Text-mode apps (Was :Who are the "spacists"?)

[Rick Johnson]

On Saturday, April 1, 2017 at 3:08:20 PM UTC-5, Mikhail V wrote:
> On 1 April 2017 at 06:38, Rick Johnson <rantingrickjohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thursday, March 30, 2017 at 9:14:54 AM UTC-5, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
>
> > > - and making band names look ǨØØĻ and annoy old fuddy-
> > > duddies.
> >
> > So now we've even included graffiti artists in our little
> > "inclusivity project". My, my... we are so _not_ mean!
>
> Lol :)  First we'll wait for Unicode version with table-
> drawing character for all possible corner styles and line
> weights, and monospaced legible Arabic for Chris' MUDs.

Urm, don't mention MUDs around Chris. That's like a dog
whistle to him. He could go on and on for hours yelping
about them. To be honest, between his MUD ramblings and his
incessant plugging of the Pike language, i don't know which
is worse @_ at .

But we tolerate Chris.

In fact, noticing that Pike is statically typed, i'm
beginning to wonder if Chris may have poured pike oil in
GvR's ear thereby convincing him to introduce type-hints.

Whaddaya got next Chris, braces?

But the more i think about it, the more i realize the _true_
culprit of this type-hints conundrum may just be the Go
language. Sure, Ruby was the "classic foe", however, Ruby
was never a _real_ threat to Python. And not because Ruby
was an inferior language, but because Ruby did not
outshine Python. For both of their natural lives, Ruby and
Python have existed in their own little nitches, and so,
neither became an existential threat to the other. But then,
Google's pet language named "Go" arrived on the scene, and
now we had a statically typed compiled language with many of
the sugary syntactical features and intuitive structural
architecture of Python scripts. Go is basically an evolution
of Python, and when Guido first noticed Go he became
intimidated and then frightened, and so, hastily decided he
had to compete with it. And since he knew that true static
typing would be impossible in Python, he made the compromise
of implementing "type-hints". And so, now the entire
community has been saddled with this type-hints mess, just
because a few of his peers at Google-plex decided to give
Go, well, a go.

Our emotions can be powerful opponents. Sometimes, so
powerful, that even the wise cannot control them. Of course,
this is the same man who proudly claimed (when asked in an
interview if he would take a flight in a aeroplane that was
controlled by a dynamic language such as Python), "Yes!". Of
course, with the caveat that he would be allowed to "write
all the code himself".

But what kind person would make such a foolish claim?

And whether this loose thinking was a matter of overwhelming
emotions or just pure stupidity, has been hotly debated by
many people in community ever since. But, as for me, i don't
think the man is stupid -- no, the Python language stands as
a testament to his intellectual prowess -- however, my
observations have led me to believe that he's unable to
control his emotions. In fact, he is a man ruled by
emotions. His famously foolish and braggadocious claim
exposes a deeply inflated sense of his own abilities brought
to the surface by powerful feelings of superiority over
others. He believes himself infallible. Could this be a
result of malignant narcissism? Megalomania? Possibly all
the above sprinkled lightly with sadistic tendencious? Who
knows...

I'm not sure if our dear leader has conceded to the foolish
nature of his famous "Python Drone Idea", but what i am sure
of, is that the existence of type-hints is evidence of his
emotions (once again!) overriding his rational mind and
causing him to make a poor decision.

Last time it was pride.

This time it is jealously.

What will it be next time?

He is a man who is unable to be humble in the reality of his
own accomplishments, and unable to concede that his
intellectual powers are merely that of a mortal. Powers that
are subject to fallibility and stubborn headedness. Powers
that cannot reach full potential unless they are
supplemented by a strong and open community.

This realization is for me, and many in this fine community,
both sad and terrifying. It is as though we are witnessing a
beloved relative slowly drift away into the clutches of
dementia. Racked with horrific pain and dehumanized by the
embarrassing bouts of incontinence. And we are powerless to
do anything to stop it. And although we'd rather hold our
noses and look away, we cannot. It is a strange irony that
we are forced by a "sense of duty" to become unwilling
spectators to this downward spiral.