All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Perfection can only be approximated

DAxelrod on 2007-02-01T04:02:53

If you don't know why a particular tool sucks, you haven't been using it for long enough.

This is especially true for programming languages and software.

Counterexamples welcome. :)

Just to give you a hard time

paperstreet on 2007-02-01T15:55:37

It seems like you're just posting our conversations now, but I'll bite.



My counterexample is religion. I can't think of anything else that, given an infinite amount of time, you couldn't understand completely. But, assuming you believe in the Jewish/Protestant God (I'm not sure about others), part of your belief is that you were created unable to understand divine things. The only parts of this argument that are debatable are the truth of religion and whether religion is a "tool". The former must be taken individually and the latter is a tricky argument to make without offense. Though, I guess you could argue that it's a tool that gives you a framework for how to live your life.



Anyway, the whole point of me registering for an account and posting this is to point out that you're sleeping through class right now, and I should be. Oh, the lengths I'll go to be a jackass.

Re:Just to give you a hard time

DAxelrod on 2007-02-01T16:00:21

Just to be clear, the tool suckage principle is something I came up with months before our conversation.

Also, your jackassery is indeed awesome.

Re:Just to give you a hard time

DAxelrod on 2007-02-01T21:24:44

It is not necessary to understand something completely in order to be able to figure out why it sucks.

For example, I don't understand religion completely, but I understand that it sucks because beliefs become dogma too easily.

Your argument about why religion is a tool has convinced me.

Re:Just to give you a hard time

pudge on 2007-02-01T22:20:23

assuming you believe in the Jewish/Protestant God (I'm not sure about others), part of your belief is that you were created unable to understand divine things
Not quite. First, some divine things are understandable. Second, the only things not understandable are those things which are impossible for any noninfinite, created, being to understand. It's not that we were created unable to understand those things, but that we cannot understand those things because we created.

Not that this has anything to do with anything.

Perfect software systems

ferreira on 2007-02-02T12:16:27

It seems like Steve Yegge has been blogging about perfect software systems here: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.html. Sometimes he writes interesting things. Well, ok, sometimes he misses the point completely. He's not that perfect as well.