Javascript semicolon flamewar
-
@gu3st said:
This is why semi-colon insertion sucks
Excellent quote in Crockford's video, "it doesn't matter what side of the road we decide to drive on as long as we all drive on the same side". That's a great analogy for someone's style choices potentially leading to disaster.
-
@mott555 said:
... Watching George is like watching a trainwreck that's about to happen and is just too painful. ...
Sounds like every character Ricky Gervais has ever played. I enjoy Extras for the characterisations of the guest stars, but I cringe through Gervais' scenes.
-
@pjt33 said:
@mott555 said:
... Watching George is like watching a trainwreck that's about to happen and is just too painful. ...
Sounds like every character Ricky Gervais has ever played. I enjoy Extras for the characterisations of the guest stars, but I cringe through Gervais' scenes.I think the thing that really made me start not liking him was that movie he did a while back (I can't remember the name now) about being the only person in the world who was capable of lying. There were basically four separate stories going on there, and any one (or two) of them would have made a decent movie if they had just focused on them more, but instead we got four distinct and weak stories awkwardly woven together into a final product that felt like nothing more than a ham-handed attack on the concept of religion with a bunch of weird distractions also taking place for whatever rason.
-
I hate the JavaScript's automatic semicolon insertion. I have written a preprocessor which disables that feature as well as adding some things such as a shorter syntax for function lambdas
-
@Mason Wheeler said:
I think the thing that really made me start not liking him was that movie he did a while back (I can't remember the name now) about being the only person in the world who was capable of lying
-
@MeesterTurner said:
@bridget99 said:
Gu3st, I don't watch movies about computer programming. It's just not a job that translates well to the film medium.
You've obviously seen the opening scenes to Firewall. I don't program my work's one anything like they do!!I never actually saw Firewall, but the trailers were a big part of my final descent into madness / atheism.
-
@Mason Wheeler said:
That movie was so horrible. I think i laughed/smiled once through the entire thing.@pjt33 said:
@mott555 said:
... Watching George is like watching a trainwreck that's about to happen and is just too painful. ...
Sounds like every character Ricky Gervais has ever played. I enjoy Extras for the characterisations of the guest stars, but I cringe through Gervais' scenes.I think the thing that really made me start not liking him was that movie he did a while back (I can't remember the name now) about being the only person in the world who was capable of lying. There were basically four separate stories going on there, and any one (or two) of them would have made a decent movie if they had just focused on them more, but instead we got four distinct and weak stories awkwardly woven together into a final product that felt like nothing more than a ham-handed attack on the concept of religion with a bunch of weird distractions also taking place for whatever rason.
-
@Sutherlands said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
@pjt33 said:
That movie was so horrible. I think i laughed/smiled once through the entire thing.@mott555 said:
... Watching George is like watching a trainwreck that's about to happen and is just too painful. ...
Sounds like every character Ricky Gervais has ever played. I enjoy Extras for the characterisations of the guest stars, but I cringe through Gervais' scenes.I think the thing that really made me start not liking him was that movie he did a while back (I can't remember the name now) about being the only person in the world who was capable of lying. There were basically four separate stories going on there, and any one (or two) of them would have made a decent movie if they had just focused on them more, but instead we got four distinct and weak stories awkwardly woven together into a final product that felt like nothing more than a ham-handed attack on the concept of religion with a bunch of weird distractions also taking place for whatever rason.
The things that really got me:
The very concept of falsehood does not really exist in their minds (first Ricky Gevrais and then later his girlfriend both have to struggle to come up with a way to express the idea of "something that... is not") and yet they have computers just like ours, which are presumably driven by boolean logic just like ours?
If there's no religion, what's with all the clearly-visible churches in the long shots of the town at various points in the movie?
If they have no concept of things that are not literally true, how in the world are they able to go around calling each other insulting names such as "douchebag" and be perfectly understood by the insultee?
-
@boomzilla said:
I've never liked Seinfeld. It has the fatal flaw, for me, that most sitcoms have. The neurotic characters and the plots that rely on stupid miscommunications or someone trying to get away with something stupid by hoping nobody notices something obvious.
It's hardly a flaw when it's something that the writers are doing deliberately and so obviously that they even have the characters directly address how stupid someone is being. You may not like it, but it's not a flaw. The entire series was a calculated deconstruction of conventional sitcoms. It was the self-described show about nothing. There were never any "very special episodes", and the characters explicitly never learned anything from their mistakes. It was glorious.
PS-- The jerk store called, and they're all outta you.
-
@Zylon said:
You skipped the best part!@boomzilla said:
I've never liked Seinfeld. It has the fatal flaw, for me, that most sitcoms have. The neurotic characters and the plots that rely on stupid miscommunications or someone trying to get away with something stupid by hoping nobody notices something obvious.
It's hardly a flaw when it's something that the writers are doing deliberately and so obviously that they even have the characters directly address how stupid someone is being. You may not like it, but it's not a flaw. The entire series was a calculated deconstruction of conventional sitcoms. It was the self-described show about nothing. There were never any "very special episodes", and the characters explicitly never learned anything from their mistakes. It was glorious.
PS-- The jerk store called, and they're all outta you.
-
@zzo38 said:
I have written a preprocessor...
Please tell me it's written in Forth. Do you have a Gopher site up with the source tarballs?
-
Superman 3 was the best movie with "Computer Programing" in it.
-
Surprisingly, a fairly good show-with-computers on right now is The Firm. Aside from a couple "at the speed of plot" and MovieOS moments, the tech's fairly accurate. My favorite is when the tech savvy character spends half the episode prepping another character on how to copy specific files off a target computer, once he has physical access to it.
Character (on phone): I'm in the computer room
Techie: Okay, remember [complex instructions]
Character: Right. (looks down at computer. Cut to next scene of him walking out of the building with the whole box). Got the files.
The laywering is pretty good to. It's nice to see plots based on articles I've seen in New Scientist, for example.
-
@Sutherlands said:
@Zylon said:
You skipped the best part!@boomzilla said:
I've never liked Seinfeld. It has the fatal flaw, for me, that most sitcoms have. The neurotic characters and the plots that rely on stupid miscommunications or someone trying to get away with something stupid by hoping nobody notices something obvious.
It's hardly a flaw when it's something that the writers are doing deliberately and so obviously that they even have the characters directly address how stupid someone is being. You may not like it, but it's not a flaw. The entire series was a calculated deconstruction of conventional sitcoms. It was the self-described show about nothing. There were never any "very special episodes", and the characters explicitly never learned anything from their mistakes. It was glorious.
PS-- The jerk store called, and they're all outta you.
No, I mentioned the Lobster Bisque.
-
@Zylon said:
@boomzilla said:
I've never liked Seinfeld. It has the fatal flaw, for me, that most sitcoms have. The neurotic characters and the plots that rely on stupid miscommunications or someone trying to get away with something stupid by hoping nobody notices something obvious.
It's hardly a flaw when it's something that the writers are doing deliberately and so obviously that they even have the characters directly address how stupid someone is being. You may not like it, but it's not a flaw.English is just not your language, is it?
-
@serguey123 said:
@boomzilla said:
I think that perhaps the worst show for this was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I have not seen that one but Supernatural does the same, it should have ended seasons ago.
Heroes did the same thing sadly, They ruined it when Sylar kept turning good, spoils it when there wasn't a decent bad guy to watch. I disagree with most people here on Big Bang Theory, I do quite like it, and it's far better than IT Crowd, which seems to really stretch to find a story that comes off as if it were something written by a small child.
A couple of shows which really didn't have a steady decline into the abyss for me are CSI (the original, although NY was good too) and Law and Order (both original and SVU). I think in part it was because they weren't hell bent on developing their characters too quickly.
-
I always thought (not using it myself), that semicolon insertion in JavaScript works just like it does in the several other languages that have it, namely when newline is encountered, semicolon is inserted if and only if semicolon is in the "follow" set. That means that the next line does not matter, ever. All that matters is whether the content so far can be parsed as statement. In that case the quoted code would unambiguously have semicolon inserted. Apparently that's not the case of JavaScript. Well, WTF.
-
@Bulb said:
In that case the quoted code would unambiguously have semicolon inserted. Apparently that's not the case of JavaScript. Well, WTF.
It is the case. Javascript will insert a semicolon in the quoted code, because it should unambiguously be there. The problem is that minify does not handle this particular case.
-
@zzo38 said:
I hate the JavaScript's automatic semicolon insertion. I have written a preprocessor which disables that feature as well as adding some things such as a shorter syntax for function lambdas
How, exactly, would you use a preprocessor to disable automatic semi-colon insertion? Does it insert semi-colons for you? Automatically?
-
@ASheridan said:
Heroes did the same thing sadly,
Yes, I stopped watching around season 2.
@ASheridan said:
I disagree with most people here on Big Bang Theory
They had a few good jokes specially in the first season, (I liked the one about Schrodinger's cat) but then it became shit. Same thing with xkcd, most of the comics are shit but they have a few that I truly liked (I found http://xkcd.com/162/ really romantic in a geeky way).
@ASheridan said:
A couple of shows which really didn't have a steady decline into the abyss for me are CSI (the original, although NY was good too) and Law and Order (both original and SVU). I think in part it was because they weren't hell bent on developing their characters too quickly.
I don't follow that type of show
-
-
@Zylon said:
@boomzilla said:
I've never liked Seinfeld. It has the fatal flaw, for me, that most sitcoms have. The neurotic characters and the plots that rely on stupid miscommunications or someone trying to get away with something stupid by hoping nobody notices something obvious.
It's hardly a flaw when it's something that the writers are doing deliberately and so obviously that they even have the characters directly address how stupid someone is being. You may not like it, but it's not a flaw. The entire series was a calculated deconstruction of conventional sitcoms. It was the self-described show about nothing. There were never any "very special episodes", and the characters explicitly never learned anything from their mistakes. It was glorious.
I liked Seinfeld more when they added Danny Devito to the cast.
-
@frits said:
I liked Seinfeld more when they added Danny Devito to the cast.
Eh, that Latka character was just an offensive stereotype.
-
@Zylon said:
@boomzilla said:
English is just not your language, is it?
Oh, irony.Yeah, you just keep on keeping on with not getting it, eh?
-
@blakeyrat said:
@frits said:
I liked Seinfeld more when they added Danny Devito to the cast.
Eh, that Latka character was just an offensive stereotype.I just went to the "Taxi" wikipedia page. I didn't realize that Tony Danza played himself way back then too.
-
@bridget99 said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Given that VS is widely regarded as massively better than Eclipse, and Android isn't open source, your attempt at humour only serves to reinforce the original assertion.Jesus Christ, Open Sores is a clusterfuck of immature stupidity. Then again, what kind of idiot is going to use code from fucking Twitter?
Oh, OK. I'll use Visual Studio instead of Eclipse, Windows instead of Linux, and Windows Phone instead of Android. Let me just drill a couple of superfluous holes into my skull first so that I'll fit in better with the other people using that crap.
Seriously, I don't always follow the people with high IQs, but I do tend to follow their lead on important things like selecting an OS or electing a representative government.
-
@English Man said:
Given that VS is widely regarded as massively better than Eclipse, and Android isn't open source, your attempt at humour only serves to reinforce the original assertion.
bridget99 is kind of an insane troll. I wouldn't listen to anything he/she says. If you're not careful you'll trigger a rant about how code maintainability is a false god or something. Which actually isn't that surprising of a complaint coming from an Open Sores enthusiast.
-
@blakeyrat said:
@frits said:
You wanna perhaps list out shows that don't rely on stereotypes?I liked Seinfeld more when they added Danny Devito to the cast.
Eh, that Latka character was just an offensive stereotype.
-
@Bulb said:
I always thought (not using it myself), that semicolon insertion in JavaScript works just like it does in the several other languages that have it, namely when newline is encountered, semicolon is inserted if and only if semicolon is in the "follow" set. That means that the next line does not matter, ever.
The next line does matter. Newlines can delimit statements but a statement can span multiple lines. The parser has to examine the first token on the following line to determine if the following line is a continuation or a new statement.
@Bulb said:
In that case the quoted code would unambiguously have semicolon inserted.
Yes, because the ! is not a continuation of the statement above.
-
@OzPeter said:
@blakeyrat said:
@frits said:
You wanna perhaps list out shows that don't rely on stereotypes?I liked Seinfeld more when they added Danny Devito to the cast.
Eh, that Latka character was just an offensive stereotype.
No.
-
@morbiuswilters said:
...Open Sores...
Every time you say that, you come across as more than a little insane troll yourself.
Hey, how about you get real edgy and start writing "Micro$oft". That'll show people.
-
@Zylon said:
Every time you say that, you come across as more than a little insane troll yourself.
I think it's a cute and amusing way to summarize the general shittiness of FOSS.
@Zylon said:
Hey, how about you get real edgy and start writing "Micro$oft".
Because I'm not retarded and I'm not bothered that Microsoft charges money for a superior product?
-
@morbiuswilters said:
@Zylon said:
Every time you say that, you come across as more than a little insane troll yourself.
I think it's a cute and amusing way to summarize the general shittiness of FOSS.
@Zylon said:
Hey, how about you get real edgy and start writing "Micro$oft".
Because I'm not retarded and I'm not bothered that Microsoft charges money for a superior product?
And herein we have the mental disconnect. You THINK it's cute and amusing, but in fact you come across as exactly the sort of retard who types Micro$oft, Microsloth, etc. Of course this is true of anyone who repeats the same joke over and over and over. So yeah yeah, we get it, we're all ever so impressed at your jape and it shall surely never become tired. Please do keep repeating it at every opportunity. Our amusement at your finite wit shall surely never wane.
-
@Zylon said:
Haha, that reminds of this xkcd...@morbiuswilters said:
@Zylon said:
Every time you say that, you come across as more than a little insane troll yourself.
I think it's a cute and amusing way to summarize the general shittiness of FOSS.
@Zylon said:Hey, how about you get real edgy and start writing "Micro$oft".
Because I'm not retarded and I'm not bothered that Microsoft charges money for a superior product?And herein we have the mental disconnect. You THINK it's cute and amusing, but in fact you come across as exactly the sort of retard who types Micro$oft, Microsloth, etc. Of course this is true of anyone who repeats the same joke over and over and over. So yeah yeah, we get it, we're all ever so impressed at your jape and it shall surely never become tired. Please do keep repeating it at every opportunity. Our amusement at your finite wit shall surely never wane.
-
@Zylon said:
You THINK it's cute and amusing, but in fact you come across as exactly the sort of retard who types Micro$oft, Microsloth, etc.
I probably come off that way because you are dumb. A not-dumb person would realize there is a distinction between hating something loathsome and hating something solely because it is popular.
@Zylon said:
Of course this is true of anyone who repeats the same joke over and over and over. So yeah yeah, we get it, we're all ever so impressed at your jape and it shall surely never become tired.
I never claimed it was witty. It's kind of funny the first time you see it, then it becomes annoying, like a grain of sand stuck deep in your urethra. My aim is to reproduce the misery of using FOSS for anyone reading my posts. It seems I have succeeded.
-
@Sutherlands said:
Oh man, that is so accurate. I know so many normal people who long to escape Windows and who get addicted to spending dozens of hours troubleshooting their shitty software instead of accomplishing things.
Oh, wait, I've never encountered a normal user who didn't want to use Windows or OSX. And all of the OSX people were graphic designers so I can kind of excuse it. The only people I've known who used Linux were computer nerds who wanted to learn more about their systems or, conversely, who wanted to stick it to the Man. The former will stick with things for awhile, but after a few years tend to realize that their time and sanity are actually worth something and they switch to a non-shitty OS. The latter install Ubuntu from the wizard and then spend all day in forums circle jerking the other FOSStards and screaming "RTFM" at the other noobs.
-
@morbiuswilters said:
@Zylon said:
You THINK it's cute and amusing, but in fact you come across as exactly the sort of retard who types Micro$oft, Microsloth, etc.
I probably come off that way because you are dumb. A not-dumb person would realize there is a distinction betweenhating something loathsometrolling and hating something solely because it is popular.FTFY
-
"Open sores"? More like "open soars"; amirite?!
-
@boomzilla said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@Zylon said:
You THINK it's cute and amusing, but in fact you come across as exactly the sort of retard who types Micro$oft, Microsloth, etc.
I probably come off that way because you are dumb. A not-dumb person would realize there is a distinction betweenhating something loathsometrolling and hating something solely because it is popular.FTFY
I hate dick cancer, too. Am I also supposed to apologize to the dick cancer enthusiasts out there who think I'm trolling? Should I worry that they find my dick cancer jokes offensive and unfunny? The Internet is full of sick weirdos; sometimes I'm gonna make fun of some of them.
-
@frits said:
"Open sores"? More like "open soars"; amirite?!
Open S'mores are tastier, but people often bitch about burning themselves.
-
@boomzilla said:
@frits said:
"Open sores"? More like "open soars"; amirite?!
Open S'mores are tastier, but people often bitch about burning themselves.
I'm a fan of Open Shores, except for all the immigrants that wash up on them.
-
@morbiuswilters said:
My aim is to reproduce the misery of using FOSS for anyone reading my posts. It seems I have succeeded.
Trust me, you succeeded at that a long time ago.
-
@morbiuswilters said:
I hate dick cancer, too. Am I also supposed to apologize to the dick cancer enthusiasts out there who think I'm trolling? Should I worry that they find my dick cancer jokes offensive and unfunny? The Internet is full of sick weirdos; sometimes I'm gonna make fun of some of them.
The only thing I've noticed you worry about is xkcd showing up in the forum, and people rolling their own cryptography. I don't really care if you troll or make bad dick cancer jokes. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt with the "open sores" stuff. Regardless of what's actually concealed in your tiny, charred heart, saying that sort of thing associates you with the "M$" morons. Flaming back at people who point this out just makes you fit in around here.
-
@boomzilla said:
The only thing I've noticed you worry about is xkcd showing up in the forum, and people rolling their own cryptography.
Which, we can agree, are the worstest things ever.
@boomzilla said:
Regardless of what's actually concealed in your tiny, charred heart, saying that sort of thing associates you with the "M$" morons.
I have to disagree. I'll admit "Open Sores" a lame joke, but I don't think people who say "M$" are stupid because they are making a lame joke, I think they're stupid because their reasons for hating Microsoft are stupid; their complaint seems to be that Microsoft makes money off of the products they create. I do think FOSS is a garbage dump, and I feel the evidence supports that position. I don't think FOSS sucks because I disagree with the concept or ideology; I think it sucks because it's just plain bad.
-
@morbiuswilters said:
@boomzilla said:
The only thing I've noticed you worry about is xkcd showing up in the forum, and people rolling their own cryptography.
Which, we can agree, are the worstest things ever.
@boomzilla said:
Regardless of what's actually concealed in your tiny, charred heart, saying that sort of thing associates you with the "M$" morons.
I have to disagree. I'll admit "Open Sores" a lame joke, but I don't think people who say "M$" are stupid because they are making a lame joke, I think they're stupid because their reasons for hating Microsoft are stupid; their complaint seems to be that Microsoft makes money off of the products they create.
Actually, much more common (and more valid) than your strawman complaint is the actual complaint: that they make money off of products that they did not create, and destroy the livelihood of the people who are actually doing the creating.
-
@morbiuswilters said:
@boomzilla said:
Regardless of what's actually concealed in your tiny, charred heart, saying that sort of thing associates you with the "M$" morons.
I have to disagree. I'll admit "Open Sores" a lame joke, but I don't think people who say "M$" are stupid because they are making a lame joke, I think they're stupid because their reasons for hating Microsoft are stupid; their complaint seems to be that Microsoft makes money off of the products they create. I do think FOSS is a garbage dump, and I feel the evidence supports that position. I don't think FOSS sucks because I disagree with the concept or ideology; I think it sucks because it's just plain bad.I generally write off anyone who uses either term seriously, because they're simply not being serious people, which is not to say they're using the terms for the same purpose.
I suppose I could argue that MS is crap by citing Clippy or Bob, and of course you could point to lots of stuff that they've made that's actually good (as far as software ever gets good). If MS were anywhere near as prolific as "open source," then the ratios of crap to not-crap would start to converge. But that's not really the point, of course. The point is that you're using your "lame joke" in a way that most people will interpret incorrectly, because you're doing a blakeyrat-like imitation of Humpty Dumpty.
-
@pkmnfrk said:
I'm a fan of Open Shores, except for all the immigrants that wash up on them
What are you talking about? That is the best part! Free entertainment!
You can
-
Poke them with a stick
-
Bet on who is going to actually make it to the shore
-
Ride them along
-
Use them as cheap labor
-
Make them fight each other
-
stage your own manhunt to "protect" the borders
The sky is the limit!
@Mason Wheeler said:
Actually, much more common (and more valid) than your strawman complaint is the actual complaint: that they make money off of products that they did not create, and destroy the livelihood of the people who are actually doing the creating.
I guess for certain values of valid approaching zero you are totally right!
-
-
@morbs said:
Stuff about the xkcd linux comic.
The point was only that we were both making (what the reader regards as) a bad joke which needs to be stopped. The specific comic was simply the first one I found when I looked up "xkcd linux".
-
@morbiuswilters said:
Oh, wait, I've never encountered a normal user who didn't want to use Windows or OSX. And all of the OSX people were graphic designers so I can kind of excuse it. The only people I've known who used Linux were computer nerds who wanted to learn more about their systems or, conversely, who wanted to stick it to the Man. The former will stick with things for awhile, but after a few years tend to realize that their time and sanity are actually worth something and they switch to a non-shitty OS. The latter install Ubuntu from the wizard and then spend all day in forums circle jerking the other FOSStards and screaming "RTFM" at the other noobs.
Hi morbs, my name is nonpartisan. Nice to meet you. As a network engineer, let me explain why I use Linux or FreeBSD.I use Windows because that's what the enterprise runs. I use Microsoft Office 2010 with Outlook 2010 because that's what the enterprise runs. If I'm reading or generating e-mail, or generating documents or spreadsheets that need to be shared with others, This is what the enterprise uses and it provides the most compatibility if I use it as well. The right tool for the right job.
For my own use, I use either Linux or FreeBSD. I feel I already know enough about my system and the general operation of the computer. I don't feel I'm sticking it to The Man. I am finding that there are significant differences in the way that Linux handles networking and the way the *BSD line handles networking. Why do I use it? It's more compatible to my way of working. And I've discussed this before . . . I can do things faster on a command line than I can through the GUI.
I don't like the Registry (a specific component of Windows, not Windows in general). I can find configuration problems faster by grepping through config files than I can by trying to navigate through the Registry, trying to make guesses as to where certain configuration settings are stored. Yes I've diagnosed Registry problems before. I've taken applications that "required" admin privileges and, with a few tweaks of the Registry permissions, changed it so that they only needed user-level privileges. That was a great boon to our department at the time, as admin-level privileges were being abused by users, but we didn't have any viable alternatives at the time. By tweaking the permissions for this one application, I was able to make our department's computers more secure overall.
I used to use Wireshark or tcpdump in either Windows or Linux to do network captures. The problem was, in situations where I required captures on links that were heavily utilized, I would frequently miss hundreds or thousands of packets (under either Windows or Linux). There were times I wasn't sure when Wireshark complained that a packet was missing -- was it because the packet got dropped through the network or was it because the packet got dropped by Wireshark/tcpdump? Then I found an open-source program called gulp. I was able to easily compile it under Linux. When it missed a percentage of packets, it recommended tweaks under the /proc filesystem to get better performance. Now, it is my go-to application for doing network captures.
These are but some of the reasons that I use Linux or FreeBSD. There are many others, some of which I've discussed on this forum before. I do lean toward the UNIX-style of doing things because it feels more comfortable to me and I can get things done faster. There are people that regard Cisco as The One True Way to build a network. There are some people that buy Juniper to stick it to The Man. For me, I have tasks that fit better under Windows and I have tasks that fit better under Linux/FreeBSD.
@morbiuswilters (requote) said:
The only people I've known who used Linux were computer nerds who wanted to learn more about their systems or, conversely, who wanted to stick it to the Man.
So now you know someone who uses it not because I'm a computer nerd, not because I want to stick it to The Man, but because for me, it is The Best Way to Get Work Done.
-
Probably the best pro-Open Source argument I've heard had nothing to do with ideology (epecially of the insane Stallman variety.) It went something like this:
We all know that software sucks. Not software from this guy or software from that company, but software in general. It sucks. It's bug-ridden and resource-hogging and full of security holes, and people keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again. And why is that? Because they aren't able to learn to do it right.
Look at any other medium. If you have a book, you can read the book and analyze the narrative structure, the plot, the characters, the viewpoints, everything that goes into it. Same if you have a movie or TV show, plus you can examine and discuss filming and acting techniques. Or in a piece of music, an aspiring musician can hear the entire song and learn how the rhythm, the melody and harmony and the verse structure work. But what if they couldn't?
Imagine if the writing industry existed in such a state that only TwainCo employees were able to analyze Huckleberry Finn, and only those who worked for Hugo, Inc. could study Les Miserables, and so on. Without solid examples of good writing freely available to study and learn from, the progress of literature would be greatly impeded.
...and it would look a lot like the state of software development today. Because of compilers (and minifiers/obfuscators/etc), software is a unique medium: It's a work of creative effort in which it's generally not possible for the next generation of aspiring creators to see what went into it. And as long as this state persists, software will continue to suck.
