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brvs

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I saw it immediately but I can see how that can happen. On the web, an underline doesn't quite scream "input" as much as a white rectangle with a border does.

I would love it if instead of quitting my program with an error, it just went ahead and called the method it thinks I'm referring to. This would remove a lot of unneeded friction from web development.

Not exactly but sort of. Think of the effect the caricatures have. Caricatures that are punching up (making fun of rich people, tech geeks, etc) affect people in a way different way than caricatures that are punching down (making fun of the poor, and racial and sexual minorities, etc).

It's similar to the difference between being called the n-word vs cracker.

I find it hard to believe you've given your opinions on it much thought or research. Oscar Wilde nor any actual socialist advocates for crony capitalism/corporatism.

- The study of ethics is inherently valuable. Regardless of what other studies tell us about "what to do" or "how to do it", we must assign some value or priority to our actions. You could try to use the findings of any other fields of study to guide your decisions. With psychology for example, we can study what makes people happy, and base our priorities on that. But ultimately you've just made an ethical decision to act on utilitarianism. It's inescapable that we make some ethical decisions, so it is worthwhile to study which ones are "best".

- Philosophy does not exist in a vacuum. In the same way that a work of art can lift someone's emotions, teaching and studying philosophy has real-world consequences. Had Hegel's works never been published, the world may have never seen Marxism, as one very big example! It's worthwhile to study philosophical theories within their own language and internal logic to understand the impact that they have on people. E.g. it is helpful to study Ayn Rand's thought itself, and not just the way it affects people's psychology, or the effects of its political applications. For example if it can be disproven by it's own internal logic, that has implications on its applications - we don't need to apply it to any political calculus to determine "P is not P" is false.

Sorry if my explanations aren't that great. I personally don't study philosophy, and can't offer much more from the top of my head, but I believe my apology of it so far is sufficient to at least say it isn't useless!

Sorry, never mind, he's perfectly right. Philosophy has been a waste of time since Socrates and it's provided nothing of value that you can't learn from functional programming and/or starting a business in Silicon valley. Let me sincerely apologize for wasting your time.

edit: I'll begin breaking the bad news to my nearest college's philosophy department ASAP.

Did you read what I'm criticizing? You mustn't have if you're saying I'm "unable to do it myself". How is this quote any more coherent or well-structured or less snarky than my comment was?

"Books on philosophy per se are either highly technical stuff that doesn't matter much, or vague concatenations of abstractions their own authors didn't fully understand (e.g. Hegel).

It can be interesting to study ancient philosophy, but more as a kind of accident report than to teach you anything useful."

Did you mean to post your comment in response to Paul Graham instead?

I would care if they were present. But I have no positive evidence that my computer is infected by any of that. I don't need to manually scan through C code to feel safe. Just like I don't have to watch my food being prepared to be sure it isn't being poisoned.

Oh my god are developers pompous.

So, the problem with Hegel is that he didn't study LISP and startups enough to understand his own thought. If only he were alive to ask for Paul Graham's help!

OK my turn! I'm going to post on a social sciences website that Paul Graham doesn't really understand LISP because he hasn't studied... uh, Slavoj Zizek enough.

Not that my own comment here is helping anything. I'm just weirded out by the fact that people aren't being critical of these empty echo-chamber posts that keep popping up. They make this place feel like it's just reddit's politics section being paraphrased by web developers trying to self-promote.

This reads like an essay from a freshman poli-sci class. The only unique thing about this post is the lame humblebrag or whatever about the author playing videogames with Snowden. But of course it's besides the point. It's so irrelevant that it has to go in the headline and link title.

A software dev speaking outside of his area of expertise to amplify the echo chamber while getting hits for his blog isn't enriching the debate.

The new php.net 13 years ago

This new, rejuvenated website, along with PHP's sexy new language features really seal the deal for me. I have to say, PHP is officially cool again. -sp

RMS lifestyle 13 years ago

"Among English speakers, "breakfast" can be used to refer to [the first meal of the day] or to refer to a meal composed of traditional breakfast foods (such as eggs, oatmeal and sausage) served at any time of day." [1]

Even Wikipedia doesn't have a strict definition. I propose a standards committee meet to disambiguate this once and for all.

[1.] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast

RMS lifestyle 13 years ago

If you're curious to know more about RMS for some reason this is fun to browse through: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developer...

"I do not eat breakfast. Please do not ask me any questions about what I will do breakfast. Please just do not bring it up."

I really want to know what horrific experience RMS had with breakfast in the past such that you can't even mention it to him!!