So much Neal Stepheson. REAMDE includes a MMORPG money laundering scheme as a centerpiece, Diamond Age sneaks in a tutorial on what Turing machines are.
Readit Newslonalzarus commented on Hard comp-fi reading list fiftysevendegreesofrad.gi... · Posted by u/sideshowb
That is just an ignorant statement.
personally I only like "Starship Troopers" and would say he was one of my most disliked SciFi writers. It just feels like a Hippie fueled throw up to see what sticks on the walls, minus Starship Troopers and why did they make that movie when it didn't have anything that the book had to say in it?
Hippie? That novel has often been characterized as semi-fascist, and it has pre-Anime mechas and alien bug colonies that essentially get genocided, I'm not sure what book you were "reading".
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. You, and I, as well, don't happen to agree with this one. After Asimov, RAH is my second favorite SciFi author, having read his entire catalog, many, multiple times. I have my favorites and disfavorites but, across the board, even with his teen stories and his later "dirty old man" books, his books all make interesting reads. His predictions just add to his legacy.
No doubt, I'm also a cranky opinionated life long Science Fiction reader, and we are definitely in agreement. I read as much Heinlein as I could get ahold of as a young man. There's no better fuel for a young nerd than stories of sex, heroic individualism and engineering with a healthy dose of libertarianism. And I know how well regarded Heinlein is in his field.
But what bothers me is the snow-clone nature of that statement that Heinlein was not recognized. It's like a knee -jerk default hyperbolic internet article closing, and I don't think it was true. Especially compared to people like Asimov and Clarke. They all had their little heyday as modern day prophets and fell by the wayside in the wider popular consciousness, no more "consistency" in recognition than any other. PKD, on the other hand seems to be bonafide cultural darling.
"...Heinlein never achieved stable and consistent recognition either during his lifetime or posthumously. His prose and ideas lacked the signature stylistic and thematic hallmarks that were to distinguish peers such as Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, and Isaac Asimov..."
I really dislike these sorts of remarks. Heinlein is down in the records as one of the "Big Three" authors in the golden age of science fiction. Any Science Fiction reader knows how much of a giant he is. Just because The Atlantic, didn't decide to declare him a singular hidden gem, or HBO didn't make a series based on his works, doesn't mean he wasn't recognized or appreciated in full.
lonalzarus commented on NPM and the future of JavaScript slides.com/seldo/npm-futu... · Posted by u/dberhane
It was always hated from my experience. It was a flawed language designed in 3 days. There's more people who love it now then before. It's mostly from beginners who learn it at bootcamp as their first/only language.
It's not my first language, I've been an engineer for 20 years, I've picked it up in the last 5. I can see what accounts for its success, it's responsive and fluid, both in its features and in its evolution which makes it perfect for what the web and emergent technologies need right now. And it's ubiquitous. It won't be important forever, but it is definitely important now.
lonalzarus commented on NPM and the future of JavaScript slides.com/seldo/npm-futu... · Posted by u/dberhane
"JavaScript is the most important programming language in the world."
Either that statement is false, in which case the JS community really is that insular and arrogant -- or it's true, which is probably even worse.
Either way, this assertion scares me.
I know it's fashionable and popular to hate on JS. No matter what your objections are, if you are frightened of it, you should be scared. It's running in almost any modern device you own, and a decent chunk of services serving those devices. Even everybody decides to switch to WASM/Go/Python and leave JS in the dust, it'll still zombie on for a good long time. See: PHP.