From: Elliot Temple <curi@...>
Date: 2006-05-01T06:18:46+09:00
Subject: Re: OT: Convention (was: how to use curly brackets vs. 'end' in Ruby)


On Apr 30, 2006, at 11:39 AM, Logan Capaldo wrote:

>
> On Apr 30, 2006, at 2:26 PM, Elliot Temple wrote:
>
>> Robert Klemme wrote:
>>
>>> I wonder how a convention can be wrong. This may sound like  
>>> linguistic
>>> nitpicking, but the whole point of a convention seems to be that  
>>> it's
>>> adhered to. It just "is" but can't be right or wrong IMHO. There  
>>> might
>>> be more and less usable and easier and more complicate conventions -
>>> but right or wrong?
>>
>> How about Sati
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)
>>
>> Or stoning adulterers to death.
>
> Whoa. How about we all pretend their was an implicit "coding" in  
> front of the word "convention" for the last couple of posts? I  
> think Mr. Klemme was wondering how a coding convention can be wrong.

How can a (coding) convention be *wrong*, instead of just less  
useful, less practical?

The same argument applies to other conventions. Why is Sati *wrong*,  
instead of just a less useful, less pleasant way to live?

Ideas have broad consequences that can't be arbitrarily restricted:  
they reach out to other fields. The full answer to the Sati case  
should include whether anything is wrong at all, and whether  
practical considerations have moral consequences. Those issues are  
important to the question about coding.

We can even take a dialog about Sati, and then use some of the ideas  
to argue about coding. Most of them will work just as well about  
either topic.

Jim: "Sure, Sati sounds horrible to us, but they are accustomed to  
it, and would be unhappy to live another way. It has practical  
consequences, like reducing how many women are available to knit, but  
wealth is only a convenience."
Chloe: "Medical textbooks are a kind of wealth, and medicine matters.  
With less knitting, they won't be able to buy as high quality medical  
books."

So, back to coding. This medical textbook argument will work great.  
Some programmers write tools for doing page layouts, and for making  
diagrams. Those tools help us make better medical textbooks. The more  
convenient and practical the coding conventions of the programmers,  
the sooner we will have higher quality medical textbooks.

The idea that medical textbook production is a *practical* issue with  
*moral* consequences can be transplanted just fine between the two  
cases: it has reach.

This isn't conclusive, of course. Maybe you don't see the moral value  
in medicine. But I think it's getting somewhere, to tie those things  
together. Most of us are probably persuaded by now. And if we were to  
continue on, about Sati, or coding conventions, we'd continue on in  
exactly the same way -- discussing medicine -- because it's all tied  
to the same issue now.

-- Elliot Temple
http://www.curi.us/blog/