I think it has been mentioned before, but it bears repeating, please don’t use “most rational” in titles.
I haven’t seen this advice before. A link would be appreciated.
Edit: The post has been retitled to “what is the best programming language”. My main reason for doing so is to avoid confusion as well as dilution of the meaning of the word “rational”—which should probably be reserved for specific contexts (e.g. avoiding cognitive biases) rather than used as a catch-all for “most optimal” and so forth.
Just ask for the best programming language and describe your needs.
My needs? Well I am already moderately skilled at a dozen or so languages, including Python, SQL, and Forth. My first scripting language was Perl and my first GUI language was REALBasic, which was essentially Visual Basic for the Mac.
Why did I go into Forth? Well, I wanted some down and dirty understanding of what the heck is actually going on in a computer. And I couldn’t stick with C long enough to get that for some reason. Now I’ve done things like creating my own string manipulation functions (by concatenating other functions and primitives). I’m not sure I could have got that from Python.
On the other hand, now when I look at C code slinging pointers and char arrays around it makes perfect sense, and I can also visualize linked lists and other data structures. As a newbie though I remember it was all extremely confusing.
I linked to the post itself because more than one of the comments were about using “rational” in the titles of posts, and I also thought the content of the post was relevant to understanding that discussion.
Labeling it off topic was an overreaction on my part. It was clear to me that you were talking about the comments.
Nonetheless, it seems kind of silly (in an insulting and childish way) for someone to portray the topic “most rational programming language” as essentially equal with “rational wart removal”, which is the most parsimonious interpretation of your comment, and which I must therefore rebut since you did not bother to clarify.
There are multiple levels on which programming languages can be rational—they can teach rationality skills, they can help you make money for rational causes, and so forth. Wart removal is far more specific and a much more clear-cut case of dilution of the term.
I have substituted “best” in the title in the interests of preventing dilution, but this still seems to me to be a step above and beyond what I am required by linguistic politeness and the demands of clarity to take—programming and rationality really are related in ways beyond the superficial “rational = best” kind of way.
That’s the kindest interpretation you could think of? I’m a bit bothered that I have to specify I wasn’t trying to be a dick in this specific situation. No, I wasn’t trying to be mean to you. It looked like you wanted to see situations similar to yours, so I showed you the first one to came to mind (which of course was the most extreme one), and I assumed you wouldn’t think I was implying they were equal.
I haven’t seen this advice before. A link would be appreciated.
Edit: The post has been retitled to “what is the best programming language”. My main reason for doing so is to avoid confusion as well as dilution of the meaning of the word “rational”—which should probably be reserved for specific contexts (e.g. avoiding cognitive biases) rather than used as a catch-all for “most optimal” and so forth.
My needs? Well I am already moderately skilled at a dozen or so languages, including Python, SQL, and Forth. My first scripting language was Perl and my first GUI language was REALBasic, which was essentially Visual Basic for the Mac.
Why did I go into Forth? Well, I wanted some down and dirty understanding of what the heck is actually going on in a computer. And I couldn’t stick with C long enough to get that for some reason. Now I’ve done things like creating my own string manipulation functions (by concatenating other functions and primitives). I’m not sure I could have got that from Python.
On the other hand, now when I look at C code slinging pointers and char arrays around it makes perfect sense, and I can also visualize linked lists and other data structures. As a newbie though I remember it was all extremely confusing.
Behold, rational wart removal
Um, that seems off topic. I do see some vaguely on topic comments in the replies… maybe you meant to link to one of them?
I linked to the post itself because more than one of the comments were about using “rational” in the titles of posts, and I also thought the content of the post was relevant to understanding that discussion.
Labeling it off topic was an overreaction on my part. It was clear to me that you were talking about the comments.
Nonetheless, it seems kind of silly (in an insulting and childish way) for someone to portray the topic “most rational programming language” as essentially equal with “rational wart removal”, which is the most parsimonious interpretation of your comment, and which I must therefore rebut since you did not bother to clarify.
There are multiple levels on which programming languages can be rational—they can teach rationality skills, they can help you make money for rational causes, and so forth. Wart removal is far more specific and a much more clear-cut case of dilution of the term.
I have substituted “best” in the title in the interests of preventing dilution, but this still seems to me to be a step above and beyond what I am required by linguistic politeness and the demands of clarity to take—programming and rationality really are related in ways beyond the superficial “rational = best” kind of way.
That’s the kindest interpretation you could think of? I’m a bit bothered that I have to specify I wasn’t trying to be a dick in this specific situation. No, I wasn’t trying to be mean to you. It looked like you wanted to see situations similar to yours, so I showed you the first one to came to mind (which of course was the most extreme one), and I assumed you wouldn’t think I was implying they were equal.