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Well, my opinion is, he took something elegant and sublime and dressed it up in bullshit; there's nothing wrong with being playful and fun--as I mentioned earlier, Whittaker's "C#, Player's Guide" is the ONLY programming book that presented serious stuff in a fun way without clowning.

Interpretation depends on the reader. Was I insulting anyone or was I making a general statement? It can go both ways. If you read my original comment, I expressed dis-preference for why_'s book, which is responsible for my not learning Ruby for a long long time. People like these take something good and make a joke out of it. My original comment points to this--not at all about Matz and Ruby--both of which I like. Yet, the person responding to my comment, without reading my comment carefully or understanding it, twisted my comment into saying 'perhaps you don't like Ruby' by saying the passive aggressive 'Ruby is not for you' which is a tacit insult (meaning, I am too stupid to get it). Do you see now how it escalated because the other person condescended?

Once again, let me spell it for you. I haev no problem with Ruby. I just did not like why_'s bullshit. Make sense to you now? I respect Matz and his achievements.

Read his comment very carefully and you will see that I have merely returned the favor :)

It would have been more useful if the article had also listed the supply side of labor's economics, i.e. what are the costs of the programs that produce such workforce and which schools were offering the programs.

his 'artsyness' was the main reason I avoided learning Ruby for years-- wrongly thinking people who code in Ruby speak like him.

I know this is a possibly unpopular opinion but I don't think one should glorify a sophomoric book as a key Ruby book-- there are others that deserve that title, PickAxe is close, but I'd have liked a book like Whittaker's "C#, Player Guide" for Ruby.

i use Fira Code. nothing beats Fira.

I wodner why my original comment got downvoted though. What was wrong with wondering about that??

what the artic doesnt meantion is long covi from which strain? it would make sense, logically, to assume that long cov from delt is not the same as omic.

don't you think by saying "there were no known health issues triggered by it" you are committing a statistical fallacy? Just because something has not bee observed does not mean it is not there....

The criticism in my previous comment backed by a valid and searchable source: "SICP does not adequately teach the fundamentals of programming." is huuge for a book claiming to the best in the field. It's not a matter of 'pedagogical disagreement'. What do you say in this regard?

Yes, unfortunately I can't find the paper and I even enlisted GPT4 to help me search, so it is possible that some other reviewer may have said that (and I may have read another review by Wadler before or after this review); So while Wadler may not have said that, he has plenty of beef with SICP in the paper in your comment which essentially boils down to implying intellectual dishonesty. If not, then you need to improve your reading comprehension.

I understand that you may have invested a lot of time and effort in SICP and Wadler's assessment of it (based on the paper you provided!) hurt your fragile ego, hence the rude attack on my intellectual integrity, but regardless of whether Wadler said the particular phrase "intellectually dishonest" or not, the implication of his complaints I listed in my previous comment (based on the paper you provided!) amounts to almost to expanded version of saying the same thing.

Also, a note on downvotes: the agreement of majority (shown via upvotes) is no guaranteed standard for quality or veracity of a comment/opinion and I couldn't care less about the "karma points"; my comments are fueled by intellectual integrity and curiosity, and that inevitably means some people might disagree with me. Just because you disagree does not mean I am wrong and you are right.

So what WERE they trying to do?

BTW, here is a list of people who had criticized SICP. The list is full of heavy-weights:

    Philip Wadler
    Donald Knuth
    Eric Raymond
    Richard Bird
    Paul Graham
    Guy Steele
    Robert Harper
    Matthias Felleisen
    Daniel Friedman
    Christopher Strachey
    Peter Landin
    John Backus

As I said, I am pretty sure I remember seeing that phrase by Wadler but can't find the paper now. However, even in your link, Wadler says:

-"SICP is a brilliant book, but it is also a dangerous one. It is dangerous because it teaches students to scheme instead of to calculate."

- "SICP is a book about Scheme, not about programming."

- "SICP's emphasis on the 'scheming' approach to programming is a mistake."

- "SICP does not adequately teach the fundamentals of programming."

Is that what you call intellectually honest?

Based on: WOOD, A. (2001). Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 2nd Ed by Abelson and Sussman, with Sussman, MIT Press, 1996, ISBN 0-262-51087-1, 657pp. Journal of Functional Programming, 11(2), 253–262. doi:10.1017/s0956796801223983:

"The new material on concurrency is rather a disappointment since such a large and fundamental topic is relegated to little more than a convenient link item between lists and streams.

...

The major omission, and it is major, is that types are never fully, or even adequately discussed."

There's more.

SICP authors were not the originators of Lambda Calc. Even a noob like me knows that!

Based on: Forbus, K. D. (1985). Structure and interpretation of computer programs. Artificial Intelligence, 27(1), 124–127. doi:10.1016/0004-3702(85)90087:

"several important topics that students should be exposed to early are treated lightly, if at all. Its coverage of fundamental algorithms is spotty - sorting, for instance, is not discussed at all.

Another problem inherent in this pedagogical approach is that it does not teach students many of the engineering skills necessary for developing efficient programs on 'real' computers. This can lead to a 'clean fingernails' syndrome. where the student feels no program should be written or used unless it is utterly clean."

This is just one. I can't find the paper but Philip Wadler was the original person saying the exact phrase 'intellectually dishonest'.

Noob here. What was the justification of SICP using Scheme as vehicle of instruction? I feel the book is intellectually dishonest.

the only problem with Moxie's essay was the treyf reference to dogs. I love dogs. Dogs are better than most humans living around me.

Thank you very much, for educating me.

Wow, thank you for this great answer!

It makes me wonder though why previous published mathematics about computer programming has been allegedly faulty. Since I don't know enough math to objectively see whether Knuth has succeeded in his task or not...

TAOCP could have benefited a lot if someone had written a simpler on-ramping version, with examples in a powerful but newbie-friendly industrial-grade language, such as C#.

Thank you! this looks solid--whereas I found Polya's "How to solve it" a pedantic and useless.

Best wishes.

A math noobie here: I want to learn the TAOCP but the pre-req is Concrete Mathematics which I also find hard--it seems almost cryptic. Any ideas for a book before Concrete Mathematics? Thanks in advance.

Google and Youtube often think I am a robot because of how fast I operate on their sites: typing, clicking, switching tabs etc..

Thank you. I tried a JetBrains product and Visual Studio but VS was both faster (on my Mini Mac ARM M1) and the visual aesthetics were better--not to mention the overall IDE experience was very comfy, it felt like VS was strictly made for C#.

I do want to branch into F# and FP but i didnt want to miss on the C# train so i tried it and it blew my mind how well the language has been designed (i mean at C# 10, .NET 6). They even made the Java-esque boilerplate thingies become automated so the code reads and feels almost like a better version of Javascript.

I am a new programmer (with only Intermediate Python and tid bits of CS under my belt) but i think choosing C# for a language made sense because of all the things you mentioned, and it also helps that it is aesthetically very beautiful, and worlds apart from C and C++ in many respects.

I see. Yes the article which I read later, did mention players looking at gadgets in the toilet...among other techniques. I guess the future of chess championships would be interesting...

Noob here: how did he cheat without getting caught? did he memorize chess engine responses? Or did he have a secret computer somewhere feeding him the moves?

What does everybody think here of C#? I've just made foray into it and I like it a lot compared to Python, Java etc. It almost feels like Kotlin, but with certain even cooler properties.

Thank you for the eloquent explanation. Although, I don't like the idea of paying for a gadget and still not being able to truly own it.

what does it mean "jailbreaking" a gadget, esp a PS5? noob here.

Are you the famous Okasaki who wrote that great book on functional programming!