My issue with `this` and things like it is that the first argument (the 'object') is usually the most important thing, and it's easier to read methods if they have a name.
Ok, you can call this deixis but do you need to? Clearly not.
I think it's fair to skip over a comment using terminology you find tiresome, be it because you aren't familiar, or you find it irritating for some reason, or for any reason; it's your time. I think it's unnecessary to insist we all use the same terminology, as that just limits what conversations can be had and who can have them. One of the things that makes HN feel magical is when people from a weird discipline jump in to give their two cents, and they add value to the community when they bring their terminology with them.
This does not mean that we need to dumb things down, but if OP can not explain things in a simplified matter, I'd take it as a signal that OP's criticism at best as non-practical and at worst as pseudo-intellectual BS.
Dismissing someone for using different terminology is dismissing someone who could surprise you or teach you something new because you don't like the aesthetics of their speech and you aren't willing to put in the effort to understand them. If you don't want to spend your time that way I understand, but why is that a stance? Why isn't that just how you've prioritized your day, without making it a moral judgement about the quality of their speech?
> This does not mean that we need to dumb things down, but if OP can not explain things in a simplified matter, I'd take it as a signal that OP's criticism at best as non-practical and at worst as pseudo-intellectual BS.
What you're saying here is that you'd rather rely on this heuristic to dismiss what they have to say, then figure out whether what they say has value. And you do you. But this isn't a reflection on anyone other than you. It isn't a criticism of their statement. You're kinda cheating yourself. You've just decided that along this certain axis, your thinking is done expanding and you have no more to learn. And that's unfortunate, I hope you'll reconsider because there's a lot of richness there.
I didn't say that the type of speech alone is enough to dismiss the argument. I am saying that resorting to terms more complicated than needed hinders communication.
If "words are tools for thought", OP is using the wrong tool and you are jerking off to someone who is employing a (overtly fancy) chisel to sand a block of wood.
(And yes, I did read up on the terms. His criticism is still vague and does not seem rooted in actual experience as a programmer, teacher or programming language designer.)
This being precisely why I found it to be a fresh and interesting viewpoint; I've heard a lot from programmers and language designers on this topic, I hadn't heard from linguists before. I found their use of different tools of thought than I had seen applied to this area intriguing and it made me see things in a different way; you seem to have interpreted this as "using the wrong tools" because they weren't the ones you were used to. This is exactly what I was saying; you're limiting the conversation to an insular set of perspectives.
You've bought my premise about what you're saying, and in lieu of justification you've provided some cheap insults. I'm glad we understand each other.
> I hadn't heard from linguists before.
Are you sure? Larry Wall, creator of Perl, is a linguist. His education certainly guided his decisions when designing the language. He certainly had different "tools of thought" compared to other programmers at the time, and it shows. You can hear him multiple talks and read books from him about the topic, and none of them are filled with out-of-context, unnecessary jargon.
Terms?
"I think you meant 'words' which I also find annoying, but don't feel the need to dress that up in fancy words."
I don't feel the need to blunt precise terms down to imprecise terms.
If I did find "fancy terms" annoying, I wouldn't be proud of nor advertise that.
It's nonsense though because this/self is barely more than syntactic sugar for what C programmers do anyway - in fact languages with UFCS let you choose arbitrarily. Writing free functions with `this` as the first parameter doesn't really change anything.
Concurrency, syntactic sugar, object oriented, monotonic clock, these all sound like babble to someone uninitiated as well.
0. https://www.tech.dmu.ac.uk/~mjdean/notes/modules/education/E...
Of course this was inevitable given the place orientated von Neumann architecture (the tape, with its distinct locations). Much as OO practitioners like to think OO is special or deep in some sense, it is in fact just a conceptual hack to accommodate the inherent clumsiness of our particular adding machines, dressing their flaws in fancy clothes to hide our shame. If it wasn't for C pointers, programmers would think OO was some sort of nightmare fuel from another dimension.