Laura's List - was Re: new years resolutions

[Laura Creighton]

> Ben Leslie <benno at sesgroup.net> wrote in message news:<mailman.1041872080.150
> 63.python-list at python.org>...
> > On Sun, 05 Jan 2003, Laura Creighton wrote:
> > > 
> > > 1. preoccupation with cleverness as opposed to wisdom
> > 
> > Care to expand on this point? I don't quite get what you mean.
> > 
> 
> My interpretation: you are wise when you are clever enough that you 
> don't need to show it. IOW, if you can, you choose the simple way over
> the difficult way. I am sure people on c.l.py would say that
> Perl is clever, whereas Python is wise.
> 
> Hoping having correcly channeled Laura,
> 

Alas .... I do not believe that it is possible to get to wisdom by
applying more cleverness.  Being _secure_ enough to not need to show it
may be a pre-requisite to wisdom, but I am of two minds about that. More
experimental research is indicated ...

The simple way is often very difficult, so s/simple/fancy/

Indeed that is part of the problem.  There is _always_ hard work which can
be avoided by doing 'something clever'.  Wisdom consists, in part, in
knowing when you _should_ avoid this work, and when you _should do
it anyway_.

I don't think that languages are wise, but they certainly can promote
wisdom, or cleverness.  One of the reasons Perl scripts are hard to
maintain is that it is very easy to pour cleverness on  cleverness.
You get preoccupied with 'what minimal clever hack can I do today to
modify this program to make it fit my new requirements'.  Days, weeks,
months after you should have tossed some code and written it with the
new specs, you think that with one more tweak you can get it to work
and 'save you rewriting it'.  But the rewriting would have been faster
and clearer.  You waste your life trying to be clever.  And there is
something about Perl that encourages such unprofitable time-wasting.
I still don't understand why this is so, but I have watched it in myself
and others again, and again, and again.

Laura