I think of these languages, these tools, as something akin to violins and cellos. They’ve been around, virtually unchanged, for several hundreds years. They are an absolutely gigantic pain in the ass to play- they haven’t got any frets, they have tiny fingerboards designed to be played by scrawny, malnourished 15th century musicians. They’ve got tuning pegs designed for strings made out of animal guts and which rely on friction alone to stay in tune. They’re freaking baroque. And yet, they get played a lot. You might argue that their design actually encourages mistakes.
I wish people wouldn't make analogies about things they don't understand. Frets do not make string instruments automatically better, in fact they limit you in terms of intonation and vibrato. The fingerboards are exactly the size they need to be, and would be less ergonomic if they were simply made wider (every attempt at an ergonomic violin I've seen has involved changing the body shape to make it easier to hold, not widening the neck. Widening the neck substantially on a bass would just be completely unhelpful) and a lot harder to bow. Friction pegs were certainly designed for gut strings, and that's why you'll find geared tuners on many instruments that use steel strings (and sometimes even on ones that use guts).
I just find it funny that he doesn't like it when people who don't understand Go try to criticize it, and then criticizes something he doesn't understand in an effort to strengthen his argument.
Actually, the author is rather well informed on the history and construction of stringed instruments. He simplified his loosely related analogy so he wouldn't have to write huge footnotes of apologia and exceptions in his mapping between domains.
In general, attacking the perceived inapplicability of an analogy is weak sauce. In this case, you allowed your pedantry to lead you to completely miss the point the author was making, both in his analogy and his thesis.
I don't think you read my comment in full. I said nothing about how effective his analogy was, just that it was obviously misinformed, to a laughable degree.
Of course I read it in full. You write a lot about how his comments on violins are wrong (which I say is irrelevant) and then say "I wish people wouldn't use analogies about things they don't understand" (which I say is also irrelevant, because it's effective).
You then misrepresent what he doesn't like, which I ignored because one can only pick on so many annoyances in one post, then you suggest he was criticizing violins (which he wasn't) in an effort to strengthen his argument (which he wasn't, and he isn't arguing anyway he's describing his viewpoint).
I'm going to go with my original comment before I changed it for something more polite.
Your comments are like the Go language: weakly typed and useless.
Hey, you're right, being intellectually lazy is effective!
Comments
I wish people wouldn't make analogies about things they don't understand. Frets do not make string instruments automatically better, in fact they limit you in terms of intonation and vibrato. The fingerboards are exactly the size they need to be, and would be less ergonomic if they were simply made wider (every attempt at an ergonomic violin I've seen has involved changing the body shape to make it easier to hold, not widening the neck. Widening the neck substantially on a bass would just be completely unhelpful) and a lot harder to bow. Friction pegs were certainly designed for gut strings, and that's why you'll find geared tuners on many instruments that use steel strings (and sometimes even on ones that use guts).
I just find it funny that he doesn't like it when people who don't understand Go try to criticize it, and then criticizes something he doesn't understand in an effort to strengthen his argument.
Actually, the author is rather well informed on the history and construction of stringed instruments. He simplified his loosely related analogy so he wouldn't have to write huge footnotes of apologia and exceptions in his mapping between domains.
In general, attacking the perceived inapplicability of an analogy is weak sauce. In this case, you allowed your pedantry to lead you to completely miss the point the author was making, both in his analogy and his thesis.
The analogy communicates fine to me, someone who doesn't play a violin.
It doesn't matter at all how accurate his criticism of a violin is, any more than it matters that C has nothing analagous to 'tuning pegs'.
Your wish that people wouldn't communicate in a way in a way that is effective but you don't like, is therefore silly.
I don't think you read my comment in full. I said nothing about how effective his analogy was, just that it was obviously misinformed, to a laughable degree.
Of course I read it in full. You write a lot about how his comments on violins are wrong (which I say is irrelevant) and then say "I wish people wouldn't use analogies about things they don't understand" (which I say is also irrelevant, because it's effective).
You then misrepresent what he doesn't like, which I ignored because one can only pick on so many annoyances in one post, then you suggest he was criticizing violins (which he wasn't) in an effort to strengthen his argument (which he wasn't, and he isn't arguing anyway he's describing his viewpoint).
I'm going to go with my original comment before I changed it for something more polite. Your comments are like the Go language: weakly typed and useless.
Hey, you're right, being intellectually lazy is effective!
Baroque instrument is baroque.
Let's not fret over analogies.