Re: RFC - One word alias for require_relative

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 7:39 PM, David Masover <[e-mail]> 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.