Comment by striking | Hacker News Reader

Comment by striking | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think people mean to attack you, and it's really difficult for me to understand why the comment you linked could be considered offensive.

I understand you have a certain love for Haskell, and that's a wonderful thing. But not everyone appreciates it as much as you do. One person's artful philosophy is another person's mental masturbation. And both people are entitled to their opinions.

Perhaps you decided to stop reading immediately after you searched for that comment, because you'll see the top reply agrees with your opinion.

There is no "anti-intellectualism" here. There are people who want to get something done at any cost, and there are people who think the journey is more valuable than the destination. Both people have a reason to think they're correct, and neither perspective is any more valuable.

You're on a forum run by a Silicon Valley VC, for goodness' sake. What opinion do you think you'll hear most here? Probably not the same one you'd hear from the wonderful folks on #haskell. It's not "anti-intellectual", it's different.

(also, there are more FP lovers here than you think.)

The grandparent brought up the concept of a community problem where members from a community actively seek out and mock members of another, completely unprovoked. I won't argue whether members of the Haskell community do it or not - I haven't seen it, maybe I've just missed it, but it's terrible if they do. Whether you think it's a particularly good example or not, I'm merely pointing out that it happens a fair bit in the other direction here on HN, and the community either supports or turns a blind eye to it.

That's what's obnoxious about that comment - it's completely unprovoked trolling, and yet it was heavily upvoted. Of course the first reply disagrees with it - If I go to a thread about a Ruby library and insult people for wanting to use Ruby, you'd expect the top reply to disagree. What you'd hope not to see is for that trolling comment to be overwhelmingly upvoted to the top, and for the community to be making excuses as to why in this instance it's ok.

If someone's not interested in some content, or disagrees with it, that's one thing, but to actively find, mock, and seek community support in ostracizing people who are interested in learning it because of that interest - I'd argue that's anti-intellectual by definition. But whatever you want to call it, it's, as the grandparent comment stated, a community problem. Sadly for the author of that comment, the HN community excuses that sort of behavior - it's just different from the wonderful folks in whatever language community they're used to.

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