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Re: Why “new”?

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  Re: Why “new”? Peter Duniho <NpOeStPeAdM@NnOwSlPiAnMk.com> - 2011-02-07 15:48 +0800
    Re: Why “new”? Ken Wesson <kwesson@gmail.com> - 2011-02-08 12:30 +0100
      Re: Why “new”? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-02-08 22:58 -0500
    Re: Why “new”? blmblm@myrealbox.com <blmblm@myrealbox.com> - 2011-02-09 15:31 +0000
    Re: Why “new”? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-02-07 19:10 -0500
    Re: Why “new”? Ken Wesson <kwesson@gmail.com> - 2011-02-08 12:17 +0100
      Re: Why “new”? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-02-08 23:05 -0500
      Re: Why “new”? Peter Duniho <NpOeStPeAdM@NnOwSlPiAnMk.com> - 2011-02-08 20:24 +0800
    Re: Why “new”? Ken Wesson <kwesson@gmail.com> - 2011-02-07 09:18 +0100
      Re: Why “new”? Peter Duniho <NpOeStPeAdM@NnOwSlPiAnMk.com> - 2011-02-07 16:38 +0800

#25617 — Re: Why “new”?

On 2/7/11 11:45 AM, Ken Wesson wrote:
> On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 11:27:56 +0800, Peter Duniho wrote:
>
>> On 2/7/11 11:17 AM, Ken Wesson wrote:
>>> [...]
>>>> J has arguably helped with that. Some. Fact is, if you apply yourself
>>>> to learning and using J then it's not line-noise at all, it's just
>>>> extremely terse. It's not symbol cruft in the same sense that Perl is.
>>>
>>> And what, pray tell, is J?
>>
>> http://www.lmgtfy.com/
>
> That is needlessly snarky. It's not as if one can google a one-letter
> query and expect a useful result.

I note that you clipped the _useful_ part of the URL I offered.

If one is so inept at web searches that they cannot be bothered to add 
relevant terms that are obvious from the context in order to produce a 
useful result, then yes…I can see how that might cause a problem.  But 
such a person probably should not be involved in programming in any way.

Pete

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#25631

On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 19:10:47 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> On 07-02-2011 03:18, Ken Wesson wrote:
>> See my response to Patricia. You added "programming language" to the
>> query but the first post mentioning J did not make it clear that it was
>> a programming language, only that learning it would make APL code seem
>> less like line noise. Whether that meant it was an APL derivative, an
>> APL IDE, a mathematical system using similar symbols, or some other
>> tool was not made clear by that post.
> 
>> This makes it sound like J might be an APL derivative or relative, but
>> is more likely an APL ecosystem tool created significantly later in
>> time than APL itself. If that impression was misleading, well, Arved
>> Sandstrom is the one who wrote it.
> 
> It could have been other things than a programming language, but a
> programming language should be one of the first guesses.

I didn't *feel* like guessing. Why are you saying that I was obligated to 
guess rather than ask and find out for sure? Because I did the latter, 
got flamed, and now you're suggesting I should have done the former 
instead.

That does not make sense.

Why should I guess when there's someone right there that I know knows the 
exact answer? The obvious thing to do in such a situation is ask, so 
that's what I did.

Now get off my case. I've done nothing that warrants the way I've been 
treated recently.

>> I suggest all of those with that trait try to be a bit more circumspect
>> with such opinions. Oftentimes what you thought was obvious wasn't.
>> Tone of voice doesn't survive the transition to email and newsposts, so
>> sometimes connotative content gets lost.
> 
> But I don't think much was lost in "J" and "APL".

There I was alluding to the *other* pointless and stupid flamewar you 
people have started recently. Where something was meant sarcastically and 
I made no unwarranted assumptions about how it was meant, instead of 
guessing and possibly getting it wrong. Apparently I was supposed to 
guess there too, and presumably magically guess right as well.

And yes, that last sentence was meant sarcastically, because I think this 
whole affair is ludicrous. Apparently you have expectations of me that 
are unreasonable given the limitations of the medium and the fact that I 
am not actually a walking encyclopedia of every single programming 
language, nuanced bit of usage, and so forth; and when I fall short of 
those ridiculous expectations the standard response is to flame rather 
than to be tolerant. How utterly silly and revolting. It makes me not 
want to be a part of any community that behaves like yours does.

>>                                          You were thinking it when you
>> posted it, and then you assume it's obvious to anyone reading it, but
>> it's not. Or in the case at hand, you assume J will be vaguely familiar
>> to someone else as being a programming language, when they may never
>> have heard of it,
> 
> I am pretty sure that Peter had never heard of it either.
> 
> But has learned to use Google and Wikipedia.

So have I. Enough to know their limitations, too, and that "J" is not a 
good query in either's search, so I'd have to guess at additional terms 
and probably spend several minutes experimenting with the query before 
being reasonably sure what Arved meant.

Or I could just ask him.

But if I'd known beforehand that asking him would prompt this ludicrous 
overreaction from at least 3 other people I'd have just ignored the whole 
matter and gone on not knowing what the hell J was!

> http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#keepcool

Oh, the irony. I'm the only one here who is making some discernible 
effort to be civil and to argue on the facts without resorting to 
namecalling or personal insinuations of any kind, and you're telling ME 
to "keep cool"!

Every other word out of your mouth is some sort of insinuation that I'm 
not a "real programmer" or some other such disparagement lately; Peter is 
not much better, nor Mike; and Lew has stooped to direct and blunt 
personal attacks; and you're telling ME to "keep cool".

I think it's clear from the tones of the various newsposts here who 
really deserves to receive (implicitly-barbed) advice to "keep cool". #1: 
Lew. #2: you. #3 (tied): Mike and Peter. #5 (distant): me. And you jumped 
right to the tail of that list for some unfathomable reason.

Well, I could speculate on what that reason might be, but if I did I 
would then be as guilty as Lew of making unconstructive personal attacks.

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#25650

On 08-02-2011 06:30, Ken Wesson wrote:
> On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 19:10:47 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 07-02-2011 03:18, Ken Wesson wrote:
>>> See my response to Patricia. You added "programming language" to the
>>> query but the first post mentioning J did not make it clear that it was
>>> a programming language, only that learning it would make APL code seem
>>> less like line noise. Whether that meant it was an APL derivative, an
>>> APL IDE, a mathematical system using similar symbols, or some other
>>> tool was not made clear by that post.
>>
>>> This makes it sound like J might be an APL derivative or relative, but
>>> is more likely an APL ecosystem tool created significantly later in
>>> time than APL itself. If that impression was misleading, well, Arved
>>> Sandstrom is the one who wrote it.
>>
>> It could have been other things than a programming language, but a
>> programming language should be one of the first guesses.
>
> I didn't *feel* like guessing. Why are you saying that I was obligated to
> guess rather than ask and find out for sure? Because I did the latter,
> got flamed, and now you're suggesting I should have done the former
> instead.
>
> That does not make sense.
>
> Why should I guess when there's someone right there that I know knows the
> exact answer? The obvious thing to do in such a situation is ask, so
> that's what I did.

It is perfectly fine to ask questions.

But if you note the name of this group then it ends in "programmer".

Programmers are expected to have basic search abilities.

There must be other groups where the idea of finding information
via Google is considered a challenging task.

>>> I suggest all of those with that trait try to be a bit more circumspect
>>> with such opinions. Oftentimes what you thought was obvious wasn't.
>>> Tone of voice doesn't survive the transition to email and newsposts, so
>>> sometimes connotative content gets lost.
>>
>> But I don't think much was lost in "J" and "APL".
>
> There I was alluding to the *other* pointless and stupid flamewar you
> people have started recently. Where something was meant sarcastically and
> I made no unwarranted assumptions about how it was meant, instead of
> guessing and possibly getting it wrong. Apparently I was supposed to
> guess there too, and presumably magically guess right as well.
>
> And yes, that last sentence was meant sarcastically, because I think this
> whole affair is ludicrous. Apparently you have expectations of me that
> are unreasonable given the limitations of the medium and the fact that I
> am not actually a walking encyclopedia of every single programming
> language, nuanced bit of usage, and so forth; and when I fall short of
> those ridiculous expectations the standard response is to flame rather
> than to be tolerant. How utterly silly and revolting. It makes me not
> want to be a part of any community that behaves like yours does.

I don't think anybody expect you to know about J.

But most expect you to be able to Google.

>>>                                           You were thinking it when you
>>> posted it, and then you assume it's obvious to anyone reading it, but
>>> it's not. Or in the case at hand, you assume J will be vaguely familiar
>>> to someone else as being a programming language, when they may never
>>> have heard of it,
>>
>> I am pretty sure that Peter had never heard of it either.
>>
>> But has learned to use Google and Wikipedia.
>
> So have I. Enough to know their limitations, too, and that "J" is not a
> good query in either's search, so I'd have to guess at additional terms
> and probably spend several minutes experimenting with the query before
> being reasonably sure what Arved meant.
>
> Or I could just ask him.

Googling should be a lot faster than waiting for a reply on usenet.

>> http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#keepcool
>
> Oh, the irony. I'm the only one here who is making some discernible
> effort to be civil and to argue on the facts without resorting to
> namecalling or personal insinuations of any kind, and you're telling ME
> to "keep cool"!
>
> Every other word out of your mouth is some sort of insinuation that I'm
> not a "real programmer" or some other such disparagement lately; Peter is
> not much better, nor Mike; and Lew has stooped to direct and blunt
> personal attacks; and you're telling ME to "keep cool".
>
> I think it's clear from the tones of the various newsposts here who
> really deserves to receive (implicitly-barbed) advice to "keep cool". #1:
> Lew. #2: you. #3 (tied): Mike and Peter. #5 (distant): me. And you jumped
> right to the tail of that list for some unfathomable reason.
>
> Well, I could speculate on what that reason might be, but if I did I
> would then be as guilty as Lew of making unconstructive personal attacks.

The next section has this:

"When this happens, the worst thing you can do is whine about the 
experience, claim to have been verbally assaulted, demand apologies, 
scream, hold your breath, threaten lawsuits, complain to people's 
employers, leave the toilet seat up, etc."

:-)

Arne

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#25801

In article <4d4faac2$1@news.x-privat.org>,
Ken Wesson  <kwesson@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:48:06 +0800, Peter Duniho wrote:
> 
> > On 2/7/11 11:45 AM, Ken Wesson wrote:
> >> On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 11:27:56 +0800, Peter Duniho wrote:
> >>
> >>> On 2/7/11 11:17 AM, Ken Wesson wrote:
> >>>> [...]
> >>>>> J has arguably helped with that. Some. Fact is, if you apply
> >>>>> yourself to learning and using J then it's not line-noise at all,
> >>>>> it's just extremely terse. It's not symbol cruft in the same sense
> >>>>> that Perl is.
> >>>>
> >>>> And what, pray tell, is J?
> >>>
> >>> http://www.lmgtfy.com/
> >>
> >> That is needlessly snarky. It's not as if one can google a one-letter
> >> query and expect a useful result.
> > 
> > I note that you clipped the _useful_ part of the URL I offered.
> > 
> > If one is so inept at web searches that they cannot be bothered to add
> > relevant terms that are obvious from the context in order to produce a
> > useful result, then yes…I can see how that might cause a problem.  But
> > such a person probably should not be involved in programming in any way.
> 
> See my response to Patricia. 

Which explains why you didn't yourself think to try the additional
search terms suggested by Peter.  What it doesn't explain is why you
quoted only the first part of Peter's URL.  I can't think of any
reason to do that other than -- well, perhaps I won't finish that
sentence.

(I agree that you do have a point here, but the lengths to which
you seem to be going to argue that you have done nothing wrong ....
"Remarkable"?)

> You added "programming language" to the 
> query but the first post mentioning J did not make it clear that it was a 
> programming language, only that learning it would make APL code seem less 
> like line noise. Whether that meant it was an APL derivative, an APL IDE, 
> a mathematical system using similar symbols, or some other tool was not 
> made clear by that post.

[ snip ]

-- 
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer:  I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.

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#25829

On 07-02-2011 03:18, Ken Wesson wrote:
> See my response to Patricia. You added "programming language" to the
> query but the first post mentioning J did not make it clear that it was a
> programming language, only that learning it would make APL code seem less
> like line noise. Whether that meant it was an APL derivative, an APL IDE,
> a mathematical system using similar symbols, or some other tool was not
> made clear by that post.

> This makes it sound like J might be an APL derivative or relative, but is
> more likely an APL ecosystem tool created significantly later in time
> than APL itself. If that impression was misleading, well, Arved Sandstrom
> is the one who wrote it.

It could have been other things than a programming language,
but a programming language should be one of the first
guesses.

> I suggest all of those with that trait try to be a bit more circumspect
> with such opinions. Oftentimes what you thought was obvious wasn't. Tone
> of voice doesn't survive the transition to email and newsposts, so
> sometimes connotative content gets lost.

But I don't think much was lost in "J" and "APL".

>                                          You were thinking it when you
> posted it, and then you assume it's obvious to anyone reading it, but
> it's not. Or in the case at hand, you assume J will be vaguely familiar
> to someone else as being a programming language, when they may never have
> heard of it,

I am pretty sure that Peter had never heard of it either.

But has learned to use Google and Wikipedia.

> Not everything you were thinking when you wrote something actually makes
> it into the text. Not everything you know about some of the things you
> mention are known to every reader. Not every reader will take away
> exactly the same meaning you intended when you wrote it or took away when
> you read it. Not every reader who doesn't read it the same way you
> expected them to is an idiot, or a clueless newbie that knows nothing
> about programming. And, for that matter, not every reader who *is* a
> clueless newbie or an idiot requires being publicly called out as such
> anytime the thought happens to cross your mind that maybe they are such.
> Certainly, the atmosphere in this newsgroup would be nicer and you'd have
> fewer flamewars if you kept such thoughts to yourself; voicing them is
> pretty much never constructive. Indeed, really there's four categories of
> people you might be tempted to flame in such a manner and flaming
> actually helps with none of them:
>
> 1. People who just misunderstood something, or not even that; they
>     interpreted an ambiguous phrase differently from what you expected, or
>     didn't know something you assumed everybody (or every programmer) knew,
>     or simply disagreed with you on some point where you're absolutely
>     convinced you're right, or even that the rightness of your position is
>     obvious.
>
>     Flaming in this instance creates needless friction when what's needed
>     is clearer communication instead.
>
> 2. People who actually are clueless newbies, but are trying to learn.
>
>     Alienating them serves no useful purpose and they won't feel inclined
>     to receive any free clues from you if every one of them comes coated in
>     vinegar. They're liable to go elsewhere, such as C++ or Lisp, after
>     getting the impression that "Java programmers are a bunch of stuck-up
>     assholes". Some may even give up on programming altogether after
>     getting a negative first impression of programmer culture.

http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#keepcool

Arne

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#25876

On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:38:01 +0800, Peter Duniho wrote:

> On 2/7/11 4:18 PM, Ken Wesson wrote:
>> See my response to Patricia. You added "programming language" to the
>> query but the first post mentioning J did not make it clear that it was
>> a programming language  [...]
> 
> Oh, give me a break.  We are talking about programming here.  The word
> is even in the name of the newsgroup.  If you simply search for "j
> programming", you get just as useful a result

I would have expected "j programming" to turn up a lot of hits -- 
anything with "j" and "programming" in it. Any page on Java programming 
is likely to have both, and is likely to have much higher page rank than 
any obscure language or tool.

That's if google didn't turn out to just ignore one-letter query terms.

> Quit making excuses.

I'm not -- I have nothing to make excuses for.

All I did was ask what J was. That's not morally wrong, and consequently 
it's not something one would make excuses for.

> If you can't admit that you should have been able to find the
> information you sought on your own, fine.

Sure I could have tried mucking about with assorted google queries. I 
just plain didn't feel like it. Satisfied?

> It's certainly not worth any of the rest of our time to keep hassling
> you about it.

Then why are you? Hassling me, that is. At least four people have flamed 
me here in the past 24 hours -- you, Arne, Lew, and Mike. And all because 
I did two apparently-especially-heinous things:

1. I asked what J was.
2. On encountering a term for which I foresaw more than one possible
   connotation, I made no assumption about which was intended, rather than
   guess right OR guess wrong.

Now, please tell me:

1. what is wrong with asking what J is (ignore that this is a Java
   newsgroup and J is apparently nothing to do with Java; that wasn't the
   focus of the flamage); and
2. what is wrong with taking a term at face value instead of assuming
   (with the risk of guessing wrong) that it was (or wasn't) intended in
   a sarcastic manner.

If you can come up with no plausible theory by which EITHER of those 
actions of mine is morally wrong, then I respectfully request that all 
four of you that I have just named post apologies.

Thank you.

> you're not making yourself look any more credible by trying to actually
> _justify_ it.

Justify asking what J is? The only justifications I need for that are a) 
I didn't know what J was, b) the person I was asking did know what it was 
and had in fact just mentioned it, c) this is an unmoderated newsgroup, 
and d) the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of 
America.

> As far as the rest of your post goes, point taken (if not read through
> thoroughly…sheesh, I thought _I_ could be verbose).  Yes, sometimes
> there are those of us who fail to work hard enough to view something
> from the other person's point of view.  I've made that mistake myself.
> 
> But I don't agree that point pertains here.

Oh, it does. Unless, again, you can come up with a theory whereby it is 
some great moral failing of mine to have had the sheer, unadulterated 
*nerve* to ask what J was, or to not assume sarcasm where I could not be 
sure of its presence.

> I don't think you had any good excuse for not figuring out what "J"
> means here.

1. I did have a good excuse: from the context it was ambiguous which of
   at least three different categories of thing it might have been.

2. Furthermore, I did not need any excuse. I was under no obligation to
   figure it out for myself rather than ask. Indeed, given the ambiguity,
   I had little choice in the matter; it was
   a) ask the guy who'd just mentioned it;
   b) try various ways of asking Google; and
   c) give up
   Obviously c) was right out and b) struck me as too much effort compared
   to a). On the other hand a) would likely be slower in terms of clock-
   time than b), but on the gripping hand I wasn't in any big hurry to
   get the answer.

> Pretty much any search text that is reasonably relevant/specific to the
> context here and which is more than just the letter "J" is likely to
> have given you the information you needed.

That depends on how Google behaves if a query word is only one letter 
long. If it ignores that term then Google would be useless in this case, 
and it wouldn't be much better if it matched any word containing that 
letter.

> It seems pretty clear that you didn't even bother to try.

True.

> And that's just lazy.

False.

Why are you making such a big deal about it anyway? So I asked Arved what 
J was. Big fricking deal! I simply can't fathom why that is being treated 
as a grade-A felony. Anyone who felt it was "lazy" for me to ask should 
have felt free to simply ignore my post and thereby refuse to answer the 
question. There was no call for flaming me for merely asking it.

> So complain about me being snarky all you want.  I firmly believe you
> deserved it.

And you're wrong.

Unless, once again, you can provide a compelling argument that asking 
what J is in this newsgroup is morally wrong *without* using J not being 
Java-related as a premise (since that wasn't apparently the reason for 
flaming me).

> And if you thought _my_ response was too harsh, I can't
> wait to see what you think of the rest of the Internet.

I have plenty of experience on the "rest of the Internet" and for the 
most part people are NOT prone to jump down your throat for innocently 
asking someone to define a term they just used.

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#25936

On 08-02-2011 06:17, Ken Wesson wrote:
> On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:38:01 +0800, Peter Duniho wrote:
>> If you can't admit that you should have been able to find the
>> information you sought on your own, fine.
>
> Sure I could have tried mucking about with assorted google queries. I
> just plain didn't feel like it. Satisfied?

That is usually called being lazy.

>> It's certainly not worth any of the rest of our time to keep hassling
>> you about it.
>
> Then why are you? Hassling me, that is. At least four people have flamed
> me here in the past 24 hours -- you, Arne, Lew, and Mike. And all because
> I did two apparently-especially-heinous things:
>
> 1. I asked what J was.
> 2. On encountering a term for which I foresaw more than one possible
>     connotation, I made no assumption about which was intended, rather than
>     guess right OR guess wrong.
>
> Now, please tell me:
>
> 1. what is wrong with asking what J is (ignore that this is a Java
>     newsgroup and J is apparently nothing to do with Java; that wasn't the
>     focus of the flamage); and
> 2. what is wrong with taking a term at face value instead of assuming
>     (with the risk of guessing wrong) that it was (or wasn't) intended in
>     a sarcastic manner.

The biggest problem is not what you did not know or did not do,
but how you react when it was pointed out.

> If you can come up with no plausible theory by which EITHER of those
> actions of mine is morally wrong, then I respectfully request that all
> four of you that I have just named post apologies.

http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#not_losing

Arne

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#26099

On 2/8/11 7:17 PM, Ken Wesson wrote:
> [...]
> Sure I could have tried mucking about with assorted google queries. I
> just plain didn't feel like it. Satisfied?

Yes.  That's all I wanted: your admission, even absent an apology, that 
you were lazy.  Now, was that so hard?

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#26008

On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:48:06 +0800, Peter Duniho wrote:

> On 2/7/11 11:45 AM, Ken Wesson wrote:
>> On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 11:27:56 +0800, Peter Duniho wrote:
>>
>>> On 2/7/11 11:17 AM, Ken Wesson wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>>> J has arguably helped with that. Some. Fact is, if you apply
>>>>> yourself to learning and using J then it's not line-noise at all,
>>>>> it's just extremely terse. It's not symbol cruft in the same sense
>>>>> that Perl is.
>>>>
>>>> And what, pray tell, is J?
>>>
>>> http://www.lmgtfy.com/
>>
>> That is needlessly snarky. It's not as if one can google a one-letter
>> query and expect a useful result.
> 
> I note that you clipped the _useful_ part of the URL I offered.
> 
> If one is so inept at web searches that they cannot be bothered to add
> relevant terms that are obvious from the context in order to produce a
> useful result, then yes…I can see how that might cause a problem.  But
> such a person probably should not be involved in programming in any way.

See my response to Patricia. You added "programming language" to the 
query but the first post mentioning J did not make it clear that it was a 
programming language, only that learning it would make APL code seem less 
like line noise. Whether that meant it was an APL derivative, an APL IDE, 
a mathematical system using similar symbols, or some other tool was not 
made clear by that post.

Specifically, we had this exchange:

>> APL, in an ugly way.
>
> J has arguably helped with that. Some. Fact is, if you apply yourself
> to learning and using J then it's not line-noise at all, it's just
> extremely terse. It's not symbol cruft in the same sense that Perl is.

I read this as "J has arguably helped with APL's ugliness. Some. Fact is, 
if you apply yourself to learning and using J then APL's not line-noise 
at all, it's just extremely terse. It's not symbol cruft in the same 
sense that Perl is".

This makes it sound like J might be an APL derivative or relative, but is 
more likely an APL ecosystem tool created significantly later in time 
than APL itself. If that impression was misleading, well, Arved Sandstrom 
is the one who wrote it.

On a more general note, I've noticed since my arrival here that there are 
several people in this newsgroup with an abrupt manner and a tendency to 
disparage other people, especially their qualifications as programmers, 
if they miss seeing anything that the person considers (often wrongly) to 
be obvious.

I suggest all of those with that trait try to be a bit more circumspect 
with such opinions. Oftentimes what you thought was obvious wasn't. Tone 
of voice doesn't survive the transition to email and newsposts, so 
sometimes connotative content gets lost. You were thinking it when you 
posted it, and then you assume it's obvious to anyone reading it, but 
it's not. Or in the case at hand, you assume J will be vaguely familiar 
to someone else as being a programming language, when they may never have 
heard of it, or that there's only one way to read a piece of on-its-face-
ambiguous text and that's as meaning whatever you were thinking when you 
wrote it. In particular, you and Patricia seem to think the "it"s in 
Arved's post referred to J; Arved himsef may have meant it that way; but 
in context I read them as referring to APL, since right after a mention 
of APL's ugliness and in response to it was "J has arguably helped with 
that", suggesting "that" is "APL looking like line noise", and later 
"it's not line-noise" with APL-looking-like-line-noise being part of the 
context.

Not everything you were thinking when you wrote something actually makes 
it into the text. Not everything you know about some of the things you 
mention are known to every reader. Not every reader will take away 
exactly the same meaning you intended when you wrote it or took away when 
you read it. Not every reader who doesn't read it the same way you 
expected them to is an idiot, or a clueless newbie that knows nothing 
about programming. And, for that matter, not every reader who *is* a 
clueless newbie or an idiot requires being publicly called out as such 
anytime the thought happens to cross your mind that maybe they are such. 
Certainly, the atmosphere in this newsgroup would be nicer and you'd have 
fewer flamewars if you kept such thoughts to yourself; voicing them is 
pretty much never constructive. Indeed, really there's four categories of 
people you might be tempted to flame in such a manner and flaming 
actually helps with none of them:

1. People who just misunderstood something, or not even that; they
   interpreted an ambiguous phrase differently from what you expected, or
   didn't know something you assumed everybody (or every programmer) knew,
   or simply disagreed with you on some point where you're absolutely
   convinced you're right, or even that the rightness of your position is
   obvious.

   Flaming in this instance creates needless friction when what's needed
   is clearer communication instead.

2. People who actually are clueless newbies, but are trying to learn.

   Alienating them serves no useful purpose and they won't feel inclined
   to receive any free clues from you if every one of them comes coated in
   vinegar. They're liable to go elsewhere, such as C++ or Lisp, after
   getting the impression that "Java programmers are a bunch of stuck-up
   assholes". Some may even give up on programming altogether after
   getting a negative first impression of programmer culture.

3. People who are hopelessly clueless; bona fide idiots and assorted
   fruits and nuts.

   Nothing you say will help them. Flaming them will however waste
   bandwidth and possibly prompt them to flame back. Frustration and anger
   will make them prone to lash out at anyone perceived as taunting or
   humiliating them. This will waste still more bandwidth.

4. Trolls.

   Flaming trolls is a form of feeding trolls. Also see 3, particularly
   the bits about wasting bandwidth.

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#26136

On 2/7/11 4:18 PM, Ken Wesson wrote:
> See my response to Patricia. You added "programming language" to the
> query but the first post mentioning J did not make it clear that it was a
> programming language  [...]

Oh, give me a break.  We are talking about programming here.  The word 
is even in the name of the newsgroup.  If you simply search for "j 
programming", you get just as useful a result (and if you're using 
Google, it suggests you complete with "language" anyway).

And your claim that you confused "J" with something that might be useful 
in the context of APL?  Well, guess what comes up in the search results 
if you type "J APL" or "APL J" into Google?

Quit making excuses.  If you can't admit that you should have been able 
to find the information you sought on your own, fine.  It's certainly 
not worth any of the rest of our time to keep hassling you about it. 
But you're not making yourself look any more credible by trying to 
actually _justify_ it.

As far as the rest of your post goes, point taken (if not read through 
thoroughly…sheesh, I thought _I_ could be verbose).  Yes, sometimes 
there are those of us who fail to work hard enough to view something 
from the other person's point of view.  I've made that mistake myself.

But I don't agree that point pertains here.  I don't think you had any 
good excuse for not figuring out what "J" means here.  Pretty much any 
search text that is reasonably relevant/specific to the context here and 
which is more than just the letter "J" is likely to have given you the 
information you needed.  It seems pretty clear that you didn't even 
bother to try.  And that's just lazy.

So complain about me being snarky all you want.  I firmly believe you 
deserved it.  And if you thought _my_ response was too harsh, I can't 
wait to see what you think of the rest of the Internet.

Pete

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