad analogy and in doing so made the discussion worse and less clear.
> The ONLY point I was trying to make is that a majority or large group of people believing in or doing plan A doesn't mean shit for plan A.
Which, again, is missing the point. The majority is already judged by the parent, namely: they are doing something wrong. Hence it does not matter that the majority is not always right, the point of the parent is already that the majority is wrong. You are trying to argue for something that nobody brought up, you are arguing against the statement: "the book is good because everybody is doing what it describes". Nobody is saying that, and so you're arguing into the void.
Wow, that was quite the tangled volley of words you lobbed at me—like watching someone trip over their own shoelaces while insisting they’re teaching everyone else to run. Let me break this down in simpler terms:
On “Missing the Point”
You keep insisting I’ve misunderstood the parent, when in fact I’m the one highlighting the exact same oversight the parent (and you) are making: popularity of a method—or “everyone doing it”—doesn’t prove correctness. You’re so busy telling me I’m off-target that you’ve inadvertently circled right back to my original statement. Bravo for that rhetorical pirouette.
The Religion Analogy
My analogy wasn’t about the specifics of Buddhism vs. Christianity any more than referencing “Homer’s Odyssey” requires you to believe in sea monsters. An analogy’s job is to illustrate a point. You chose to interpret it literally, which is about as productive as reading a metaphor and then complaining it’s not a physics textbook. If you can’t separate form from function, maybe you shouldn’t be lecturing people on clarity.
FP, Zealotry, and the Real Topic
It’s downright adorable that you think I’m pushing some “everyone agrees FP solves everything” agenda. I specifically said “nobody can prove a viewpoint absolutely”—which you just argued against by, ironically, claiming some vantage of universal correctness. This might be the first time I’ve seen someone label atheists as ‘not zealots,’ then turn around and call me one for not fitting neatly into your black-and-white categories. The mental gymnastics are impressive—Olympic-level, even.
Majority vs. Correctness
You keep shouting that the majority is wrong, that the book is aiming to correct them, and that somehow I’m “arguing into the void.” Yet my entire point (and this is the third time I’ve repeated it, but apparently you need a replay) is that a majority doing something doesn’t automatically validate or invalidate a claim. And guess what? You agree. You literally said the majority is wrong. So if I’m “missing the point,” then so are you—just from the opposite side of the mirror.
On Being a Zealot
Contrary to what you claim, being “vocal” about something doesn’t automatically make you a zealot any more than whispering your opinions makes you right. If you’re content to wander around in that nuance-free zone where anyone with a perspective is a fanatic, you’re welcome to it. Just don’t be surprised when folks point out that you’re holding an umbrella indoors to avoid a hypothetical downpour.
In short, you’re so determined to prove me wrong that you’ve ended up echoing my very premise—that “everyone doing X” doesn’t magically prove X is correct—while scolding me for saying precisely that. Next time, maybe aim for consistency before you break out the condescension. It’ll save you the trouble of repeatedly shooting down a position you’re already occupying.
Religious “truths” are not factual truths- they are better thought of as psychological technology or techniques, and are “true” if they work for the intended purpose. Many conflicting religious “truths” are all “true.” Even calling them truths is only done to make the religions accessible to people that can’t mentally process nuance, and the techniques only work for them if labeled as truth. Intelligent religious scholars understand this well- for example Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism both teach nearly opposite and factually incompatible perspectives on almost everything, yet are often both used by the same religious teachers for different pupils as appropriate.
The same is true for software design- an approach is not literally true or false, but either works for its intended purpose or does not. Conflicting philosophies can both be “true” just with different underlying goals or values.
To circle back here, my point is that this information is presented in a simple way that will let people reading it design better software. Saying they have no right to present it without a much less accessible and more complex framework that would likely make it less useful to the intended audience does not make sense to me.
FWIW, I am also a functional programmer, but would love to see people that are not follow some of these ideas.
1 Corinthians 15:13-19 (NIV) : “ If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
——
There is only one kind of truth. “All truths are God’s truths.”
If Christianity is not true, then it is false. If Christianity and Buddhism strictly contradict each-other, then at most one of them is true.
Christianity is not meant to be a, what, psychological trick? It makes claims, and these claims should be believed if true and disbelieved if false.
It's no trick, it's a spiritual path that can't be understood without following and practicing it- the path very much leads to something real that cannot be experienced or explained any other way. Everything Christianity teaches is true in the sense that I mean here. You are not understanding what I am saying and I do not personally know how to explain it more clearly[1], which, as I explained above, is why religions pragmatically also offer this view you hold as the official explanation to lay people, despite being obvious nonsense as an objective truth to anyone that thinks very hard about it.
I posit almost all intelligent monastics and religious people are smart enough to tell the difference between objective truth and religious truth- but it is taboo to explain this to lay people as they will be confused and think it means the religion is "fake" or a "trick", however I don't feel the need to respect said taboo. Perhaps I will learn to respect it by trying to explain it to people unsuccessfully.
> I posit almost all intelligent monastics and religious people are smart enough to tell the difference between objective truth and religious truth- but it is taboo to explain this to lay people as they will be confused and think it means the religion is "fake" or a "trick", however I don't feel the need to respect said taboo.
That is positing a conspiracy theory level of deception.
At least as far as Christianity goes, the "intelligent monastics and religious people" write down their beliefs, and have done so for millennia, and they read each others writings. What you suggest might be possible with an oral tradition, but not with a written one. Christianity is very much concerned with objective truth, and one of the distinguishing characters of it (and some other religions too) is a belief that there is an objective truth.
It's no great conspiracy for a religion to have tiers of understanding and nuance reserved for people more intelligent and dedicated in practice- that is one key purpose of having a distinction between lay people and monastics. The mystique of this is openly part of the draw for people to sign up for it.
There's no deception- it's something that (as this discussion shows) is very subtle and dangerous to the religions when misunderstood- but not dangerous when understood correctly. It is written down repeatedly in religious texts, in a subtle way with plausible deniability, but clear to those that can read between the lines. Writing in that way was the essential basic art of any intellectual until very recently, it is only now (sort of) safe to plainly state nuanced philosophical and religious concepts without facing persecution. Nietzsche argued you still should not do so even if you can.
It's also both quite obvious and relatively unimportant on its own to people that would be capable of understanding nuance, and could be quite harmful to the faith and the stability of the religion of those not able to understand.
I'm not a scholar of Christian literature (or a Christian), and I don't speak Latin, so it would hardly be appropriate for me to pull out a specific quote and insist "this is what they really meant." In truth, my original source for this was my own understanding being raised in a Christian church- and voicing this perspective out loud in church as a young kid didn't go over well, as you might imagine. To me as a young kid, it was immediately obvious that there were deeper ethical principles being explained in these stories, and one had to be an idiot to be worried about if they were objective factual details or not, when the point was clearly to understand and embody the message- to practice and live it. One was called to have faith that living these principles wholeheartedly was the right thing to do and would lead to real spiritual growth, not to have faith that some particular guy built a particular boat- such things are irrelevant.
However St. Augustine is someone that I am particularly certain had a clear understanding of this, and I can see it in how he frames most of his ideas.
Another example, would be that ancient religious texts are not careful at all to avoid making numerous objectively factual contradictions- as the anti-christian crowd loves to point out over and over while also completely missing the point. If the people writing them thought that was important, they would have avoided doing so- contrary to modern opinion, ancient theologians and philosophers like St. Augustine were not idiots.
William Blake is a more modern person that, while just about the furthest thing from a monastic, clearly had a deep understanding of what I am talking about. Carl Jung also extensively understood and discussed a lot of esoteric things in Christianity including this, and wrote about them in a relatively clear modern way.
> However St. Augustine is someone that I am particularly certain had a clear understanding of this, and I can see it in how he frames most of his ideas.
Can you give me an example of one?
> To me as a young kid, it was immediately obvious that there were deeper ethical principles being explained in these stories, and one had to be an idiot to be worried about if they were objective factual details or not
Again, an example? You are suggesting for example that there is no redemption or afterlife but they convey some point?
> If the people writing them thought that was important, they would have avoided doing so- contrary to modern opinion, ancient theologians and philosophers like St. Augustine were not idiots.
Does Augustine contradict himself? In a single work (different views in different works could be a change of mind)?
I am curious where you are coming from- are you a religious person that feels like my distinction between religious and objective truth undermines your beliefs, or are you a non-religious person that dislikes the idea that religion may still have value, even if the beliefs are not based on objective physical truth?
Myself, I would say I am non-religious, but have a lot of respect for the purpose and value religions offers people, and that one benefits greatly by understanding and filling those roles and needs in other ways even if not practicing a religion. I very much dislike the Richard Dawkins follower crowd that hate religion with a passion, but have no understanding of it, and have no connection to or understanding of their own emotions, unconscious, or spirituality to their own detriment.
Look at Wikiquote for some of St Augustines most well known quotes with what I am saying in mind- if you can’t see a dozen examples you’re not going to agree with a specific one I point out either. I am refusing to give a specific example for a reason- you will almost certainly disagree immediately with the specific example - because they are written with an alternate interpretation possible on purpose - and then think my whole premise must be wrong as a result without looking at the bigger picture, and seeing how often this plausibly deniable concept keeps coming up.
> You are suggesting for example that there is no redemption or afterlife
I am suggesting no such thing, only that dwelling on this issue is to miss the point, and even worrying about it would be an obstacle. One must deeply feel these ideas and practice accordingly to follow this spiritual path- even getting stuck on arguing that they are true would be an obstacle to that.
It makes a humourous and compelling argument that a big part of Christianity is encouraging its adherents to follow the game-theoretic optimum in a way that will convince someone even if they are a bit credulous.
If you approach the bible with a good knowledge of negotiation and game theory, a lot of it can be interpreted in that light. There is a lot of good advice to get people to move to the global optimums that can be reached if everyone cooperates. It isn't subtle about it. There is no conspiracy to hide that it is good advice even to someone who doesn't particularly believe in afterlives, miracles or god-given ethics. There is a very neat division between the common read and the read of someone with a good grasp of social dynamics, negotiation and game theory. No conspiracies. Just a lot of people who can't handle complex social negotiation.
Its hardly a new idea. One problem is that there is a lot more to religion than ethics. It also assumes that religious rules of behaviour are global optimums. It fails to explain why religions spread too - why would people believe in the religion that promotes cooperation, rather than one another one? In fact, I would argue, that, in the west, far more people are moralistic therapeutic deists than Christians.
There is also a lack of evidence it works. I do not think Christians are consistently greatly more socially cooperative than atheists. Maybe more inclined to help people on the fringes of society - e.g. running food banks here in the UK, very active in poverty charities globally but while good, I cannot believe it has a sufficient consistent effect to provide an advantage to a society that follows it.
Fear of hell as a motivator is limited to some Christian denominations but is not often mentioned by other denominations (I am mostly familiar with Catholic and Anglican churches) or in the Bible, or Christian writings, or in sermons or in religious discussions. Christian universalists and others do not believe in any form of hell at all!
It might work with a religion once established (religious societies do better because of that cooperation) but it does not explain how religions spread in the first place.
Its a lot more likely to apply to a religion that has been long established in a relatively stable setting so it is credible as an explanation of much of ancient Jewish law that seems strange to us now (e.g. what to eat, not plucking fruit from young trees etc) that often seems off from a modern perspective.
The comic isn't saying this is the main point of religions, it's only saying it's one thing that happens within religions. For example, religious communities have their own social norms that are fundamental to the religion, and allow for coordinated actions you don't see elsewhere, like an Amish barn raising.
I take a Jungian view that a major useful thing religions offer is a framework for relating to the unconscious. One key part of that is to have a clear sense of ethics, and to align ones actions with it, which is generally good for your mental health.
> so it is credible as an explanation of much of ancient Jewish law that seems strange to us now (e.g. what to eat, not plucking fruit from young trees etc) that often seems off from a modern perspective.
One example theory I remember reading at some point was the prohibition against eating shellfish: In the area the religion arose, it would have most likely gone bad by the time it was brought that far inland.
That seems like a very forced theory. By the time shellfish is bad enough to present a health risk, it smells, looks, and feels repugnant, one doesn't need a religious system to know not to eat it.
Shellfish are susceptible to harmful algal blooms like red tide, that can make them very dangerous.
Coastal foraging cultures that don't have bans on eating shellfish, instead have complex knowledge about when, where, and how to prepare and eat them. It's the same with mushrooms- cultures either universally ban them, or deeply educate everyone about them. All cultures globally with access to these foods have a system here- it's not unique to Judaism.
There would definitely need to be many people who are are deliberately deceitful. Those who both know how to "read between the lines" and who clearly seek to persuade others in the objective facts of Christianity.
Take CS Lewis as an example. He write strong and clear defences of the incarnation, miracles etc. as objective facts. He was either trying to deliberately deceive or he did not actually understand older writing, and the latter is not really credible given he was the professor of mediaeval and renaissance literature at Oxford.
> The mystique of this is openly part of the draw for people to sign up for it.
Not in my experience of priests, monks and nuns and people who consider becoming clergy.
I haven't read any of CS Lewis's writing for adults, but unfortunately, it is not at all unusual for academic liberal arts scholars to have only a very shallow surface understanding of the ideas in literature they formally study.
Another possibility is that if you get what I'm saying here, you might re-read CS Lewis and have a very different perspective on what he was actually saying- because those Christian "truths" are extremely important, and exist for a good reason - and one can write a strong clear defense of them from the perspective I am coming from.
I read a lot of old philosophy and religious texts translated and commented on by "well respected" scholars, and it is not uncommon at all that I can tell they are seeing only the surface of the ideas... which can make it frustrating and difficult to read when the translator wasn't 'getting it.' The level one needs to be at to be a well respected philosopher, and just to succeed as an academic are not close at all, and there is no guarantee that the latter will be capable of fully grasping the ideas of the former - it is probably the norm that they cannot. If they could they would not be just a translator or scholar, but a powerful philosopher in their own right.
An intelligent person whose mind is fundamentally oriented towards communicating deeper meaning, does not operate on the level of obsessing over banal binary verification of facts- and they need to be able to assume their reader is already capable of thinking abstractly in this way as well. To put it simply one must assume intelligence in the reader to communicate deep ideas and meaning, and neglecting to "explain how to be intelligent" is not deception- when it is not even something that can be explained.
It might be better to think of it as a potentially useful fiction. Our culture is full of those.
Morality doesn't exist in any objective sense, which means "murder is wrong" is not, strictly speaking, true. That doesn't mean it isn't useful for us to collectively treat it as if it's true. You might even argue that that's the nature of all shared truth.
The passage drdeca quoted explicitly denies you the space to treat Christianity as a "useful fiction". (I mean, lots of people do, but they have to ignore what it actually teaches in order to do so. You have to create a fictionalized version if you want a useful fiction, which I guess shouldn't surprise me...)
> The passage drdeca quoted explicitly denies you the space to treat Christianity as a "useful fiction"
Yeah, I'm disagreeing with that passage.
> [I]f Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith
Faith can be useful even when it does not reflect an objective truth. In fact, you might say that faith can only exist at all in the absence of objective truth. I don't need to have faith that a triangle has 3 sides, or that ice is cold.
If we do take seriously the idea that Christianity must either be true or false, then it's obviously false: Most religions contradict each other, and none of them have any concrete evidence in their defence. The natural conclusion is that all religious beliefs are false. But then we have to interpret society as a place where most people believe obvious falsehoods, which is just not a useful lens. There is a huge difference between a falsehood like "triangles have 5 sides" and a falsehood like "Jesus was reborn." Nobody would believe the former, but many people believe the latter. We must distinguish useful fictions as a category beyond the dichotomy of simple truth or falsehood.
Well, there is a parable of seven blind men who met an elephant, touched different parts of it and later described the animal in wildly different terms. Listening ot these different tales can we say that only one of these men is right and all others are wrong? Or maybe all are wrong? Or all are right? Also, do contradictions in their tales mean that the elephant does not exist?
Good explanation, really. Imperative systems programmers reject one or more of the fp commandments (perhaps finding them impractical), and are probably heretics in the eyes of the fp cult.
It’s similar to why a big portion of the world believes in Christianity and another portion believes in Buddhism. Basically only one or none of these religions is correct rendering at least one population of people believing in a completely made up fantasy concept.
Much of what is preached in software is religion and what is preached by the majority can be completely ludicrous. The majority believing or not knowing something doesn’t mean anything.