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Comment by bigdict | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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