home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!oz
- From: oz@nexus.yorku.ca (ozan s. yigit)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.perl.misc,comp.lang.tcl,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.java
- Subject: on criticism [Re: Relative Speed of Perl vs. Tcl vs. C]
- Date: 20 Feb 96 00:14:52
- Organization: The Electric Skillet
- Message-ID: <OZ.96Feb20001452@nexus.yorku.ca>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: nexus.yorku.ca
-
- sir karl popper is known to have said that criticism is a sign of
- appreciation, even though he could not stand it himself. there has always
- been plenty of criticism on usenet; rarely in depth, and rarely in its
- proper level as art. all the popular things make easier targets; we all
- know what we like and is popular is not the same as what those other
- losers like and is popular. we feel we are closer to Truth somehow, just
- as we felt at age ten. this brings us to java, perl, python, tcl, scheme,
- c++ and any other new language which captured the hearts and minds of
- computing professionals, ten years old and up. in the last several yearrs,
- each one of these languages have received some of the most vituperative
- and most vacuous criticism ever showeled on the net. they have been the
- great mistakes, the end of civilized computing as we know it. it is not
- good enough that we spit on them in every opportunity, but we imply that
- each one was designed by someone half illiterate, half mad. mr hyde in there
- somewhere, and mr magoo as his assistant, surely. lately, we all learned
- that java is the biggest pile of [fill in the blanks] ever to hit the
- wide world of web...
-
- enough. time to grow up.
-
- criticism is a vicious art; it is hard to take, and it is harder to
- give. is meant to enlighten us, further our thinking and help us do better.
- when it is used for no other reason than its target's popularity, or for our
- own gain, it loses its value and diminishes its would-be practicioners. we can
- choose to deliver well-thought-out criticism to worthy targets, and expect
- to receive in kind, or we can poison the net with hysterical, worthless
- opinion pieces. which one do we deserve?
-
- even a ten year old knows the answer.
-
- oz
-