Ruby, Now Swear Free!
[ rakaur on Sun May 29 at 11:14 PM // category: programming, technology ]
Someone posted my Ruby rant on the ruby-talk mailing list (here, and here). As a result, a bunch of people are rather mad at my inbox.
The most common complaint I saw was my “presentation.” I guess that means because I swear a lot. Yeah, well, so does jwz, and he’s one of the most respected people in the software world. So what, people swear. I use swearing as a litarary construct, be it for better or worse.
And that’s another thing: you cocks can stop emailing me about every typo/grammar mistake. I don’t care. It’s a rant. It’s me, writing for no reason, it wasn’t meant to be presented to the Ruby community. If you people want to criticize it as if I meant it for publication in a scientific journal, then go right ahead. I’ll just keep to my small corner of the Web, swearing to myself.
About the log entry. I have a rule of thumb. If someone is using the words “shit” or “fuck” three or four times on page, they quickly lose all credibility.
Well, I guess if you want to live in a magical world where no one swears and no one is offended, have at it. I hear far worse in traffic every day.
I expect everyone reading ruby-talk could assemble a list of cases where Ruby violates their own sense of POLS.
I expect they could. I was led to believe this was a major design aspect of the language, and that’s why I wrote the rant. I now know that POLS was never advocated by the designer.
Some valid points ? I think this guy does not know what he’s talking about, or simply did not read the documentation correctly, or is simply blinded by something he should unlearn first, or simply likes making straw man arguments for the sake of it, or simply likes to rant (that I can understand, I like it too :) ).
Er, and just what documentation is that? I poured over every book, ruby-doc, etc that I could find. Ruby is a fine language, this is a list of things that annoy me about it. I did it with Python too.
And, yes, I like to argue for the sake of argument, and I like to rant for the sake of writing. I’m INTP.
And calling the language creator(s) “fucktard(s)” really doesn’t help making a point, really.
Yes, yes, swearing is bad it causes cancer etc. I personally find “fucktard” no more or less offensive than “idiot,” “moron,” etc.
He is 18 and just out of high school and thinks he knows everything. I think everyone goes through that phase.
No, I really don’t. I know I really know very little of anything. I haven’t been through four (perhaps more) years of CS in college like some of you people have, and I never will. I find CS largely boring. Data structures, instruction sets, algorithms, blech. It’s a hobby, and obviously a hobbyist such as myself knows far less than someone with a degree.
I haven’t seen it, and I see very little valid on that page.
I haven’t read War and Peace, but I suspect it’s pretty worthless.
How can you possibly judge something if you haven’t actually, you know, read it?
I think the guy’s point was “omg, they said everything was an object! “hi”.length == 2 and stuff! But not sqrt(5)! Like, omg you farking farktards are farking dumb! So much for POLS!!!1”
Yeah, that sounds about right.
The rant-writer likes ruby. From his python rant:
Yes, I like both languages.
his choice of language is bad, some examples are stupid, and even me, being quite a newbish, wonders why he rants about that, but some examples are really good.
Uh… all right.
Nothing that hasn’t been said before, but in a much more acceptable way that promotes good discussion and real action.
As I’ve said, I didn’t write this with the intent to distribute. Spare me the “BUT RAKRAU YOU PUT IT ON TEH INTARWEB!!!11” shit. I didn’t peal your eyes open and force you to read it.
Nothing new here people… move along, move along.
That’s strange, because quite a few of the posts and emails agreed with me that some of these are serious problems. I guess if we ignore them they’ll just go away, right? Good plan.
Okay, thanks for the information. Knowing that you never advocated POLS or actually designed the language around POLS, as I was told by every source I’ve ever read regarding Ruby, negates quite a few of my points.
And on to the emails…
Your rant was referenced on the ruby-talk mailing list. As can be expected, maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of the people are saying, “really good points, if you can overlook his obnoxious tone” while the rest… well, they got their feelings hurt.
It is pretty amazing how many people boo and hoo and make no point. If you got something useful out of my rant, that’s far more than I ever intended while writing it. If you were offended, I guess you haven’t really had much contact with humans.
Oh, and one more thing: Don’t call people “fucktards”.
You’re not my mother, and this is the Internet. One of the main points of the Internet is that it can’t be censored. Deal.
I thought your rant was interesting, if I edited out the swear words directed at matz, the language creator and an all round nice guy.
I wasn’t insulting him, I was questioning some of his decisions regarding language implementations.
It would be nice if you could modify your rant and maybe remove reference to POLS, or at least acknowledge the language designer doesn’t actually like that principle.
I’ve done the latter, but if I did the former I wouldn’t have a rant left.
I know it’s a rant, but you’re unlikely to make many friends in the Ruby community if you swear repeatedly
You people need to get over the swearing thing. Just for general information, I rarely swear outside of writing.
By the way, I found Ruby to be similar to blue cheese or advocado. The first few times I tried blue cheese, I thought this is horrible, how could anyone like this. Soon after though, I found I really liked it…
Interesting analogy, which I agree with. The rant was never saying I hated Ruby, it was listing things about it which I disliked.
And that’s that.
-- rakaur // 2005.05.29 @ 11:14 PM
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