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I couldn't help but notice this phrase:

[X] is nice but [Y] will get you most of the way and [dealing with the difference] is simple.

reads a lot like the Blub conceit. I'm not accusing you of that, but I do disagree that OO can give you what pattern matching typically does.


>reads a lot like the Blub conceit

Perhaps. But then again the "Blub conceit" is nothing that exists in real life as a proven fact of computer science.

It's just an argument expressed in an essay. Not some kind of formal logical error.


What's your point?


My point, which is pretty obvious, is that it "reading like the Blub conceit" doesn't mean anything at all with regards to its correctness.

Might as well say "your argument reads a lot as something that an unbeliever in the flying spaghetti monster would say".


I live ok without pattern matching and I build compilers/runtimes for a living; is that blub conceit?

I also have no problem with the expression problem. C# has partial classes anyways, which work even if type checking is non-modular. Of course, I would like it if C# support some form of pattern matching, but not enough to switch over to F# (whose pattern matching isn't as rich as Scala's, anyways).


> I live ok without pattern matching and I build compilers/runtimes for a living; is that blub conceit?

No, I would have quoted it the first time if it was. But if you want to repeat that again you will certainly sound conceited.


OK, I have no idea what point you are trying to make then. Please forgive my ignorance on your social conventions.


The point was simply that what you wrote is how a very bad argument starts. I took care to point out I wasn't accusing you of that but you have reacted defensively anyway.

It's my fault for trying to engage an HN-er in a form of discourse other than debate.


If its a meta comment, just say so directly. It is a bit difficult to decode these comments sometimes, especially when defending OOP.


What is the blub conceit? Google searched it and got nothing.


The important bit is:

    As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power 
    continuum, he knows he's looking down. Languages less powerful than Blub 
    are obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used 
    to. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, 
    up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are 
    merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power 
    to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good 
    enough for him, because he thinks in Blub.
From PG's Beating the Averages (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)


A "my language is more expressive than yours" version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.


> Lets pick one as a community and stick with it.

And when our assumptions turn out to be wrong, should we continue working on it even though we know it can never work? The problem is every new term is forged with assumptions because the very idea of what intelligence is the subject of ongoing debate. (I don't even like the one presented here, even though it's pretty good as far as these things go.)

I sympathize though, the nomenclature is polluted with the corpses of would-be giants and makes it hard to talk about what we can all easily recognize as the same broad-strokes effort.


People missed the joke. Have an upvote.


Unfortunately, I don't think it was a joke. Such negative, very disappoint.


He did a better job of aping doge than you did, and not everyone needs to love it.


I don't think so. With their track record it would take a devout optimist not to think "oh, Mail is bugging out again." At least that's my impression from maintaining dozens of servers with many thousands of customers running this client.


Here's one comparing ATS, C#, Go, Haskell, OCaml, Python and Rust:

http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2013/06/09/choosing-a-python-r... (there's also a “Round 2” link at the bottom.)


I don't buy the logic. If embedding is such a big deal then why does nearly every discussion forum allow you to embed youtube videos but not tweets? It's got nothing to do with who the community thinks could make ad money on it, it's all about the particular medium. Further, while youtube is full of content, twitter has a much higher meta-content volume. Good for 'news' perhaps, not so much for discussion forums outside of gossip.


It's pretty easy to embed tweets nearly everywhere


I don't think so, not as a discussion site participant. None of the sites I use allow it.

But the real point is people don't do it that often even when they can. Twitter is rarely a direct source of content. From what I've seen Vimeo and Soundcloud have a better shot at this than Twitter, even though YouTube has them both both beat on embedding frequency for their respective content.


I disagree. Many people in this world lack the freedom to purchase cocaine. Whether they should have the freedom is up for debate. Whether it's a question of freedom is not.


Should we also have the freedom to hire a contract killer then? If not, where do we draw the line?

I agree that we should have the freedom to access anything we need to, but I guess it comes down to where we draw the line and what the appropriate response by law enforcement is. Much like we are seeing with growing marijuana for therapeutic intent (selling and personal) vs running a grow up for profit.

My main argument was that they are comparing DPR, who turns a profit, to Snowden who essentially lost everything to expose a corrupted system.

In a sense the active simulation we see with bitcoin is an example of a profitable but accurate exercise of a system.

Outside of specific details (legal etc), it is an interesting concept to witness the drug trade without the use of 'the street'. Hopefully this will present some ideas that will shape this currently illegal economy toward something that can be regulated and made 'safe'.


> Should we also have the freedom to hire a contract killer then?

It sounds an awful lot like you're trying to pick an argument that isn't on the table. I haven't endorsed any freedoms in particular, why are you asking me about this?


Were you suggesting that we should all have access to substances etc regardless of the laws in our land? I apologize if I read you wrong.


I wasn't. I was making the point that it's important to realize that it is a question of freedom even if you don't regard it as one that should be had. There are those who don't believe Snowden is fighting for justified freedoms and that his alleged treachery is worse than facilitating drug trafficking.


> they pretty clearly benefit from the access

Speaking of access, make sure you have the SonyⓇ RootKit™ Updater installed.


How do you think Sony and the EFF will respond?


Keep going, you're about to discover the holographic principle for yourself.


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