Re: Imports / inclusion of s.el into Emacs

[tomas]

On Sun, May 03, 2020 at 10:24:54AM +0200, Philippe Vaucher wrote:
> >> Anyway, you try to focus on the weak points of the arguments. I
> understand,
> >> it's a natural defense mechanism.
> 
> > Here it is again.
> 
> > Psychologizing your opponent is dangerous, may be insulting and won't
> > bring the quest forward.
> 
> Oops, seems I derailed again. Thanks for pointing these out, it helps me
> notice.

I'm in the nice position of a somewhat external observer. Having
been involved in that kind of discussions in far more unconfortable
positions in the past, I'm just trying to offer what I can.

Of course, I may be wrong and all that -- in that case I'd hope
someone sets me straight (on-list or off-list). I can take quite
some abuse whenever I can assume it's well-intentioned :-)

> I have problems when someone looks to me like putting a lot of efforts into
> not seeing where we are talking from, and only pointing things from
> their perspective (all this while, I think, we try to understand theirs).

Often, such is the feeling on all sides...

> But I do realise now that it's just myself who has an understanding
> problem: if I truly understood the other person I'd not be surprised. What
> would work wonders for me is to say something like "I understand your
> position and why you think it's better but for me it's useless because...".

Of course that's not only you. It's always easier to see the other's
understanding problem. One's own can only be inferred (by making the
reasonable assumption that the other is, on the average, as smart as
oneself), but that is an abstract thing.

> It looks like most of our missunderstandings come from the fact that I
> expect others to be familiar with a lot of concepts or how a significant
> portion of the developers in the world work & function. Based on previous
> messages I discovered that's not the case at all, and it looks like this
> community is sometimes a bit "unaware" of how things work for a lot of
> people "outside".

That's why I try to compare it with cultures. Basically, I'm convinced
that the same mechanisms are at work.

Cultures gather around languages, but in a very subtle and complex
way. The official translation into English of "pavé de bœuf" is just
"beef steak". But the association cloud stirred up in the mind of a
person rooted in French culture (think Bourgongne :) will be totally
different to the cloud stirred up in someone, say, accultured in
Berlin.

When writing (and even more when reading) code, similar mechanisms
are at work. A wise person (I think it was Donald Knuth) once said
that he writes programs not to convince the machine to do something,
but to convince his colleagues that the program is doing the right
thing. So computer languages are (a strange kind) of human languages.

Now assume Alan is proofreading a patch coming from somewhere else.
Would you like him to read it as he reads his native language,
or as he reads a foreign language, dictionary in hand?

I guess the first choice will contribute towards a higher quality
in Emacs!

OTOH cultures and languages are living organisms. It doesn't make
sense to pretend they're static (unless they are dead).

Cheers
-- t

signature.asc
Description: Digital signature