Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
Xah Lee, 20021124
In the unix community there's quite a large confusion and wishful
thinking about the word laziness. In this post, i'd like to make some
clarifications.
American Heritage Dictionary third edition defines laziness as:
“Resistant to work or exertion; disposed to idleness.”
When the sorcerer Larry Wall said “The three chief virtues of a
programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris”, he used the word
“laziness” to loosely imply “natural disposition that results in being
economic”. As you can see now, “Resistant to work or exertion” is
clearly not positive and not a virtue, but “natural disposition that
results in economy” is a good thing if true.
When Larry Wall said one of programer's virtue is laziness, he wants
the unix morons to conjure up in their brains the following
proposition as true: “Resistant to work or exertion is a natural human
disposition and such disposition actually results behaviors being
economic”. This statement may be true, which means that human laziness
may be intuitively understood from evolution. However, this statement
is a proposition on all human beings, and is not some “virtue” that
can be applied to a group of people such as programers.
Demagogue Larry Wall is smart in creating a confusion combined with
wishful thinking. By making subtle statements like this, he semi-
intentionally confuses average programers to think that it is OK to be
not thorough, it is OK to be sloppy, it is OK to disparage computer
science. (like the incompetent unixers and perlers are)
Can you see the evil and its harm in not understanding things clearly?
This laziness quote by Wall is a tremendous damage to the computing
industry. It is a source among others that spurs much bad fashion
trends and fuckups in the industry. It is more damaging than any
single hack or virus. It is social brain-washing at work, like the
diamond company De Beers' tremendously successful sales slogan: “A
Diamond is Forever” or Apple's grammatically fantastic “Think
Different”.
The most fundamental explanation of why Larry Wall's sophistry are
damaging to society is simply this: What he said is not true and they
are widely spread and conceived as worthwhile. This is a form of mis-
information. This is a manifestation of Love without Knowledge as i
expounded before, with subtle but disastrous consequences (already).
[DISCLAIMER: all mentions of real persons are opinion only.]
----
This post is archived at: http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/w..._laziness.html
Xah xa*@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/ 16  1642 
Xah Lee wrote:
Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
When the sorcerer Larry Wall said “The three chief virtues of a
programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris”, he used the word
“laziness” to loosely imply “natural disposition that results in being
economic”.
Programming by definition is the process of automating repetitive
actions to reduce the human effort required to perform them. A good
programmer faced with a hard problem always looks for ways to make
his|her job easier by delegating work to a computer. That's what Larry
means. Automation is MUCH more effective than repetition.
--
Dan www.prairienet.org/~dsb/
You fail to understand the difference between passive laziness and
active laziness. Passive laziness is what most people have. It's
active laziness that is the virtue. It's the desire to go out and /
make sure/ that you can be lazy in the future by spending just a
little time writing a script now. It's thinking about time
economically and acting on it.
On Apr 15, 6:25 pm, "Xah Lee" <x...@xahlee.orgwrote:
Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
Xah Lee, 20021124
In the unix community there's quite a large confusion and wishful
thinking about the word laziness. In this post, i'd like to make some
clarifications.
American Heritage Dictionary third edition defines laziness as:
“Resistant to work or exertion; disposed to idleness.”
When the sorcerer Larry Wall said “The three chief virtues of a
programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris”, he used the word
“laziness” to loosely imply “natural disposition that results in being
economic”. As you can see now, “Resistant to work or exertion” is
clearly not positive and not a virtue, but “natural disposition that
results in economy” is a good thing if true.
When Larry Wall said one of programer's virtue is laziness, he wants
the unix morons to conjure up in their brains the following
proposition as true: “Resistant to work or exertion is a natural human
disposition and such disposition actually results behaviors being
economic”. This statement may be true, which means that human laziness
may be intuitively understood from evolution. However, this statement
is a proposition on all human beings, and is not some “virtue” that
can be applied to a group of people such as programers.
Demagogue Larry Wall is smart in creating a confusion combined with
wishful thinking. By making subtle statements like this, he semi-
intentionally confuses average programers to think that it is OK to be
not thorough, it is OK to be sloppy, it is OK to disparage computer
science. (like the incompetent unixers and perlers are)
Can you see the evil and its harm in not understanding things clearly?
This laziness quote by Wall is a tremendous damage to the computing
industry. It is a source among others that spurs much bad fashion
trends and fuckups in the industry. It is more damaging than any
single hack or virus. It is social brain-washing at work, like the
diamond company De Beers' tremendously successful sales slogan: “A
Diamond is Forever” or Apple's grammatically fantastic “Think
Different”.
The most fundamental explanation of why Larry Wall's sophistry are
damaging to society is simply this: What he said is not true and they
are widely spread and conceived as worthwhile. This is a form of mis-
information. This is a manifestation of Love without Knowledge as i
expounded before, with subtle but disastrous consequences (already).
[DISCLAIMER: all mentions of real persons are opinion only.]
----
This post is archived at:http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/w..._laziness.html
Xah
x...@xahlee.org
∑http://xahlee.org/
I like Larry Wall, despite being not a Perl programmer, and when he
secretly subverts the american, protestant working ethos I like him
even better :)
On Sun, 15 Apr 2007 18:25:19 +0200, Xah Lee <xa*@xahlee.orgwrote:
Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
Xah Lee, 20021124
In the unix community there's quite a large confusion and wishful
thinking about the word laziness. In this post, i'd like to make some
clarifications.
American Heritage Dictionary third edition defines laziness as:
“Resistant to work or exertion; disposed to idleness.”
In this context I think you can safely take it to mean:
Don't work hard, work smart.
Avoid repetitious work. If somthing seems to elaborate find a more
efficient way.
In a course I took on verifiable programming I found working with Hoare
logic
extremely tedious. So I started using rewriting loops as recursive
procedures and
using induction instead. It took about a quarter of the time as the
invariant of a loop
fell out rather naturally this way. I failed the course, but when I took
the course
over again a year later I noticed that the book had been rewritten and now
half the book
was dedicated to Generator Induction. (Seems the professor noticed I
failed in a interesting
way and figured out it was not so stupid after all.) Naturally I had no
problems the second time ;)
This is just one example but it should convey the idea.
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
Dear Ken,
I want to thank you for your spirit in supporting and leading the lisp
community, in spreading lisp the language both in what you have done
technically as well as evangelization, as well as the love and
knowledge attitude towards newsgroup communities in general, in part
thru your numerous replies to my posts in the past years. (as opposed
to, the motherfucking pack of driveling and fuckface ignoramuses that
are predominate personalities in newsgroups, including some of the
fucking asshole intolerant bigwigs in the lisp newsgroup who think
themselves as the holder of justice and goodness (which has
contributed significantly to the stagnation of lisp).)
Thank you.
For those reading this, i also want to mention, that although i think
Perl is a motherfucking language on earth, and its leader and
“inventor” Larry Wall has done massive damage to the computing world,
but Perl the community is in fact very tolerant in general (which is
to Larry's credit), when compared to the motherfucking Pythoners (who
knew SHIT) as well as many of the self-appointed lisp bigwig
characters.
[disclaimer: my statement about Larry Wall is opinion only.]
With Knowledge, and, Love.
Xah xa*@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/
On Apr 15, 10:36*am, Ken Tilton <k...@theoryyalgebra.comwrote:
XahLeewrote:
Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
XahLee, 20021124
In the unix community there's quite a large confusion and wishful
thinking about the word laziness. In this post, i'd like to make some
clarifications.
American Heritage Dictionary third edition defines laziness as:
“Resistant to work or exertion; disposed to idleness.”
When the sorcerer Larry Wall said “The three chief virtues of a
programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris”, he used the word
“laziness” to loosely imply “natural disposition that results in being
economic”. As you can see now, “Resistant to work or exertion” is
clearly not positive and not a virtue, but “natural dispositionthat
results in economy” is a good thing if true.
When Larry Wall said one of programer's virtue is laziness, he wants
the unix morons to conjure up in their brains the following
proposition as true: “Resistant to work or exertion is a natural human
disposition and such disposition actually results behaviors being
economic”. This statement may be true, which means that human laziness
may be intuitively understood from evolution. However, this statement
is a proposition on all human beings, and is not some “virtue” that
can be applied to a group of people such as programers.
Xah, you are losing your sense of humor. Wall listed the usually
pejorative "lazy" as a virtue simply to grab the reader, make them
think, and simply to entertain better. Surely The GreatXahunderstands
the virtue of flamboyant writing and does not want every word yanked
from context and slid under the microscope for dissection.
kzo
Xah Lee wrote:
Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
Xah Lee, 20021124
In the unix community there's quite a large confusion and wishful
thinking about the word laziness. In this post, i'd like to make some
clarifications.
Years ago I used to work with someone who used to say 'I'm a lazy person
- I like to do things the easy way!'. I guess this is what Larry Wall means.
Jim Ford
Xah Lee wrote:
[SOME FURTHER TROLLING DISTRIBUTED TO MULTIPLE NEWSGROUPS]
For those who are relatively new here in comp.lang.python and not aware
of the troll:
It seems, that Xah still haven't learned from the impact of past abuse
reports on his Internet access and tries again to pollute Usenet after a
longer time of inactivity.
Claudio Grondi
Xah Lee wrote:
Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
Xah Lee, 20021124
In the unix community there's quite a large confusion and wishful
thinking about the word laziness. In this post, i'd like to make some
clarifications.
American Heritage Dictionary third edition defines laziness as:
“Resistant to work or exertion; disposed to idleness.”
When the sorcerer Larry Wall said “The three chief virtues of a
programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris”, he used the word
“laziness” to loosely imply “natural disposition that results in being
economic”. As you can see now, “Resistant to work or exertion” is
clearly not positive and not a virtue, but “natural disposition that
results in economy” is a good thing if true.
When Larry Wall said one of programer's virtue is laziness, he wants
the unix morons to conjure up in their brains the following
proposition as true: “Resistant to work or exertion is a natural human
disposition and such disposition actually results behaviors being
economic”. This statement may be true, which means that human laziness
may be intuitively understood from evolution. However, this statement
is a proposition on all human beings, and is not some “virtue” that
can be applied to a group of people such as programers.
Demagogue Larry Wall is smart in creating a confusion combined with
wishful thinking. By making subtle statements like this, he semi-
intentionally confuses average programers to think that it is OK to be
not thorough, it is OK to be sloppy, it is OK to disparage computer
science. (like the incompetent unixers and perlers are)
Can you see the evil and its harm in not understanding things clearly?
This laziness quote by Wall is a tremendous damage to the computing
industry. It is a source among others that spurs much bad fashion
trends and fuckups in the industry. It is more damaging than any
single hack or virus. It is social brain-washing at work, like the
diamond company De Beers' tremendously successful sales slogan: “A
Diamond is Forever” or Apple's grammatically fantastic “Think
Different”.
The most fundamental explanation of why Larry Wall's sophistry are
damaging to society is simply this: What he said is not true and they
are widely spread and conceived as worthwhile. This is a form of mis-
information. This is a manifestation of Love without Knowledge as i
expounded before, with subtle but disastrous consequences (already).
[DISCLAIMER: all mentions of real persons are opinion only.]
----
This post is archived at:
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/w..._laziness.html
Xah
xa*@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/
Laziness is re-posting something dated 2002.
Of course, for functional languages, 'lazy' means something rather
different...
Some entity, AKA db*****@eecs.wsu.edu,
wrote this mindboggling stuff:
(selectively-snipped-or-not-p)
Of course, for functional languages, 'lazy' means something rather
different...
lazy means: just get a post-grad to do the grunt-work for free.
Cor
--
The biggest problem LISP has is that it does not appeal to dumb people
If this failed to satisfy you try reading the Hyper-Spec or woman frig
(defvar MyComputer '((OS . "GNU/Emacs") (IPL . "GNU/Linux")))
Read the mailpolicy before mailing http://www.clsnet.nl/mail.html
Daniel Gee <ze****@gmail.comwrote:
+---------------
| You fail to understand the difference between passive laziness and
| active laziness. Passive laziness is what most people have. It's
| active laziness that is the virtue. It's the desire to go out and /
| make sure/ that you can be lazy in the future by spending just a
| little time writing a script now. It's thinking about time
| economically and acting on it.
+---------------
Indeed. See Robert A. Heinlein's short story (well, actually just
a short section of his novel "Time Enough For Love: The Lives of
Lazarus Long") entitled "The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy To
Fail". It's about a man who hated work so much that he worked
very, *very* hard so he wouldn't have to do any (and succeeded).
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <rp**@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
Dan Bensen <ra********@cyberspace.netwrites:
Xah Lee wrote:
>Laziness, Perl, and Larry Wall
When the sorcerer Larry Wall said “The three chief virtues of a
programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris”, he used the word
“laziness” to loosely imply “natural disposition that results in being
economic”.
Programming by definition is the process of automating repetitive
actions to reduce the human effort required to perform them. A good
programmer faced with a hard problem always looks for ways to make
his|her job easier by delegating work to a computer. That's what
Larry means. Automation is MUCH more effective than repetition.
Indeed. A programmer is someone who, after doing similar tasks by
hand a few times, writes a program to do it. This extends to
programming tasks, so after writing similar programs a few times, a
(good) programmer will use programming to make writing future similar
programs easier. This can be by abstracting the essence of the task
into library functions so new programs are just sequences of
parameterized calls to these, or it can be by writing a program
generator (such as a parser generator) or it can be by designing a
domain-specific language and writing a compiler or interpreter for
this.
Torben rp**@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) writes:
Daniel Gee <ze****@gmail.comwrote:
+---------------
| You fail to understand the difference between passive laziness and
| active laziness. Passive laziness is what most people have. It's
| active laziness that is the virtue. It's the desire to go out and /
| make sure/ that you can be lazy in the future by spending just a
| little time writing a script now. It's thinking about time
| economically and acting on it.
+---------------
Indeed. See Robert A. Heinlein's short story (well, actually just
a short section of his novel "Time Enough For Love: The Lives of
Lazarus Long") entitled "The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy To
Fail". It's about a man who hated work so much that he worked
very, *very* hard so he wouldn't have to do any (and succeeded).
You can also argue that the essence of progress is someone saying
"Hey, there must be an easier way to do this!".
Torben
Xah Lee wrote:
Dear Ken,
I want to thank you for your spirit in supporting and leading the lisp
community, in spreading lisp the language both in what you have done
technically as well as evangelization, as well as the love and
knowledge attitude towards newsgroup communities in general, in part
thru your numerous replies to my posts in the past years.
Hey, thx, but to me recommending Lisp is like recommending water to a
life form.
Meanwhile, the last thing anyone can doubt is that you say what you mean
and mean what you say, so all we can say about your detractors is...
(as opposed
to, the motherfucking pack of driveling and fuckface ignoramuses that
are predominate personalities in newsgroups,
....OK, but we know this from long Usenet experience. Reaching
Enlightenment means smiling on these noisemakers and having compassion
for them, for they live in mean, narrow worlds and in attacking you are
only reaching for the sunlight you enjoy, in however their ignorant way.
The nice thing about this compassionate view is that it leaves you
feeling positive and at peace within yourself, whereas the "driveling
and fuckface" thing leaves you feeling negative and attacked. less good,
for my money.
ken
Xah Lee wrote:
For those reading this, i also want to mention, that although i think
Perl is a motherfucking language on earth, and its leader and
“inventor” Larry Wall has done massive damage to the computing world,
but Perl the community is in fact very tolerant in general (which is
to Larry's credit), when compared to the motherfucking Pythoners (who
knew SHIT) as well as many of the self-appointed lisp bigwig
characters.
Be careful not to damage the English language by making "motherfucking"
a compliment :)
--
Regards/Gruesse,
Peter Maas, Aachen
E-mail 'cGV0ZXIubWFhc0B1dGlsb2cuZGU=\n'.decode('base64') This thread has been closed and replies have been disabled. Please start a new discussion. Similar topics
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