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Comment by Grue3 | Hacker News Reader

Personally I can't stand "whimsical" tutorials to programming. Most of the time the author's attempts at humor just make me cringe. why's Ruby book is probably the worst offender. Couldn't make it past the first chapter.

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Oh my, amen. That book actually made me question my decision to learn Ruby. I didn't want to identify with a community that was responsible for such an abomination. I ended up learning Lua instead.

This. And whimsical error pages, documentation, etc, are just showing the lack of writing skills behind. Google is full of those, and most of the time the allusion cannot be understood by those who are not sharing the same culture. That's utterly annoying. Did SICP writers feel the need to embellish their prose with eye winks?

Did SICP writers feel the need to embellish their prose with eye winks?

Yes? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of...

Well, maybe my understanding of "whimsical" is wrong but it do not feel the same way to me. "Alyssa P. Hacker" is a poor pun that do not try to look clever.

I too found that a very frustrating book. I was struggling to understand two things rather than one.

Yeah, it's definitely not for everyone. It's just the kind of thing I would like though.

I find why's book really obnoxious, but I think learn you a haskell is excellent, so I don't really know if there's just a point where it's too much, or if sometime it's just done terribly.

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