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Comment by vikingcaffiene | Hacker News Reader

> “As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript”

I got some bad news for 2009 PG from the future…

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> No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion

Seriously, this reads like satire now.

I don't think it does, so long as one uses a sufficiently broad definition of religion (e.g. crypto, wokeness).

Also my impression is that there was a spike of js hate ~3-5 years ago that has since subsided. I think it grew alongside the development of web applications, where more and more people who had little previous exposure to js were suddenly forced to confront it as some part of their workflow or other.

Can you point to a big dust up thread about js recently? I can't think of one personally. At most there are various complaints about specific js technologies like npm.

EDIT: Since everyone wants a definition of religion, here's the copypaste from my response downthread: Priests, holy writings, dogmatic beliefs, original sin, etc.

> I don't think it does, so long as one uses a sufficiently broad definition of religion (e.g. crypto, wokeness).

Crypto and wokeness are not religions in the actual sense of the word religion. It's a shame that people redefine words in order to change their meanings to fit what they are saying.

I suppose it's too soon to tell if they take off, but they seem to fit the bill to me: Priests, holy writings, dogmatic beliefs, original sin, etc.

As a way of bounding this definition, I don't think javascript would count as a religion. Although perhaps I'm not sufficiently tapped into that world to make the necessary parallels.

Do all religions have a concept of original sin?

Definitely not, although any grouping of beliefs with a concept mapping to original sin strikes me as religious. So kind of a "not all rectangles are squares but all squares are rectangles" situation.

> I suppose it's too soon to tell if they take off, but they seem to fit the bill to me: Priests, holy writings, dogmatic beliefs, original sin, etc.

Your list left out one thing that is in the definition of the word, religion.

And that is?

Bring up tabs vs spaces or ;'s at end of lines or spaces as code (IE: Python) and watch the fervor over opinions fly.

You may not call it "religion"... but deep held beliefs of the Only True Way come out and I'm not sure what else it should be called.

Zealotry?

I'd go with superstition.

That the evolution of language, it's been going on for hundreds of thousands of years...

No, it's a game of labels, where people like to slap labels on things to assume commutative properties of other things they have attached labels to in order to celebrate or condemn the people who identify with those labels.

I get there similarities, but I worry we are engaging in semantic diffusion.

If we define religion as "anything people get super passionate and opinionated about" then it's pretty much tautological that people will argue about such things, without telling us anything about why such arguments start in the first place.

How do you define religion? And how does crypto and wokeness fit into that definition. I feel like you're using crypto and wokeness in a perforative sense, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, and assuming you have a working definition that's interesting and useful.

Further down the article you will see:

>For example, the question of the relative merits of programming languages often degenerates into a religious war, because so many programmers identify as X programmers or Y programmers.

I noticed that to. PG contradicts himself within a couple paragraphs

This happens to every question into which people are so emotionally invested that even discussing any modifications or alternatives seriously is painful for them.

That is, when it's a part of one's identity, like religion, or [list other protected classes here].

Maybe in 2009 people around pg were not emotionally invested in JavaScript so much. Like,they were more professional, or maybe just still preferred Lisp and didn't care about JS much.

In any way, the whole thread here just illustrates the pg's point, which only grew stronger since 2009.

pg is certainly religious about lisp . . .

http://paulgraham.com/diff.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/quotes.html

> Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?

Or knitting, or Rust, or the second amendment, or patents, or bitcoin, or Prop 13, etc.

emacs or vi?

windows or linux?

Kirk or Picard?

Marvel or DC?

Han shot first!

Systemd or openrc?

Wayland or Xorg?

Python or Go?

QWERTY or Dvorak?

Dvorak all the way. to eternity.. :-P

1) Neither: Nano

2) Neither: VMS

3) Neither: Dr. Who

4) Neither: Family Circle

5) That is correct

God those were simpler times back then.

Totally agree. Politics has ripped the fabric of society. I vividly remember how political discourse was in 2009. It was nowhere near as toxic, fascist, rage-fueled, woke, and dangerous as it is now. What has been lost? Truth. We've stopped caring about seeking truth and instead have resorted to subscribing to mob-mentality. Equally applies to both sides. The mere act of listening to both sides is considered as "silence is crime". WTF people. HN is probably one of the better places to have a political discourse but it has also suffered.

I yearn for pre-social media days.

You are discounting the fact that 8 billion people are connected (nth-removed at worse) to the largest communication network ever. There are legitimately only large mobs at this point.

We’re fundamentally struggling with scale and there’s no two ways about it.

I yearn for pre-internet days :-)

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