From: Adam Prescott Date: 2011-06-21T20:51:08+09:00 Subject: Re: RFC - One word alias for require_relative On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 7:39 PM, David Masover wrote: > On Monday, June 20, 2011 09:17:51 AM Adam Prescott wrote: >> require_relative is completely fine. There is almost no sensible >> discussion here, and certainly not one worth 100+ posts, complete with >> people letting Ilias rile them up so that he can truncate text in his >> reply, call it babbling and declare the thread closed and "dismiss" >> people, like he owns the place, which just further aggravates people. > > This is true. The actual, interesting discussion has been: > >  - Is require_relative a good name? Most people think yes, but there have been > some good arguments to the contrary. >  - Is there some inherent security risk in any require? There used to be by > having '.' in the load path, but not anymore. >  - Can we use require_relative with autoload? Not directly related, but I > wonder if it would've come up without this thread first? >  - Just what _is_ the policy on bang methods? > > That's just on this thread. His questions are profoundly stupid, but they can > also be a catalyst for real discussion, partly because of how they often deal > with such obscure and fundamental properties of the language. > I agree the discussions that have spun off have been (very) informative, but as responses to the original question they're evidence of good trolling. I would much rather have the informative discussion without "dismissed!" but.. that's obvious. Who wouldn't? > > I know I learn things just trying to wrap my head around (and explain) just > how wrong Ilias is about, say, initialize and constructors. It's fair to say > that I'd forgotten, or never learned, a really solid concept of what > constructors actually are in Ruby, and why initialize isn't a constructor (but > is, in fact, a good pattern to adopt in Java code) -- and I learned this by > watching someone else explain to Ilias how wrong he is. > >> (Hint: it's intentional. He's being a dick. On purpose.) > > Don't get me wrong, I'd rather not have him here at all, but despite his best > efforts to troll us, he does occasionally raise some good points. Probably the > most productive use we could make of him is to read his initial post, respond > to that, and then ignore him and only respond to sane people for the rest of > the thread. > > Of course, this is why he's so dangerous as a troll. He's not just some asshat > posting Goatse or Lemonparty. He's dangerous because he can give an appearance > of actually having interesting questions, opinions, or observations, and then > being a dick at absolutely every opportunity after raising the initial > concern. > >> If anyone else had posted his original "scenario", I'd bet it would >> have been largely ignored. > > Unlikely. If you look at the people responding to him, it doesn't seem like > most of them are people who (like me) should know better by now. If it was > anyone else posting that, I might've been kinder, and given them more of the > benefit of the doubt, but the response would still be effectively the same: > "Why would you ever want that? What are you actually trying to do?" > The discussion that came off it might have been the same, in the end, but I don't think the actual original point raised by Ilias would have had quite the same set of reactions, because they wouldn't have come from Ilias. >> Can we stop being trolled now? > > I suppose. > > I'll probably continue to respond when it seems like there's a genuine > misunderstanding, mostly because if a newbie happens on one of his misguided > posts ("require_relative" is more dangerous than "require"? Really?), I'd like > an actual answer to be there. > > Plus, every time he responds to an actual, legitimate, informative answer by > "dismissing" me or "closing the thread," I win. > > But I guess this makes me part of the problem. I'm not sure what a good > solution is, though. I hate to leave his crap unchallenged. Either responding > or not responding still gives the impression that he's running the list, and > gives him some amount of perceived credibility. > Perhaps being terse and linking to existing solutions? If the desire is to actually respond to incorrect/uninformed statements, for the sake of having proper answers in the thread (which I also agree is worthwhile), I can't see a simpler approach. The more "babbling" there is (how _dare_ you!), the greater the reaction he's got out of people.