> He had nothing but dismissive comments about the language.
The comments were not intended to be dismissive about the language; I'm kind of surprised that statements with qualifiers like "might" would be interpreted as being "dismissive". Perhaps you didn't notice them?
If you look at my comments, while I was pretty strident about the facts, I took great pains to extensively qualify my opinion. To illustrate, I'll quote from my initial comments to you with highlights to draw your attention to the qualifiers:
> ...it might not qualify as "a good programming language" for the job...
> ... Do you think it is maybe possible that a language that had standard... just might be better suited for talking to hardware?...
> ... Maybe JavaScript makes working with hardwaremore accessible than other choices, but I doubt it...
Now, no question I was expressing a difference of opinion, but I think if I had said any more times and ways that my critique wasn't of the language in general, but of its suitability for the task in particular, I'd have felt like a broken record. Not only wasn't I dismissive of the language in general, but I wasn't even dismissive of the application of the language for the problem in particular. I expressed that I didn't think it was a good idea, but I explained my basis for the opinion and qualified it extensively, to the point of stating that I could be wrong even if I didn't think so.
I honestly can't explain your characterization of my comments other than speculating that perhaps you came in to the discussion already wearing your language advocacy hat, and that framed & distorted your perception of the discussion.
This is kind of obvious, but given the context I think it might be necessary to say it anyway.
Perfectly good programming languages tend to have strengths, weaknesses, and areas of focus (it's an inevitable consequence of both language design and Darwinian forces that dominate the marketplace of ideas). I don't think any of the flaws I pointed towards are necessarily bad points about the language and in certain domains are actually great strengths (probabilistic parsers are a great idea for web content).
> it only finally slipped out of him almost by accident what he was actually trying to get at, and even that isn't much of a relevant point.
I think a better way of describing it is that it "finally slipped in to you". ;-) When something is said multiple times in different ways, that's not "slipping out".
Obviously, you didn't understand what I was communicating, and no doubt this is partly a reflection on my own failings to communicate effectively. I apologize for not doing better.
However, you might want to consider the possibility that particularly given the limitations of the medium, the nature of communication failures, and that my point was deemed clear as day by at least one other 3rd party... you may have missed something.
Maybe we can learn something from this experience.
I have edited comments in some cases immediately after posting them, as I have a habit of noticing grammatical errors, typeohs, errors in punctuation, etc. only after posting.
I didn't alter anything that substantively altered or added to the meaning of what I said (when I have done that in the past I have marked the relevant text as an UPDATE so that the change gets noticed by anyone who may have already replied, but that wasn't necessary in this case), and I didn't edit anything any time after (or shortly before) you posted a reply. I find once a comment has been up long enough for people to read it, even in place corrections of gibberish to English increases confusion more than it decreases it.
If you saw an earlier version of an edited post you might have found a non-sensical phrase or two (e.g. I do recall one post where I fixed an accidental "maybe maybe" to just "maybe", I do remember my first post had something like "which just the many of few examlpes" and I'm sure there was one or two superfluous apostrophes in some of the comments which I later removed), then it's conceivable you read something that was later edited, but if it was fully legible (more like, as legible as it is now ;-), then definitely nothing was edited. I can assure you that the qualifiers were there in the original postings.
Truth is HackerNews locks down comments pretty fast, so by the time I might want to change/add/remove to what I've said in a way that even subtly changes the meaning, it's way, way too late for an in place edit.
UPDATE: Murphy's Law strikes again. I remember one edit I did do that might be deemed more significant than the others I mentioned. In the original post where I said, "..it is maybe possible that a language that had standard ways of working with bytes say within the first decade of popularizing it just might be better suited for talking to hardware", I had original used underbar instead of asterisks to emphasize certain words. Once I hit post my mistake became obvious and I went back and fixed it. I made the same mistake again when I wrote the comment where I was quoting myself with previous excepts (so I changed "with italics" to "with highlights" and then promptly fixed the rest of it so that "with italics" was if anything finally the more accurate phrase ;-).
The comments were not intended to be dismissive about the language; I'm kind of surprised that statements with qualifiers like "might" would be interpreted as being "dismissive". Perhaps you didn't notice them?
If you look at my comments, while I was pretty strident about the facts, I took great pains to extensively qualify my opinion. To illustrate, I'll quote from my initial comments to you with highlights to draw your attention to the qualifiers:
> ...it might not qualify as "a good programming language" for the job...
> ... Do you think it is maybe possible that a language that had standard... just might be better suited for talking to hardware?...
> ... Maybe JavaScript makes working with hardware more accessible than other choices, but I doubt it...
Now, no question I was expressing a difference of opinion, but I think if I had said any more times and ways that my critique wasn't of the language in general, but of its suitability for the task in particular, I'd have felt like a broken record. Not only wasn't I dismissive of the language in general, but I wasn't even dismissive of the application of the language for the problem in particular. I expressed that I didn't think it was a good idea, but I explained my basis for the opinion and qualified it extensively, to the point of stating that I could be wrong even if I didn't think so.
I honestly can't explain your characterization of my comments other than speculating that perhaps you came in to the discussion already wearing your language advocacy hat, and that framed & distorted your perception of the discussion.
This is kind of obvious, but given the context I think it might be necessary to say it anyway.
Perfectly good programming languages tend to have strengths, weaknesses, and areas of focus (it's an inevitable consequence of both language design and Darwinian forces that dominate the marketplace of ideas). I don't think any of the flaws I pointed towards are necessarily bad points about the language and in certain domains are actually great strengths (probabilistic parsers are a great idea for web content).
> it only finally slipped out of him almost by accident what he was actually trying to get at, and even that isn't much of a relevant point.
I think a better way of describing it is that it "finally slipped in to you". ;-) When something is said multiple times in different ways, that's not "slipping out".
Obviously, you didn't understand what I was communicating, and no doubt this is partly a reflection on my own failings to communicate effectively. I apologize for not doing better.
However, you might want to consider the possibility that particularly given the limitations of the medium, the nature of communication failures, and that my point was deemed clear as day by at least one other 3rd party... you may have missed something.
Maybe we can learn something from this experience.