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GENTLE_ART_OF_PROGRAMMING

                                    April 6, 2007

   "Larry has turned what was
    a gentleman's war into
    guerilla tactics. He
    consistently and cleverly
    (I never said he wasn't                 BLADES_OF_PERL
    brilliant) slanders other
    languages and language
    communities, and
    encourages this behavior
    in his lieutenants."
        -- Steve Yegge


Where does Steve Yegge get the
notion that there's *any* sort
of "gentleman's agreement"
about pissing on the other
guy's language?

When I got started in this game,
"structured programming" was going to
save the world, and Edsger Dijkstra
was making pronouncements about how a
generation of programmers have had        Perhaps, like most
their brains irreparably damaged by       "gentlemen's" rules,
programming in "Basic".                   it's only intended to
                                          protect you if you're
                                          a member of the club.

   Imagine my surprise that
   Pascal was one of the worse    It liked to pretend
   languages ever invented.       that there was no       It used the first
                                  outside world: input    byte of a string
                                  and output had to       to store the length
     I've long since gotten       be handled by non-      of the string.
     over the notion that         standard extensions.
     there's some sort of                                    Strings that
     magic syntax out there                                  max out at
     that will allow bug                                     255 characters.
     free, easily
     maintainable code to                                    Useful, that.
     flow from my fingertips
     like bullshit from the
     white house.


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