Not Again [LWN.net]

Not Again

Posted Apr 17, 2012 3:47 UTC (Tue) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998)
In reply to: Not Again by brianomahoney
Parent article: PHP: a fractal of bad design (fuzzy notepad)

Personally, I tend not to take advice from people who abuse others as being stupid and yet can't write a coherent post. How do you program if you can't get simple things like spelling and capitalization right in English? (The first is why they invented spellcheckers; you just have to learn the rules for the second, but they're not that complex.)

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Not Again

Posted Apr 17, 2012 5:54 UTC (Tue) by edomaur (subscriber, #14520) [Link]

I don't see the link between your answer and his question... Well, color me stupid.

More seriously, if I could erase PHP from my life, I would do. It's a mess as a language, and this has no link whatsover with my political preferences, my skin tone, the things I know as a learned human, and any other non-software related themas.

However, you have the right (and the left) to choose your programming language of preference, and to beeing offended by the negative views some other people will have about it.

But you have to be realist.

Not Again

Posted Apr 17, 2012 16:14 UTC (Tue) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

Seriously Brian, attacking everything as 'lefty' when totally irrelevant to this degree is a warning sign of schizophrenia. Please talk to a mental health professional.

Not Again

Posted Apr 19, 2012 14:27 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

Thanks for giving the information that you can be ignored for all times on LWN.net.

Not Again

Posted Apr 17, 2012 10:49 UTC (Tue) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

How do you program if you can't get simple things like spelling and capitalization right in English?

First, English spelling is sufficiently non-simple that a spellchecker can't save you from howlers.

Second, a former (English!) co-worker of mine could design and write sane, coherent software despite being unable to reliably internalize the spelling of "receive".

Not Again

Posted Apr 17, 2012 14:34 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]

If the compiler keeps telling you that you're wrong, eventually you'll step up and give it something it can work with, and then you'll always have the executable and a debugger. There isn't such a toolchain for English.

Not Again

Posted Apr 17, 2012 16:18 UTC (Tue) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

I guess it depends on what you consider sane.
> Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.
(Edsger Dijkstra)

Not Again

Posted Apr 17, 2012 16:38 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

Yeah. Even Ritchie couldn't spell "create" right.

/me ducks

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Posted Apr 17, 2012 22:34 UTC (Tue) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

I think that was Thompson, and I *think* he said that if he could change one thing about Unix, that would be it.

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Posted Apr 18, 2012 12:50 UTC (Wed) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

I recall it was Ritchie, but I could be wrong. And yes, that's the quote I was thinking of.

Not Again

Posted Apr 19, 2012 11:00 UTC (Thu) by jwakely (subscriber, #60262) [Link]

Although there seem to be several sources on the web attributing it to Ritchie (e.g .http://www.gobolinux.org/?page=doc/articles/clueless) Wikiquote attributes it to Thompson, citing Kernighan & Pike as the source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kenneth_Thompson
My copy of TUPE is at home so I can't check it, but I'm inclined to believe Kernighan & Pike would have got it right.

How to get `receive' right

Posted May 12, 2012 1:54 UTC (Sat) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

Back in the day, I was programming a custom multiplexer board for the HP 2100. Obviously I had to have a testbed that would cause it to transfer data in either direction. :-)

Being lazy, most of its commands were single letters: `s' for send, `h' for halt, &c. But to get it to listen for incoming, I had to type in the entire word `receive' correctly. By the end of the week I had no further trouble remembering the spelling.