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Comment by natesm | Hacker News Reader

I don't like the "tools" analogy that always comes up. For example, Robertson screws are better than Phillips head screws, which in turn are better than flatheads. All of them are tools, and they all effectively do the same thing. But the Robertson screw is better.

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The best screw is the one which I have a screwdriver/drill head for! (Thus PHP is still the best language for a newbie on $5/mo or less shared web hosting!) But really I agree with your point that these metaphors and analogies into other fields hurt the discussion since it changes to being about pointing out problems with the analogy rather than about whatever the discussion was originally about.

Exactly, though I'm not sure you're making the point you want to. I have dozens of Phillips screws at home, and at least two Phillips screwdrivers. I've never heard of Robertson screws.

I could get a new set of screws and screwdrivers, but it's a lot more difficult and expensive than just using the Phillips stuff I have lying around. Depending on how important my project is (am I making a load-bearing shelf or am I putting up a poster frame?) the answer may differ.

> I've never heard of Robertson screws.

Common in Canada, where they were invented. They're square head. Nearly impossible to strip, will stay on your driver with no support at almost any angle.

Not well known in the US because of a decision Ford made nearly 100 years ago to not pay Robertson the price he was asking.

Thus, to this day, any product that comes with screws is likely to come with Phillip's head, and all of its terrible downsides (I keep a supply of Robertson heads so that I never have to deal with Phillips' inherent shittyness).

Bad legacy decision making and inertia conspire to aggravate generations, long after the original thinking behind those decisions stopped making sense. The parallels to PHP are pretty clear.

I, on the other hand, am struggling to think of the number of times that Phillips screws have aggravated me that much. Maybe my needs are not as complex as yours. Perhaps there is a PHP parallel there, too.

Robertson screws are nearly impossible to strip? Since when? They're just as easy to strip as Phillips screws. I've done it plenty of times. It's not fun seeing a round slot where a square slot used to be, let me tell you.

Wikipedia paints a different picture. It indicates that Robertson didn't name too high a price for the license, but that he refused to license at all. Maybe you can cite where you heard otherwise so Wiki can be corrected? In any case, the problem of licensing being the cause of holding back superior technologies is just another example of why patents should be abolished.

I would claim that a programming language is more like material than a tool. You can easily switch tools during the course of the project and discard them once it's done, but it's not that easy to replace faulty material. If you want good results, you should invest in quality material.

(Of course every analogy holds only up to a certain point.)

Actually, your own analogy is very apt. When correctly applied, all kinds of screws can perform the same task fine. The difference lies in how the screw is driven.

only php is a screw made out of silly putty, which is fine for extremely simple things, but would take a great deal of ingenuity and creativity to make work for larger problems

Not sure this is a valid analogy at all; PHP is a tool, not a type of problem (insert joke here), so rather it would be a choice between brands or types of screwdrivers.

And yet I have 5-6 different sized Phillips and standard screw drivers. I've never even heard of Robertson screws.

Well, they're good for the same reason that hex/Torx is, and I think most people have a set or two of those.

They tend to be known outside of Canada as "square drive" screws. They can't cam out, are nearly impossible to strip in normal use, and will stay on the driver tip without assistance in almost any attitude other than straight down. They're the darling of woodworkers even in the United States of Phillips.

The American bias towards towards the Phillips screwdriver has mostly to do with the gift of patent made to the government in order to support the war effort, putting them effectively into the public domain. They were better than flat screws/drivers, but that's not saying much: when I worked in aircraft maintenance, about half of all of the Phillips-head captive fasteners (Camlock or Dzus type) on inspection and access panels needed to be replaced between periodic (400-hour) major inspections due to stripped heads.

I've never encountered those but now I know why I have several square tips in my drill's driver bit set. Thanks

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