redbar0n (u/redbar0n)

redbar0n commented on Incomplete list of mistakes in the design of CSS wiki.csswg.org/ideas/mist... · Posted by u/OuterVale

redbar0n · 3 months ago

How could CSS (or any language) have been designed so that these mistakes could have easily been corrected today in any case?

If the mentioned mistakes or similar language design mistakes were made. Because mistakes will always be made.

(Unison lang comes to mind but it’s refactor failsafe seems narrow. How about: Antifragile language design? Self-correcting language?)

redbar0n commented on Perl's decline was cultural beatworm.co.uk/blog/compu... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

asa400 · 3 months ago

> Erlang is, by my accounting, not even a functional langauge at all.

How do you figure?

The essence of FP is functions of the shape `data -> data` rather than `data -> void`, deemphasizing object-based identity, and treating functions as first-class tools for abstraction. There's enough dynamic FP languages at this point to establish that these traits are held in common with the static FP languages. Is Clojure not an FP language?

> It takes more than just having immutable values to be functional, and forcing users to leave varibles as immutable was a mistake, which Elixir fixes.

All data in Elixir is immutable. Bindings can be rebound but the data the bindings point to remains immutable, identical to Erlang.

Elixir just rewrites `x = 1; x = x + 1` to `x1 = 1; x2 = x1 + 1`. The immutable value semantics remain, and anything that sees `x` in between expressions never has its `x` mutated.

> Erlang code in practice is just imperative code written with immutable values, and like a lot of other modern languages, occasional callouts to things borrowed from functional programming like "map", but it is not a functional language in the modern sense.

I did a large amount of Scala prior to doing Erlang/Elixir and while I had a lot of fun with Applicative and Monoid I'm not sure they're the essence of FP. Certainly an important piece of the puzzle but not the totality.

redbar0n · 3 months ago

x = x + 1

always annoyed me as a syntax for binding, when first learning programming, coming from using = in equational reasoning in mathematics.

x: x + 1

would have been more natural as assignment/binding, imho.

redbar0n commented on Perl's decline was cultural beatworm.co.uk/blog/compu... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

hinkley · 3 months ago

The big pearl of wisdom I took from Larry Wall seemed to be counter to the culture I experienced looking in from the outside. That always confused me a bit about Perl.

And that was, paraphrased: make the way you want something to be used be the most concise way to use it and make the more obscure features be wordy.

This could have been the backbone of an entire community but they diminished it to code golf.

redbar0n · 3 months ago

In two concepts: syntactic sugar vs syntactic vinegar.

redbar0n commented on DHH: Calling someone a "Nazi" is a permission slip for violence world.hey.com/dhh/calling... · Posted by u/jaredcwhite

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 5 months ago

> hurt feelings

This is an example of how the violence of speech is often minimized and dismissed. Causing hurt feelings is violence, particularly doing so intentionally.

redbar0n · 5 months ago

I did not dismiss speech’s potential to cause hurt feelings, I acknowledged and affirmed it. It is not to be taken lightly. Yet, we need an effective demarcation between speech and physical action, where resorting to physical action is deemed even more severe than words. So which one do you propose?

redbar0n commented on DHH: Calling someone a "Nazi" is a permission slip for violence world.hey.com/dhh/calling... · Posted by u/jaredcwhite

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 5 months ago

> From each except the first: - «force, assault» - «action» - «an act of aggression»

Speech can be forceful, it can constitute assault, it's obviously an action, and it can be aggressive as well as defensive. (I suppose I was a little wrong with my initial use of the word "force". Words can be funny like that. My point is that it is not strictly physical force.) This argument would be as if to say that "abuse" cannot be verbal because most people think of it as being physical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbal_abuse (Also, I wasn't aware until I was linking it for this comment, that page uses terms like "verbal violence", "verbal assault", "verbal attack", "verbal aggression". For what it's worth.)

> what they list first and their general primary agreement: that violence is physical force

Right. I've not refuted this. I've said that violence is not strictly physical. your position is that violence can only refer to something which could cause physical harm or pain and I say that is too narrow a definition even for common use; violence can be verbal.

There are other words from those definitions which you did not include in your comment like "feeling", "vehemence", "infringement", "outrage", "pain", "suffering". These things are not strictly physical.

> I hope we can agree how dangerous it is to wash out the meaning of the word «violence», and conflate it with «speech».

On the contrary, I would hope that we can agree how dangerous it is to minimize and dismiss when violence is perpetrated with speech by claiming that speech cannot be violence.

redbar0n · 5 months ago

I am not arguing that terms cannot be used in broader or more expansive or even metaphorical meaning. But I am arguing that the accuracy/essence of the term «violence» ought to be respected. Especially because diluting it (i.e. washing out the border of it) can have such disastrous consequences.

There should be a very clear line between saying something and using physical force. So if you think the term «violence» isn’t a part of defining that line (or even the terms «attack», «aggression», «force», «assault» etc. which you seem willing to use to describe speech), then I am eager to hear what term(s) you propose to uphold that distinction?

redbar0n commented on DHH: Calling someone a "Nazi" is a permission slip for violence world.hey.com/dhh/calling... · Posted by u/jaredcwhite

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 5 months ago

> From each except the first: - «force, assault» - «action» - «an act of aggression»

Speech can be forceful, it can constitute assault, it's obviously an action, and it can be aggressive as well as defensive. (I suppose I was a little wrong with my initial use of the word "force". Words can be funny like that. My point is that it is not strictly physical force.) This argument would be as if to say that "abuse" cannot be verbal because most people think of it as being physical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbal_abuse (Also, I wasn't aware until I was linking it for this comment, that page uses terms like "verbal violence", "verbal assault", "verbal attack", "verbal aggression". For what it's worth.)

> what they list first and their general primary agreement: that violence is physical force

Right. I've not refuted this. I've said that violence is not strictly physical. your position is that violence can only refer to something which could cause physical harm or pain and I say that is too narrow a definition even for common use; violence can be verbal.

There are other words from those definitions which you did not include in your comment like "feeling", "vehemence", "infringement", "outrage", "pain", "suffering". These things are not strictly physical.

> I hope we can agree how dangerous it is to wash out the meaning of the word «violence», and conflate it with «speech».

On the contrary, I would hope that we can agree how dangerous it is to minimize and dismiss when violence is perpetrated with speech by claiming that speech cannot be violence.

redbar0n · 5 months ago

The fact that the Wikipedia page on «verbal abuse» has to use «verbal» as a prefix term to the terms «abuse», «violence», «assault» etc. actually underscores the point: If those terms were obviously verbal in nature, then «verbal» wouldn’t have been needed as a prefix to them.

redbar0n commented on DHH: Calling someone a "Nazi" is a permission slip for violence world.hey.com/dhh/calling... · Posted by u/jaredcwhite

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 5 months ago

Nope, just regular singlespeak. Violence can plainly be non-physical.

> Redefining words in service of authoritarian political ideology.

This isn't a description of doublespeak. An example of doublespeak could be someone using their speech to call for violence against others and then saying speech can't be violence.

redbar0n · 5 months ago

Why would you even need to say «call for violence» if speech were violence in itself?

No one is opposing the fact that speech can be used to call for violence, but that doesn’t make the speech itself violence. The speech part of it is the «call for» or «incitement to» or even «lead to». But we must not mix up cause and effect.

redbar0n commented on DHH: Calling someone a "Nazi" is a permission slip for violence world.hey.com/dhh/calling... · Posted by u/jaredcwhite

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 5 months ago

> I see it as a great sign of maturity and civilization that we can make a firm distinction between words and violence.

I see it as a great sign of maturity and civilization that we can understand the dangers of speech without minimizing and dismissing them.

redbar0n · 5 months ago

Distinguishing speech from violence is not to dismiss the potential for speech to cause hurt feelings.