Comment by KingMob
2 days ago
Heh. Hickey once debated with me at length about visual neuroscience, a subject I have a master's degree in and he doesn't. At no point did this stop him from confidently asserting things.
I have to wonder if "Maybe Not" is similar, since he's not actually an expert in types, either afaik.
Alexis King wrote a partial rebuttal to Maybe Not: https://lexi-lambda.github.io/blog/2020/01/19/no-dynamic-typ...
Well, at least I know how to form an argument that is not ad hominem. Remind me who you are next time 'KingMob' so I don't waste my time chatting with you again.
I'd personally say typing or not is a style choice, but your criticism here seems to be that Hickey doesn't have a visual neuroscience Master's degree which seems a bit arbitrary.
If your argument is you are an expert but Hickey is not, criticising him on his language design skills seems like a logical mistake. He's one of the foremost language designers of the current era. "Maybe Not" is a speech by an expert talking in his field of expertise.
If your argument is that his confidence is unfounded, again, he's an expert talking in his area. He can reasonably take a confident attitude in that, even if he has unfounded confidence in other fields he isn't an expert in. Lots of experts do that, it is a well founded stereotype of smart people.
He doesn't need to be an expert in implementing types to judge whether they are a good language feature.
The point of my story that you're missing is that Hickey's confidence in giving a talk shouldn't be confused with knowing what he's talking about.
> "Maybe Not" is a speech by an expert talking in his field of expertise.
Writing a dynamically-typed language does not mean he's an expert in types.
> He doesn't need to be an expert in implementing types to judge whether they are a good language feature.
Hah! Love it.
Asimov: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
> Writing a dynamically-typed language does not mean he's an expert in types.
That isn't a reasonable criticism here. To take it to the extreme, it wouldn't be accepted that someone has to be an expert in homeopathy before deciding they want to disregard the approach. It is up to experts to proactively demonstrate the worth of their domain - he's a language design expert and he's saying that he doesn't think the people formalising the type system have proven it generally powerful for designing new languages.
He's not claiming to be an expert in types, in "Maybe Not" he's specifically arguing that in programming languages they are an attempt to solve a problem where we should be looking for a stronger approach. And in this case, that approach is open schemas.
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Being an expert in type theory or language design is not particularly relevant either. The most relevant expert would be the lowly maintenance developer.
This "rebuttal" is a mix of subtle ad hominem attacks and strawman arguments. Not recommended.