Why “new�

[Arne Vajhøj]

Why spend the time and effort to task switch on a probably-futile
endeavor when I can simply ask the person that's right in front of me
that I *know* knows the exact right answer?

Because you could learn something.

But that does not seem to be on your agenda.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

[...]
I am also welcome to ask the question

Yes, you are free to do whatever you want. The point is that you used
that freedom to choose to behave in a lazy way

I did not.

and then are now complaining that your laziness was observed and
commented on.

No, I am complaining that I have been *falsely accused* of laziness *and
worse*.

You said that you did not want to spend time on it.

That is the definition of being lazy.

So that question you have already confessed to, so no
point in denying that now.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

No, it is called being "pragmatic".

Pragmatic does not exclude being lazy, but it is certainly being
lazy - I find it more difficult to see it as pragmatic.

You act like you caught me goofing off at my desk at work or something.
I've got news for you.

1. This isn't work, it's usenet.
2. You're not my boss.

True. So we can openly criticize you for being lazy.

3. There is no rule saying one must keep one's nose to some grindstone on
pain of being called names in public.

Read the usenet FAQ I already linked to a couple of times.

4. Questions related to a newsgroup's topic and not in that newsgroup's
FAQ are supposed to be fair game to ask in that newsgroup without fear
of reprisals.

It is fair game to ask. And it is fair game to explain to
you that you are being lazy not to google yourself.

I reacted exactly as anyone would react to being insulted without cause.

The smart people does not react like that.

See the above mentioned usenet FAQ for details.

There seems to be some confusion here. You seem to think someone merely
pointed out that I didn't know what J was and I took offense to that.

I MYSELF pretty much said I didn't know what J was when I asked someone
else what J was.

That person then came back with a response that insinuated that I was
*stupid* for not knowing that it was a programming language.

Actually nobody did that.

Some people has even admitted that they did not know what J was.

You got criticized a little bit for not being able to find out.

And a lot for acting like a spoiled child when it was pointed
out to you.

I don't see anybody losing their cool around here except Lew, who is
veritably frothing at the mouth for some reason.

Try look in the mirror.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

45, Ken Wesson wrote:
17 AM, Ken Wesson wrote:
[...]
J has arguably helped with that. Some. Fact is, if you apply
yourself to learning and using J then it's not line-noise at all,
it's just extremely terse. It's not symbol cruft in the same sense
that Perl is.

And what, pray tell, is J?

http://www.lmgtfy.com/

That is needlessly snarky. It's not as if one can google a one-letter
query and expect a useful result.

Since Peter suggested a 22 character query, then that is not so
relevant.

Since the only part of Peter's query that was obvious to me was the
letter "j", it is relevant. The rest of it Peter got from his prior
knowledge that J was a programming language -- knowledge I did not
share with him at that time.

Well as I suspected and as Peter now has confirmed then he did not have
prior knowledge.

For that, we have only Peter's word, of course, and I can't consider that
to be especially reliable now, since some other of Peter's recent words
state things that I *know* to be false.

And even if what he said about prior knowledge *is* true, it merely means
that he made a lucky guess.

No. It means that he is not lazy and that he has the basic skills
to work with IT (the ability to find information).

Arne

 

[blmblm]

On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:48:06 +0800, Peter Duniho wrote:

On 2/7/11 11:45 AM, Ken Wesson wrote:
On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 11:27:56 +0800, Peter Duniho wrote:

On 2/7/11 11:17 AM, Ken Wesson wrote:
[...]
J has arguably helped with that. Some. Fact is, if you apply
yourself to learning and using J then it's not line-noise at all,
it's just extremely terse. It's not symbol cruft in the same
sense that Perl is.

And what, pray tell, is J?

http://www.lmgtfy.com/

That is needlessly snarky. It's not as if one can google a
one-letter query and expect a useful result.

I note that you clipped the _useful_ part of the URL I offered.

If one is so inept at web searches that they cannot be bothered to
add relevant terms that are obvious from the context in order to
produce a useful result, then yes…I can see how that might cause a
problem. But such a person probably should not be involved in
programming in any way.

See my response to Patricia.

Which explains why you didn't yourself think to try the additional
search terms suggested by Peter. What it doesn't explain is why you
quoted only the first part of Peter's URL. I can't think of any reason
to do that other than -- well, perhaps I won't finish that sentence.

It was quite simple -- I quoted only the part I was responding to, which
was the fact that he'd used lmgtfy.com instead of google.com,

Ah, is *that* what you meant .... It wasn't clear to me, and apparently
it wasn't clear to Peter either. Perhaps we were confused by the fact

To me that makes it sound like Peter was suggesting doing the search
on just "J", when in fact the not-quoted part of his URL made it clear
that he was not.

an implied
criticism. The rest would have been an irrelevant distraction and I
wanted to make it clear that it was specifically, and solely, the lmgtfy
that I objected to.

Well, at least one reader, possibly two, didn't understand the nature
of your objection. Maybe others did.

One could say the same of the lengths several people seem to be going to
to argue the reverse.

"It's Usenet"? <shrug>

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Funny that doing so seems to get you flamed, then.

No.

Asking questions that you can find out may lead to
hints about Google and Wikipedia.

Acting offended by such hints will lead to flaming.

I don't see the relevance. This would only have relevance if I had been
*incapable* of performing a bunch of random, low-probability-of-success
Google searches in lieu of asking the question.

The actual facts are that I was quite *capable* of doing so, but quite
*unwilling* to do so except as a last resort. Why mess around in Google
and *maybe* find something that *might* be the right answer when I can
ask someone who definitely knows and *probably* get something that
*surely is* the right answer?

Weird - somebody using your name has been posting a lot about the
difficulties searching for single letter "words".

The problem is that you, Lew, and one or two others apparently expect me
to Google *first* and ask questions *second* even when there isn't a
single clear candidate Google query to use, or a clear likelihood of
recognizing the correct answer if it does come up. Maybe there are
several computer-related things called J? In that case it would be hard
to be sure which had been meant without asking anyway.

Peter did not have any problems figuring it out.

The next section of what, and of what relevance is this? Are you accusing
someone of whining, screaming, or leaving the toilet seat up?

The only things resembling items on that list that *I* have done are

1: Note that I have been personally attacked.
2: Request an apology.

The first is supported by evidence. I can re-quote some posts and cite
messageIDs if necessary, but the repeated use of the word "troll" has
surely not escaped anyone's attention that hasn't long since killfiled
this thread and suffices to support the claim in item 1. So my making
that claim is proved reasonable in the circumstances.

And as for item 2, it is quite common when someone is rude to request an
apology after calling them on their behavior.

Not on usenet.

Arne

 

[Sulfide Eater]

you're starting to sound a *lot* like [insult deleted] at this point.

At the risk of sounding a lot like Seamus: Who is "[insult deleted]",
Pendley? There is nobody in this newsgroup using that alias.

Who is "Seamus", Wesson? There is nobody in this newsgroup using that alias.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

No, I am not. And whereas you may *think* so, it is quite rude of you to
express such an opinion in public. Please do not do so again.

Read the entire text from the link about usenet that I posted
a couple of times.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Yes, it does seem that people are more polite and less prone to blurting
out privately-held negative opinions of others in circumstances where
expressing these carries a substantial non-zero risk of resulting in the
prompt incurring of a black eye.

My guess is that most people here does not live in environments
where physical violence is accepted.

Arne

 

[Arved Sandstrom]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:52:47 +0000, Andreas Leitgeb wrote:

On Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:14:45 +0000, Andreas Leitgeb wrote:
You're applying the same rationale that you criticized. (joke?)
[someone] assumed, that a query for "j" alone would be inherently
not amenable. Ok, he was wrong with his assumption
Nope. "Results 1 to 10 of about 2,910,000,000".

Once you got really used to google, you'll have learnt that the total
number of hits is more of a pseudo-random number that shouldn't be
overrated. If you advance to the next page of hits, usually that
number shrinks by an order of magnitude.

But even if it is a biiiig haystack, often enough a needle shines out
to you within the first couple of glances at it - in the case at hand,
a useful hit was on position three,

If you're referring to "J (programming language) - Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia", I saw that at position two, but for all I knew *at the
time* that could have been something else. Suppose I'd made the same
search in a counterfactual world where there was an APL IDE named J
that the poster had been referring to *and*, separately, a J
programming language utterly unrelated to APL?

The name's so short it's *easily* plausible it could have been used
more than once for things related to IT.

[ SNIP ]

I'll admit I could have qualified my reference to "J". It never really
occurred to me, because as part of professional development I tend to
keep up on programming languages. Over the decades I suspect I've
professionally used several dozen, experimented with several dozen more,
and have at least read up on enough others that the total number of
languages of which I have at least a vague idea of what they are about
is perhaps a hundred. This is simply where I personally expect a
professional software developer who has been working for 2 or more
decades to be.

Then you expect wrong. Plenty of professional software developers have
focused on only a few, chiefly mainstream, languages.

I used "expect" in the sense of (using
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/expect) of 2. to consider reasonable or
due, maybe even tending towards the sense of 3. to consider obligatory.
In the sense of 1. to look forward to the probable occurrence of, no, I
don't expect it at all...I think the rest of my post below may have
informed you of that.

Most would rather spend 5-10 hours doing something productive that
advances one of the projects they're currently working on, which is
almost always going to be in one (or more) of C, C++, C#, Objective-C,
Java, Python, Ruby, Perl, shell, Java/ECMAScript, Pascal, Delphi, Lua,
Common Lisp, OCaml, Haskell, Scala, Clojure, Fortran, or PHP.

But if they are ever going to be in a position of having to choose an
appropriate language for a project, then they are often ill-prepared to
do that. For example, if all you know are class-oriented languages like
Java or C++, and maybe some Perl or Python, you're hampered. I'm not
saying that such a programmer will have professional problems, seeing as
how the state of the industry is pretty mediocre, but the point is that
they will be _contributing to, and perpetuating_, the mediocrity of the
industry.

And yet it is not a mainstream language, or even close. Clearly it is
quite possible to go many years working in Java, Lisp, and other
mainstream language families and have only a vague awareness that APL
exists and no knowledge whatsoever of J. It must depend on exactly what
you do and which circles you move in.

This is simply the difference between a 9-5 M-F working coder, and a
craftsman. This is a choice everyone has when they decide to work as a
programmer - whether to be a technologist, or whether to be an engineer
or scientist. I think decades of software construction are showing that
technologists don't fare too well in our profession.

[ SNIP ]

Busting on an undeserving target is wrong whether it is "in particular"
or as part of a larger group being busted on.

I'm not busting on a _undeserving_ target, Ken. That's the point. There
are way too many programmers that don't cut the muster, and it's hurting
the profession.

Just a short time ago you were expecting "the typical programmer" to know
about 100 languages. Which is your real expectation?

No, I believe I said:

"Over the decades I suspect I've professionally used several dozen,
experimented with several dozen more, and have at least read up on
enough others that the total number of languages of which I have at
least a vague idea of what they are about is perhaps a hundred."

At this point in time I am probably not that different from you in terms
of how many languages I am fluent in, and how many I can ramp up in quickly.

There are those of us in between the two extremes. I have:

[ SNIP ]

See my above, I'm about the same as you in terms of what I am fluent or
moderately accomplished at, at any given point in time.

However, one point I'll return to is that I retain enough knowledge of a
bunch of other languages that I've used at least somewhat in the past,
to be able to include them in an assessment of what might be suitable
for a new project. That's one reason why it's good not to be handcuffed
to just 2 or 3 or 4 languages. I'm not expecting that someone is fluent
in dozens of programming languages at any given time.

The usual source of handcuffing on Windows is Windows. No native
scripting facility worth a damn and doing anything nontrivial requires
either booting up a JVM or mucking around with MSVC++ and friends and the
big, ugly MFC API. Thanks, but no thanks.

[ SNIP ]

The way I look at it is that we professional programmers don't often
call the shots - or all the shots - as to what software gets used. I'm a
consultant myself, and only rarely do I get to recommend all or most of
a technology stack. Most of the time clients already have this stuff
picked out.

One can pick apart a language, like Mr d'Oliveiro is picking apart Java,
but I find that attitude rather pitiable. And one can moan about the
strictures placed upon one by an OS, but that's rather amateurish too,
in my opinion. What we should do, and to my way of thinking are
professionally required to do, is suck it up when it comes to what tools
are often given us, and just make them work.

And for the record I don't feel handcuffed by Windows. It's not my
favourite OS, not by a long shot, but I've had to use it since 3.1, and
as a result I've developed my techniques and tools for getting the job
done on Windows. None of us get paid for whining about an OS that the
majority of the planet uses, after all.

AHS

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

And yet we have eyewitness evidence (now archived by Google) that this
has actually happened. Funny how that works.


In this case it led to flaming.


"lmgtfy.com" links ARE flaming, Arne.

No.

Just slightly sarcastic.

The flaming start when the cry babies start whining over the
sarcasm.

Read the links I have already posted several times on
usenet behavior.

For that we have only your word.

No.

He posted so himself.

He could be lying.

I think that is generally known as a conspiracy theory.

Maybe you need a tin foil hat.

He could have just made a lucky guess.

Competent people tend to be lucky with Google to an extent
where it can not just be luck.

And before you get all incensed at my suggesting that you could be lying,

Given that Peter posted himself that he just googled it, then
I just see that accusation as another proof of missing skills
in logical thinking.

It should be. Your behavior is uncalled-for and I continue to request an
apology from you.

Dream on.



Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Well, then, that's just you. Lazy would be writing something that cannot
be interpreted unambiguously without very uncommon knowledge, without
including that tiny bit of additional background information that would
forestall a lot of questions (or web searches, or both).

Peter proved that it was easy.

So the above is just lame excuses.

No, you cannot, because it isn't true.

It seems to be, You preferred somebody else to do the work
instead of finding out by yourself.

*Please* read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" before posting
again.

I am not interested in having lazy people like you as friends.

And I don't care if I influence you or not - it is your privilege
to stay ignorant for the rest of your life if you so prefer.

No doubt this FAQ of yours advises people subjected to verbal abuse to
submit meekly to it. Otherwise why would you choose that particular one
to refer me to? It's basically just your ventriloquism, Arne, telling me
to do what you want me to do, which is to do the online equivalent of
crying "uncle".

Sorry, Arne, but I refuse to do that. I think your treatment of me has
been wrong and I will not pretend it is otherwise.

You can chose to ignore the advice in that FAQ.

You will just have to live with that people laugh at you in usenet
as long as your are around.

Actually, Peter Duniho did that in
<[email protected]> when he used
"lmgtfy.com" instead of "google.com" in his response.

lmgtfy did not claim that you were stupid - it just suggested that you
were lazy.

But I was able to find out. I found out by asking.

You claimed yourself that you could not find out due to one letter
being difficult to find.

I didn't do anything of the sort. I have responded calmly, patiently, but
firmly to rudeness and namecalling most of which has come from you and
Lew and all of which has been completely uncalled-for.

No - you are know requesting apologies etc. - exactly as described
in the FAQ.

But I am losing
patience and will probably soon killfile you both.

That is your privilege as well.

But usually your types doesn't do that.

I am perfectly calm and composed, Arne. I am not among those here who are
veritably frothing at the mouth and calling other people names.

You are considering yourself treated wrongly, demanding apologies
etc..

Read that FAQ!!!!

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

That's not the same thing as environments where it actually never occurs.

That does not change that in such environments fear of physical violence
is not determining ones behavior.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Hint 3: if you want people to do something for you, asking nicely and
using the word "please" gives far greater odds of success than phrasing
it as a command. Especially when you're not, in fact, their boss.

Why?

You can read it and become wiser.

Or you can decline to read it and stay ignorant.

Not really my problem.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

I can learn a lot more from an articulate human being cogently answering
a question than I can from random search engine hits that a) are static
pages that can't answer back with clarifications or elaborations if I
have further questions, b) may have been written for an audience assumed
to already know more about the subject, and c) could even be poor
material (FUD, propaganda, advertisements) that got there via SEO spam.


Insulting your interlocutor does not advance yours, if yours is actually
to get at and convince others of the truth of a matter.

I think everybody besides you are already convinced (most likely
completely independent of me).

You can read that from the comments given.

If yours is
something else, though, say to pick a fight, I'll not satisfy you in
that. Flame away and you'll earn yourself a place in my killfile
eventually

It is your choice.

But whiners rarely killfile. They can't whine about being treated
unfairly if they don't read it.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

49 AM, Ken Wesson wrote:
[...]
I am also welcome to ask the question

Yes, you are free to do whatever you want. The point is that you used
that freedom to choose to behave in a lazy way

I did not.

and then are now complaining that your laziness was observed and
commented on.

No, I am complaining that I have been *falsely accused* of laziness
*and worse*.

You said that you did not want to spend time on it.

That is the definition of being lazy.

I don't want to spend time uselessly digging holes in my back yard and
then filling them back in and digging them again, either, but that does
not make me lazy. It just makes me not stupid.

But learning to use Google is very useful.

Arne

 

[Lew]

Why?

You can read it and become wiser.

Or you can decline to read it and stay ignorant.

Not really my problem.

The fact that "Ken Wesson" resorts to whining about specious issues such as
"asking nicely" indicates how little he really has to say. He's just a troll.

 

[Lew]

On 18-02-2011 01:46, Ken Wesson wrote:
49 AM, Ken Wesson wrote:
[...]
I am also welcome to ask the question

Yes, you are free to do whatever you want. The point is that you used
that freedom to choose to behave in a lazy way

I did not.

and then are now complaining that your laziness was observed and
commented on.

No, I am complaining that I have been *falsely accused* of laziness
*and worse*.

You said that you did not want to spend time on it.

That is the definition of being lazy.

I don't want to spend time uselessly digging holes in my back yard and
then filling them back in and digging them again, either, but that does
not make me lazy. It just makes me not stupid.

No, it doesn't. Nothing can do that. That ship has long since sailed.

But learning to use Google is very useful.

That would defeat his purpose of arguing without regard for facts, reason,
good sense, helpfulness, ...

 

[Lew]

Peter proved that it was easy.

So the above is just lame excuses.


It seems to be, You preferred somebody else to do the work
instead of finding out by yourself.


I am not interested in having lazy people like you as friends.

And I don't care if I influence you or not - it is your privilege
to stay ignorant for the rest of your life if you so prefer.


You can chose to ignore the advice in that FAQ.

You will just have to live with that people laugh at you in usenet
as long as your are around.


lmgtfy did not claim that you were stupid - it just suggested that you
were lazy.


You claimed yourself that you could not find out due to one letter
being difficult to find.

Oh, no, "Ken Wesson". It was completely called for. Now we're all laughing
at you. You are a putz. Stop posting to Usenet; you only hurt your own
reputation. You put more effort into whining and posturing than you do into
programming, but that's OK, because you clearly are no programmer.

That would require powers of ratiocination.

No - you are know requesting apologies etc. - exactly as described
in the FAQ.


That is your privilege as well.

But usually your types doesn't do that.

It's not a name, it's a description.

You are considering yourself treated wrongly, demanding apologies
etc..

Read that FAQ!!!!

That would require him to behave properly and use his brain. Not gonna happen.

"Ken Wesson", if you don't want people to point out that you're stupid, lazy,
ignorant, contentious, whiny, immature, undesirable, pathetic and foolish,
then simply go away. No one will miss you.

Buh-bye.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Your personal opinions of others are not the topic of this newsgroup. Do
you have anything Java-related to say?

He commented in your behavior in a Java group.

Arne