OT: Crazy Programming

[James J. Besemer]

Donn Cave wrote:

> | 1. existing in a person's mind and not produced by things outside it, not
> | objective.
> | 2. depending on personal taste or views, etc.
>
> 1. Arguably the empty set, unless your person has some supernatural
>    power to generate something ab nihilo.  (Mine doesn't.)

(a) Not anticipating an argument, I was simply quoting the OAD's entry, FWIW.

(b) Without resorting to the supernatural, all sorts of things go on inside of MY mind
that are not produced by things outside.  Imagination is a cool thing.  So is
Opinion.  Someone says something I think is silly.  There is a stimulus of the someone
saying something but the conclusion that it is 'silly' is purely subjective in the #1
sense.  Similarly, I like to believe that all my Political beliefs are firmly rooted
in concrete facts and analysis, but I bet I would have a hard time building the case
that they're truly objective.

> I don't think your genetic predisposition model for this is really very
> useful, and moreover I don't think any model is necessary.

Human beauty was offered an example of something usually thought to be subjective when
in fact it really is somewhat objective -- in agreement with your observation.

It doesn't and wasn't intended to apply to judging the beauty of code (which I argue
is mainly Subjective).

> I'm not trying
> to establish a particular mechanical basis for beauty of code.  The point
> is that there surely is a basis for it, and almost as surely it applies
> to everyone.

I think I may agree but it's in that Nameless-Quality way that is actually fairly
subjective.

Or it may be in the Godel incompleteness theorm sense, that in many cases it may be
true but there's no way to prove it.

> | Note how often these topics come up and the answer is that "you
> | have no choice, eventually you'll get used to it, once you're properly
> | Pythonized it won't seem so bad..."  Sounds like the epitome of  SUBJECTIVE to
> | me.
>
> Yes, but here "subjective" is really about development.

I think this is where the key disconnect happens on this issue.  The original
complaint is that the decision to make the language this way is a mistake c and the
answer is about development, that it doesn't matter in the long run.

> You can develop
> in a variety of directions depending on the influences of environment,
> there's no arguing that.

True.

> Is there also a non-subjective factor, i.e.,
> objective beauty?  If we are all the same in some ways, then yes.  These
> two can be in conflict, hence rap music, and list comprehensions.

TO the extent it's objective there should be no conflict.  Conflict comes from
contrary subjective views. Or 'objective' views from conflicting viewpoints, which is
the same thing.

Regards

--jb

--
James J. Besemer  503-280-0838 voice
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