Comment by logingone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by logingone | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I find such errors are like bum notes in a guitar solo. They're just wrong. A sign of incompetence, and I don't want that incompetence rubbing off on me, nor do I want to experience other areas of potential incompetence. The errors are warnings. The job was to install a bath. You've installed a toilet. You were painting the sky, but you've painted it green, unintentionally. Most of these things should be drilled into us by now that we shouldn't be having to think about them. I know I make mistakes and would welcome every correction, but no one corrects because correct is not a goal. Unknown unknowns. Some errors are more acceptable than others. The "tea's and coffee's" example in the article is embarrassing to me, comma splices often slip my notice. I'm reminded of the tolerance thresholds regarding dirty dishes in the sink. Some people happily walk past while others, unable to bear them, end up doing the washing time and again.

Does this mean introverts prefer the consistency of opinionated frameworks and languages? Is Go preferred by introverts, Scala by extraverts?

BTW, I had never heard of the "comma splice" rule before (but I'm not a native English speaker). It looks more like a stylistic rule than a grammar rule, and I can see nothing inherently wrong in using the form - the Wikipedia entry says it's considered acceptable or even compulsory in other languages. As a stylistic rule, it sounds like a particularly silly one, given that there are numerous examples of authors using comma splices in literature.

The Wikipedia entry mentions "The Elements of Style" by White and Strunk as one of the sources of the rule. The manual has been criticised by professional linguists, who noted that White and Strunk didn't even seem to understand what constitutes a passive voice (while discouraging their use). The manual also contains other silly prescriptions, like avoiding split infinitives.

While these criticisms are valid, you shouldn't use them to dismiss S&W entirely. It contains many good observations[1] about the English language.

[1] Sadly, many are voiced prescriptively despite the fact that neither S&W nor any other manual of style can claim to be the final arbiter of our ever-evolving language.

>The "tea's and coffee's" example in the article is embarrassing to me, comma splices often slip my notice.

Very funny. Was this intentional?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com