blogs, longbets.org, and education of sociology

Sun May 25 19:25:33 EDT 2008

For about the past 10 years, i have been concerned in the programing
community's level of education in social issues.

I have found that recently, a news that would be of interest to
programers.

There was a bet at longbets.org (run by Long Now Foundation) regarding
the importance of blogs. The bet was made in 2002. The prediction has
a resolution date in 2007.

In 2008, the bet is resolved. See

“Decision: Blogs vs. New York Times” (2008-02-01) by Alexander Rose
 http://blog.longnow.org/2008/02/01/decision-blogs-vs-new-york-times/

I'd like encourage, for many of you, who have lots of opinions on
technical issues or social issues surrounding software, to make use of
longbets.org. It can help shape your thoughts from blog fart to
something more refined. In any case, your money will benefit society.

here's some examples you could try:

• I bet that Java will be out of the top 10 programing languages by
2020.

• I bet that the top 10 programing languages in 2015 (as determined by
requirement from job search engine), the majority will be those
characterized as dynamic languages (e.g. php, perl, python,
javascript, tcl, lisp. (as opposed to: C, Java, C++, C#, F#,
Haskell)).

• You bet that Linux as a desktop system will or will not have a
market share of such and such by the year xyz.

(I'm not sure the above “predictions” are candidates on longbets.org,
since one of their rule is that the “predictions” should be socially
important. Looking at existing entries on their site, the social
importance of the above items pale in comparison. (however, many of
their existing “predictions” are somewhat fringe))

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Note, in almost all online forums where tech geekers gather (e.g.
newsgroups, slashdot, irc, etc), often they are anonymous, each fart
ignorant cries and gripes and heated arguments, often in a
irresponsible and carefree way.

One of the longbets.org's goal is to foster RESPONSIBILITY.

In recent years, i have often made claims that the Python's
documentation, it's writing quality and its documentation quality in
whole, is one of the worst.

Among all the wild claims in our modern world, from the sciences to
social or political issues, my claim about Python's technical writing
quality or its whole quality as a technical documentation, is actualy
trivial to verify by any standards. When presented to intellectuals of
the world at large, the claim's verifiability is trivial, almost as a
matter of fact checking (which are done by interns or newbie grads of
communinication/journalism/literature majors, working for journalism
houses). However, when i voiced my opinion on Python doc among
programing geekers online, it is often met with a bunch of wild cries.
Some of these beer drinking fuckheads are simply being a asshole,
which are expected by the nature of online tech geeking communities (a
significance percentage are bored young males). However, many others,
many with many years of programing experience as a professional,
sincerely tried to say something to the effect of “in my opinion it's
good”, or voice other stupid remarks to the effect of “why don't you
fix it”, and in fact find my claim, and its tone too fantastical, to
the point thinking i'm a youngling who are bent on to do nothing but
vandalism. (the tech geekers use in-group slang for this: “troll”.)

The case of the Python doc is just one example. I have also, in the
past decade, in _appropriate_ online communties (e.g. newsgroups,
mailing lists), voiced opinions on Perl's doc, emacs's doc, criticism
on lisp nested syntax, “software engineering” issues (e.g. OOP),
various issues of jargons and naming (e.g. currying, lisp1 vs lisp2,
tail recursion, closure), emacs's user interface issues, criticism on
the phenomenon of Open Source community's fervor for bug reporting,
criticism on IT industry celebrities such as Larry Wall and Guido von
Rossum, opinions on cross-posting, ... and others. Some of my claims
are indeed controversial by nature. By that i mean that there is no
consensus on the subject among its experts, and the issue is complex,
and has political implications. However, many trivially verifiable, or
even simple facts, are wildly debated or raised a ruckus, because the
programers are utterly ignorant of basic social knowledge, or due to
their political banding (e.g. a language faction, Open Source) or
current trends and fashions (e.g. OOP, Java, “Patterns”, “eXtreme
Programing”, ... , OpenSource and “Free” software movement, ...).

I think, the founding of Long Now Foundation with its longbets.org,
shares a concern i have on the tech geeking communities. In
particular, tech geekers need to have a broader education on social
sciences, needs to think in long term, and needs to foster personal
responsibility, when they act or voice opinions on their love of
technology. (note: not reading more motherfucking slashdot or
motherfucking groklaw or more great podcasts on your beatific language
or your postmodernistic fuckhead idols)

(One thing you can do, is actually take a course on philosophy,
history, law, economics, in your local community college.)

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Long Now Foundation.

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