What percentage of programmers on Hacker News haven't?
Flaunting your ignorant anti-intellectualism isn't a good look.
You do know this is 2024, you have Internet access, and you can just look shit up or ask ChatGPT to learn new things, instead of cultivating ignorance and pointlessly criticising programmers trying to raise awareness, share their experiences, and educate themselves and other people.
In case you've been living under a rock and didn't realize it, JavaScript, the topic of this discussion, is essentially a dialect of Lisp, with garbage collection, first class functional closures, polymorphic JSON structures instead of s-expressions, a hell of a lot more like and inspired by Lisp and Scheme than C++, and LOTS of people know it.
My point is that if someone says something is arcane, “it’s not, it’s just [something that you’ve potentially never heard of and almost definitely don’t understand even if you have heard of it]” doesn’t help your case. They could look it up, but the fact that they would have to do so proves the commenter’s point - relatively few programmers understand Lisp syntax, i.e. it is arcane.
If you’re trying to raise awareness of something, don’t act like the reader is stupid if they don’t already understand. Insisting that something is obvious, especially when it is not, means any reader who does not understand it will likely perceive the comment as snobby. As does including snide remarks such as “in case you’ve been living under a rock”.
> Flaunting your ignorant anti-intellectualism isn’t a good look.
Why do you assume that I personally don’t know what s-expressions are just because I agree that they’re arcane? Labelling someone as an ignorant anti-intellectual just because they disagree with something you said isn’t a good look either.
There's nothing "arcane" about WebAssembly Text format. The fact that you don't recognize it just means you don't know much about WebAssembly, which is fine, but you're whining, lashing out, and attacking people who are trying to explain it, and trying to police and derail discussions between other people who are more knowledgeable and interested in it, which makes you a rude anti-intellectual asshole.
Why don't you just go away and let other people have their interesting discussions without you, instead of bitterly complaining about things you purposefully know nothing about and refuse to learn? How does it hurt your delicate feelings to just shut up and not bitch and whine about discussions you're not interested in?
> you’re whining, lashing out, and attacking people who are trying to explain it
I think you’re assuming that all of the comments you’re talking about are written by the same person, when they’re not. I haven’t been attacking anyone, and I don’t think I’ve replied to anyone who’s tried to explain it.
> things you purposefully know nothing about and refuse to learn
Why do you still assume I don’t know what they are? I’ve already pointed out that my belief that s-expressions are arcane doesn’t mean I don’t know what they are.
As another illustration of my point, I just stumbled across this comment on another post:
> But maybe the whole "ease of use" budget is blown by using a Lisp in the first place.[0]
The fact is that Lisp syntax is understood by relatively few programmers, which meets the definition of arcane. You immediately flying off the handle when someone calmly points this out will not help your goal.
I had a basic idea of what Lisp was before getting into it some 25 years ago. It soon became obvious that, no, I actually had no idea. It's not that what I thought had been wrong, but it had no content.
I knew Lisp the way I know that that guy walking down the street is my neighbor Bob. But since I've never had a conversation with Bob, I actually have no idea who he is.
When I see Korean writing in hangeul, I know it is Korean writing, but can't read a letter of it (nor speak a word of Korean).
These examples are like knowing what Lisp is.
The thing I had not expected was how the knowledge in the Lisp world and its perspectives are very informative about a whole lot of non-Lisp!
> There's no point in trying to make other people stop talking about Lisp
Nobody is trying to make you stop talking about it. We’re trying to make you understand that the way you’re talking about it is elitist. When someone said they were confused by the syntax, you could have just explained it without judgement. Instead, you felt compelled to flaunt your membership of the in-group who understands Lisp, and try to make others feel stupid by implying that people who don’t understand it aren’t good programmers, or are anti-intellectual.
You’re doubling down on it in this comment, too, still insistent on making people feel like they’re “less than” because they don’t know Lisp:
> so other more knowledgeable and curious people
If I didn’t know Lisp, and my first exposure to it was from someone who sees this kind of toxicity as a reasonable way to speak to people, would I want to join their community?
> If I didn’t know Lisp, and my first exposure to it was from someone who sees this kind of toxicity as a reasonable way to speak to people, would I want to join their community?
Wouldn't (didn't!) faze me. Every community has it. The most popular languages, platforms and tools in fact bring out unbridled hostility. Probably, hostility finds a peak in the second most popular camps. :)
We have already lost people who are influenced by this sort of fluff, because those people will be turned away from Lisp by the anti-Lisp trolling about parentheses, niches and slow processing over everything being a list, and so on. There aren't enough Lisp people around to counter it.
Sorry to bust your minuscule lisp bubble but just because someone ignored your favorite niche language in an educated career choice, it doesn't mean they are ignorant.
Infantile language tribalism though, have no place in engineering and is blatant ignorance when coming from a supposed adult.
So what you mean by niche is actually popularity, and not a specific application area?
Fortran has a niche: numeric computing in scientific areas. However, even Fortran is not your grandfather's Fortran 66 or 77 any more. I had a semester of the latter once, as part of an engineering curriculum before switching to CS.
It supposedly has OOP programming in it, and operator overloading and such.
I don't know modern Fortran, so I wouldn't want to look ignorant spreading decades-old misinformation about Fortran.
Most devs do know what Lisp'ish languages are because you just can't forget how weird a bunch of nested parenthesis look.
They just don't care enough to invest time in it because it is niche. And proponents tend to tirelessly spam about it from their ivory towers like it's flawless and everyone who didn't learn it is somehow inferior, somehow justifying personal attacks like yours. Classy as usual.
> people who become hostile when you try to talk about something interesting
We’re becoming annoyed not because people are trying to talk about something interesting, but because they are being intentionally insulting and condescending and then using bad faith arguments like this one when they’re called out on it.
Which of these quotes represent the commenter “trying to talk about something interesting”?
> flaunting your ignorance and your anti-intellectualism
> The point is that anyone who's distracted by the arcanity of Web Assembly Text Format obviously doesn't understand the first thing about WASM
> You do know this is 2024, you have Internet access, and you can just look shit up
> In case you've been living under a rock and didn't realize it
> but you're whining, lashing out, and attacking people who are trying to explain it, and trying to police and derail discussions between other people who are more knowledgeable and interested in it, which makes you a rude anti-intellectual asshole… Why don't you just go away and let other people have their interesting discussions without you, instead of bitterly complaining about things you purposefully know nothing about and refuse to learn? How does it hurt your delicate feelings to just shut up and not bitch and whine about discussions you're not interested in?
> And that proves my point that you're flaunting your ignorance and your anti-intellectualism. But you be you. There's no point in trying to make other people stop talking about Lisp by complaining about how proudly ignorant you are, and how you want to remain that way, so you don't want anyone else to talk about it. This really isn't the place for that, since you always have the option of not reading, shutting up, and not replying and interrupting and derailing the discussion, so other more knowledgeable and curious people can have interesting discussions without you purposefully harassing them like a childish troll.
> Look, it's pretty clear I stepped on some insecurity.
I listed those quotes to rebut your assertions that we’re being hostile towards a group of people who are merely trying to talk about something interesting, not to imply attribution of all of the quotes to you. I chose the general phrase “the commenter” because it would not have been correct to say “you”, as I was aware you were not the source of many of them.
I can see where you're coming from, but my intent was to talk about the very first interaction that started all of this nonsense:
- I said WebAssembly can already manipulate the DOM with functions.
- He asked for an ergonomic example because StackOverflow told him it can't be done. The "we can have DOM access at home" bit seems like the start of things to come.
- I provided a concise example, and expressed skepticism that this would settle the discussion.
- He responded with sarcasm, and weirdly accused me of sarcasm.
- I reacted poorly to his bitchy and ungrateful reply.
My best guess is that the WAT format confused him. He didn't know it was a programming language, and he didn't know you could do it with other programming languages, so he got insecure and lashed out.
Do you have a better explanation for the weird transition from technical discussion to flame war and hurt feelings?
Flaunting your ignorant anti-intellectualism isn't a good look.
You do know this is 2024, you have Internet access, and you can just look shit up or ask ChatGPT to learn new things, instead of cultivating ignorance and pointlessly criticising programmers trying to raise awareness, share their experiences, and educate themselves and other people.
In case you've been living under a rock and didn't realize it, JavaScript, the topic of this discussion, is essentially a dialect of Lisp, with garbage collection, first class functional closures, polymorphic JSON structures instead of s-expressions, a hell of a lot more like and inspired by Lisp and Scheme than C++, and LOTS of people know it.