Re: Job Market for Lisp and Haskell programmers, serious question.

Xah Lee wrote:
«As far as newsgroup goes, perhaps it is doomed to be stupid drivels
when it comes to issues or argument that has some element of opinion.
What can i do?»

Kenny <kentil...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The trick is an energy-saving one-liner high on wit and low on anger.
That manifests by example your superiority. And saves a lot of energy.
And scores better with the judges (the lurkers).

i can see that's the style you are inclined. LOL.

the problem with that is, there are already too many tech geekers who
like to do one-liner smart-ass comments. Forum are filled with so many
smart-ass one-liner slipslops. Other than amusement, there's not much
in depth opinion to be seen.

You see clearly you have no more hope with the average Usenet denizen
did Alice with her brunchmates, yet you persist. Doh!*

well, it's not like i dived into drivels to realize its the wrong
pool.

Writing, is kinda therapeutic to me, and is so to perhaps most
professional writers. In the past 10+ years, most of my newsgroup
posts are carefully crafted to sting the tech geeking morons and
illustrate their moronicity. I had a plan, that these writings not
only serve temporal purpose of venting and as etudes of creative
writing, but also contained content. These careful compositions, are
later archived and edited, so that i can eventually form a coherent
thesis. See for example, i've expressed this line of thougth in a post
in 2002 to Kent Pitman in comp.lang.lisp:

http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/tailrecursion.html

Excerpt:
«
The second important reason for me reading comp.lang.lisp, is that i
use it as on outlet of my meticulous crafted rants when opportune. I
could pick other newsgroups, but in general it is not fun if the
community does not welcome it. Trolling per se is not something that
interest me. As it so happens, that i started to read lisp newsgroups
around 1998 because i was learning Scheme, and i find the lispers in
general much more educated than, say, comp.lang.perl.* in which i use
to discuss on-topic perl related stuff now and then. So have i used
comp.emacs or xemacs often, and some ohter mailing lists as well. In
any case, my lavish rants tends to go to comp.lang.lisp.

The harmony of authorship and readership takes a matching. Imagine
Einstein ranting his physics theories to 17th century physicists, he'd
probably be kill-filed to death. Likewise, Larry Wall's drivel fits
the unix moron's minds to a tee; and that i find comp.lang.lisp has
the best readership for my rants among the few online discussions
groups i use.

My vague motivation, is for me in the future to collect my rants and
form a book. May it be a coherent account of unix & perl's damage to
society, with technical criticisms, or similar attacks to the slew of
fantastic fucking stupid imperative languages or the SQL language and
other software “technologies”, or cogent commentaries on the idiocies
of software industry such as the Design Patterns... i don't know. In
the last few years as i write more and more, i find myself enjoy
writing. I consider my act of writing soothing to my anger caused by
unthinkers in society. When my rants are offensive to unhtinkers, i
consider it a form of sweet revenge.

The other motivation is to educate people, but let's not talk about
that. Once you tell people that, all sorts of things come flying
against you, from hats of hypocrisy to spontaneous resistance. I find
that the best way to educate, is by means of covert brain washing. I
try to go in unassuming and rant my rants and get myself attacked and
kill-file announced, but behind the scene i stab people's brain with
sharp thoughts, jam their wires and screw their programs, totally
shattering the world of their minds. And when they try to recuperate,
to think ways of counter-attack, bang! I have succeeded in my goal.
»

* * *

You see, so i had some kinda master plan, that my posting in
newsgroups serves partly as a writing exercise, a soothing activity,
as well as basis for formulating a thesis. Most of my writings are
today edited and collected on my web site. For example, some entry
points are:

Computing And Its People
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/skami_prosa.html

Emacs and Lisp Related Essays
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_essays_index.html

The Unix Pestilence (A gander into unix info tech industry & a logo
tour)
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/freebooks.html

Pathetically Elational Regex Language
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/perlr.html

Python Documentation Problems
http://xahlee.org/perl-python/python_doc_index.html

Netiquette Anthropology
http://xahlee.org/Netiquette_dir/troll.html

Essays on logos (needs a index page)
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/logo_design.html
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/lambda_logo.html
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/logo_lisp.html

Almost all the essays in the above index pages are originally online
forum posts accumulated in the past 10+ years.

These essays on my site, are partly responsible for my site's high
popularity, as well the periodic “great thinker” email praises from
professors and all sort of unexpected walks of life i receive.

It is true that sometimes that these tech geeking moron's behavior
caused me some grief. Such happens more often, for example, in places
like Wikipedia or in places where these morons can ban you, censor you
etc, such as in irc, some online sites.

Once, in newsgroup, the spatting with morons escalated to legally
definable harassment. As you know, this happened during 2006 with a
guy who lives in comp.lang.perl.misc, which resulted in my web hosting
service provider kicking me off. I have a written record of it on my
site:
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/t2/harassment.html

So yeah, spatting with these morons are not always a pleasurable
activity, but you can't enjoy gardening without getting pricked
sometimes.

Your countryman said it best, "Win without fighting." Toss off a mot and
get on with yoru coding. Even if I slip and write something long and
angry I delete it all and replace with a one-liner.

Unless I am looped. :)

hth, kenny

* Wouldn't it be cool to have not a moderated forum but a /judged/
forum? Lurkers could score without unlurking? Talk about an addictive NG. k

that won't work. That is effectively done in slashdot and lots other
tech geeking forums, including for example, reddit.com . What happens
in such a system is that the tech geeking morons trash articles just
because they feels like it, then starting some mod wars among
themselves. The score of articles by popular vote has little
correspondence to the quality of the articles. At best, the articles
that floats to the top are just those that these tech geeking morons
like. For example, how OpenSource should rule the world, how Microsoft
is evil, how lisp is great, but how Perl gets the job done, how emacs
vs vi, how one should format his code, how scheme is most beautiful,
what's the latest fashion in coding (patterns, eXtreme Programing) ...
etc type of stupidities. You read these type of trite stupidities in
newsgroup at all times.

The problem at heart, is something like the cost of giving a opinion.
In conferences or meetings in a day job, people are more responsible,
because it effects their daily bread. Similarly, in more important
conferences or meetings, where people have to pay to join or give
opinion, such as voting in stocks, people are quite considerate about
what opinion or vote they give. I wrote elements of this in this
essay, see:

“Microsoft Hatred, FAQ”
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/mshatredfaq.html

excerpt:

Q: US Judges are not morons, and quite a few others are not morons.
They find MS guilty, so it must be true.

so did the German population thought Jews are morons by heritage, to
the point that Jews should be exterminated from earth. Apparently, the
entire German population cannot be morons, they must be right.

Judge for yourself, is a principle i abide by. And when you judge, it
is better to put some effort into it.

How much you invest in this endearvor depends on how important the
issue is to you. If you are like most people, for which the issue of
Microsoft have remote effect on your personal well-being, then you can
go out and buy a case of beer on one hand and pizza on the other, and
rap with your online confabulation buddies about how evil is MS. If
you are a author writing a book on this, then obviously its different
because your reputation and ultimately daily bread depend on what you
put down. If you are a MS competitor such as Apple or Sun, then
obviously you will see to it with as much money as you can cough out
that MS is guilty by all measures and gets put out of business. If you
are a government employee such as a judge, of course it is your
interest to please your boss, with your best accessment of the air.

When i judge things, i like to imagine things being serious, as if my
wife is a wager, my daughter is at stake, that any small factual error
or mis-judgement or misleading perspective will cause unimaginable
things to happen. Then, my opinions become better ones.

----------------------

Dear Kenny, this important letter is to inform you that you are a
winner of a free beer and pizza in bay area!

Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

.