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0 pointspdntspa2y ago0 comments

Be the change you want to see.

I personally don't understand why people aren't willing to learn instead. It's not hard to sit down and pick up a new skill and it's good to step out of one's comfort zone. I personally hate Powershell syntax, brevity is the soul of wit and PS could learn a thing or two from bash and "the linux way".

We seem obsessed with molding the machine to our individual preferences. Perhaps we should obsess over the opposite: molding our mind to think more like the machine. This keeps a lot of things simple, uncomplicated, and flexible.

Does a painter wish for paints that were more like how he wanted them to be? Sure, but at the end of the day he buys the same paint everyone else does and learns to work with his medium.

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pdimitar2y ago

> I personally don't understand why people aren't willing to learn instead

You misunderstand. As programmers we learn every day, obviously that's one of our strong points.

The real problem is that every single tool wants you to go deep and learn their particular dyslexic mini programming language syntax or advanced configuration options syntax. Why? We have TOML, we have SQL, we have a bunch of pretty proven syntaxes and languages that do the job very well.

A lot of these programmers authoring tools suffer from a severe protagonist syndrome which OK, it's their own personal character development to grapple with, but in the meantime us the working programmers are burning out because everyone and their dog wants us to learn their own brain child.

imiric2y ago

> We seem obsessed with molding the machine to our individual preferences. Perhaps we should obsess over the opposite: molding our mind to think more like the machine.

How so? Everything in "the machine" was created by other humans; from the latest CLI tool, to the CPU instruction set. As computer users, given that it's practically impossible for a single person to be familiar with all technologies, we must pick our battles and decide which technology to learn. Some of it is outdated, frustrating to use, poorly documented or maintained, and is just a waste of time and effort to learn.

Furthermore, as IT workers, it is part of our job to choose technologies worth our and our companies' time, and our literal livelihood depends on honing this skill.

So, yes, learning new tools is great, but there's only so much time in a day, and I'd rather spend it on things that matter. Even better, if no tool does what I want it to, I have the power to create a new one that does, and increase my development skills in the process.

Grimburger2y ago

>I personally don't understand why people aren't willing to learn instead.

Mostly because if you don't use it that often then it ends up forgotten again. I can smash out plenty of trivial regexes, but anything even slightly complicated means I'm learning backreferences again for the 6th time in a decade.

stevage2y ago

In my case, my memory doesn't work that way. I have learnt jq several times but I don't use it frequently enough to retain the knowledge.

A better tool for me would be something that uses JS syntax but with some syntactic sugar and a great man page.

ruuda2y ago

I have that same problem, the advanced features I use too little to remember. Then I started working on a configuration language that should have a non-surprising syntax (json superset, mostly inspired by Python, Rust, Nix). And it turns out, this works well as a query language for querying json documents. https://github.com/ruuda/rcl Here is an example use case: https://fosstodon.org/@ruuda/111120049523534027

throwaway20372y ago

What is "JS syntax"? And can you write a frontend for jq that converts "JS syntax" to jq syntax?

And is the jq man page poor? I'm sure they will accept patches for it.

andelink2y ago

The jq man page is pretty good IMO. It’s where/how I learned to use jq

unsui2y ago

While I appreciate the sentiment for bending your mind, rather than the spoon, the practical reality is that developer time is far costlier than compute time.

It is easier to map compute structures and syntax to existing mental models than to formulate new mental models. The latter is effortful and time-consuming.

So, given the tradeoffs, I could learn a new language, or leverage an existing language to get things done.

And yes, given sufficient resources (particularly time), developing new mental models is ideal, but reality often prohibits the ideal.

3np2y ago

If the crux is that you want something that maps closer to your personal mental model than what's available, I guess the other option is to build the missing tool yourself. That's the other side of "be the change you want to see".

> So, given the tradeoffs, I could learn a new language, or leverage an existing language to get things done.

There is also the option to create a new language (jqsql or whatnot), optionally sharing it publically.

If you do this I think you'd find out why beyond very trivial stuff, sibling commenters have a point in that SQL isn't a good fit for nested data like JSON. Would still be a useful exercise!

smabie2y ago

The machine is uncomplicated and simple? That is the last way I would describe modern CPUs and their peripherals.

The whole point of programming is to bend the machine towards humans, not the other way around.

cjaybo2y ago

“Brevity is the soul of wit”

Maybe we have different goals but I don’t get paid to write witty code and I don’t think anyone on my team would appreciate it if I did.

I don’t think the redeeming qualities of brevity in prose transfer to something like terse syntax.

reportgunner2y ago

Yeah I don't understand why people aren't willing to learn SQL too.

vips7L2y ago

brevity is not clarity.

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