[erlang-questions] Coon - new tool for building Erlang packages, dependency management and deploying Erlang services

[Joe Armstrong]

Just another thought...

There seems to be the idea that in some sense people's freedom is being
limited because various ways of behaving in the past are no longer acceptable.

The Internet has changed how we interact, and we are performing a huge
experiment on billions of people, without knowing what will happen.

When I was a kid - there was no Internet and no computers - if we were bored
we'd go into the garden and paint some stones or eat a few worms or something.

The only people we interacted with, apart from adults, were the local kids
and the kids at school. All interaction was verbal and face-to-face.

If you offended somebody there was immediate feedback, they might cry
(if they were smaller than you) or thump you (if they were bigger) -
the point being was
that there was immediate feedback and you knew if you'd annoyed somebody.

Fast forward 60 odd years and now we communicate with an unknown number of
people who are brought up in different continents and in different cultures.

So of course, we have zero idea of how what we write is received, and
feedback is
slow or non-existent.

We have replaced high band-width one-to-one face-on communication with a small
number of people with low band-width one-to-many communication with a
large number
of people.

I have seen large numbers of e-mail conflicts in mailing groups that I
believe just
would not have happened in a face-to-face context. This is a consequence of
restricting the band-width and locality of our communication.

I don't believe that people are any better or any worse than they were
50 years ago before
the Internet, nor that things are getting worse. The ability to
communicate directly
with people from different cultures is great, we need to do this to
solve our common problems.

Writing accurately and saying exactly what you mean to a mixed
audience is incredibly
hard, talking face-to-face is far easier because of the immediate feedback.

The immediacy of instant messaging and email is also changing our communication
in ways we do not yet understand.

When I sent letters to people before the Internet I did not expect an
immediate reply.
When I replied to a letter I could reflect over the text for a few
weeks, many ill-considered letters
got ripped up the day after and not sent - why waste a good stamp and
walk to the post office?

I don't think we've figured out how to use the Internet in a sensible
way yet - we're in
what historians in the future will cause "the age of Internet confusion"

These little skirmishes over the meanings of words should not be taken
too seriously
but more as a symptom that the tools we use to communicate are crap
and we need to
invent better tools.

It will be interesting to see how these things evolve - Personally I
have turned off
all notifications on my phone and computer - I check mail/messages
now-and-then when I decide
not when my computer decides.

This is why I missed a telephone conference the day before yesterday -
I forgot - yes forgot -
that old fashioned thing that means that I am in control and not my computer.

Have a nice day

/Joe









On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 2:05 PM, Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:
> It seems like several arguments have gotten mixed into each other.
>
> 1) is how to choose a name that does not offend people.
>
> A quick Google search said that that the Oxford English dictionary
> lists 171 K words - how many of these are offensive - I have no idea - but
> if you Google "<word>" + offensive and get zero hits it's probably OK.
>
> A normal person has a working vocabulary of about 10K words (this is somebody
> with a rather good knowledge of English) - assume ALL of these are offensive
> (they are not but never mind) - that leave c. 160K words that are probably OK
>
> Take two words and string them together (for example, "green-coffee")
> probably OK since there are 160K^2 combinations you cannot argue that
> it is difficult to make up new words. ("Red hat" did this and the name
> seemed to have worked - I don't think it offended anybody, it has a
> nice logo, and is memorable).
>
> 2) Does the individual have the right to use any old word they feel like
> even though it might offend someone?
>
> The answer is -  yes but ... it depends...
>
> In some countries blasphemy is punishable by death.
> In some countries being nasty about the rulers is a crime.
>
> If you offend people it will have consequences - you might not know
> that you have offended people but it will have consequences - once you
> become aware of the consequences you will have to decide what to do
> about it.
>
>    - You can change the name
>    - You can do nothing
>    - You can stick to the original name
>
> You will not know in advance the consequences of making one of the
> three choices, but you might make an intelligent guess or ask people
> for guidance if it is a foreign culture.
>
> Personally I would be appalled if a program I wrote was being discussed
> because the name of the program was the main reason to discuss the
> program and not the merits or deficiencies of the program. I would
> immediately change the name - but that's me.
>
> personally I think we should celebrate the fact that there are
> 14,609 repositories on Git hub.
>
> The fact that one of them has attracted a lot of publicity should not
> detract from either the community or the other 14,608 repositories.
>
> 3) Is the language going to be diminished if we stop using certain words
>
> No of course not - people are inventing new words all the time - words going
> in and out of fashion has always happened.
>
> I'd rather be known as the inventor of a splendid new word than as a
> defender of the right of people to use old words whose 'best use
> before date' has expired.
>
> If you hear a public figure using a controversial word that causes a
> storm of protest (this happens now and then, you can possibly think of
> an example of this) my immediate thought is "What don't they want us
> to be talking about."
>
> Words elicit reactions - so it's good idea to know what they mean:
>
>    'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
>    'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
>
>    'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so
>     many different things.'
>
>     - "Through the Looking Glass", Lewis Carroll
>
> Cheers
>
> /Joe
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 11:49 AM, Karlo Kuna <kuna.prime@REDACTED> wrote:
>> it seems to me that the main problem is growth of classification of  acts as
>> offensive in general.
>> what i mean is that in digital and (archive all) age it seems that number of
>> acts (words, expressions etc.) that are viewed as offensive only grows in
>> time, and
>> they *do not* die out. given multinational context it seems to be the truth
>> even more so.
>> not dying out is the biggest problem. it is easy to make something offensive
>> but is is very hard to emancipate the same thing  back to benign and
>> in most cases original meaning.
>>
>> moral dilemma is should we police others or should we first police our own
>> reactions? should i be offended regardless of context or should others make
>> sure that i don't have to consider context?
>>
>> should one use coon or be offended by it? with context "raccoon"
>> should one use cowboy of be offended by it? with context "genocide"
>>
>> here i must stress out that in case of cowboy intended context was actually
>> bound to tech world and i don't in any shape or form believe that author
>> was implying otherwise. but as cruel as it sounds context *is* derived from
>> historical fact packaged in perception of entertainment in less developed
>> times
>> (cartoons and etc.).
>>
>> this leads me following problems:
>> 1) how do we emancipate back words, and acts in general
>> 2) how much time should one spend in analyzing words and acts to deem them
>> acceptable
>>
>> for one i think this thread is great because it gives author and community
>> time for consideration and action before product is widely spread
>>
>> we should be kind, but also we need to be more resilient!
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 4:06 AM, Mahesh Paolini-Subramanya
>> <mahesh@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>
>>> Naming and Branding are not complicated things. Oh, doing it *well* can
>>> take any amount of time and effort, but the basics are very *very*
>>> straightforward. Here are two excellent example
>>>    -
>>> https://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2017/10/26/before-naming-your-startup-read-this/
>>>    - https://landor.com/thinking/how-not-to-name
>>>
>>> It really is not terribly different from software development
>>> 1) Identify the requirements for the name
>>>    - What kind of name is it? (made-up word? an experience? etc.)
>>>    - What are you trying to accomplish with the name?
>>>    - What is your target market?
>>>    - What are your evaluation criteria?
>>>    - etc.
>>> 2) Generate a bunch-a example names based on the above
>>> 3) Test these names thoroughly
>>>    - Does it sound good? In the target markets?
>>>    - Will it get misinterpreted?
>>>    - Is it confusing?
>>>    - etc.
>>> 4) Deploy to production
>>>    - Update docs
>>>    - Send out emails
>>>    - etc.
>>>
>>> In the world of Marketing, there is an entire sub-genre of Naming /
>>> Branding.  It exists because, despite the fondest beliefs of the tech-world,
>>> Excellence does *not* win out, if you build it they *don't* come, and just
>>> making yourself heard in the din of the marketplace is frightfully hard.
>>>
>>> The tech world is particularly replete with the Dunning-Kruger effect -
>>> and this is rarely more apparent than when we talk about Marketing & Sales
>>> (admit it - as you read "Marketing & Sales", you mentally added a sarcastic
>>> tone to it, didn't you?).
>>> Sales is *hard*. Do *you* have the ego-less-ness to do cold-calling? The
>>> stamina to repeat the same sales-pitch over and over and *OVER* again?
>>> And Marketing, well, it's just about the same - those sales funnels don't
>>> fill themselves.
>>>
>>> Which brings me back to Naming/Branding - and the process that I described
>>> above. Right up front, in the requirements for the name, you should be
>>> making sure that it isn't offensive. (Or, maybe you're a white supremacist
>>> group, and *want* to be offensive! Whatever). Thing is, these are
>>> table-stakes in any brand-exercise - to the point where not doing this is
>>> usually an actionable offense.
>>> To Jesper's point - of course the meaning of the brand-name can change.
>>> And it doesn't have to be around names like "Darkie Toothpaste" (yes, that
>>> was a thing) - pity the manufacturer of "ISIS Chocolates", who were
>>> overtaken by world events. Hence the existence of the field of Brand
>>> Management, and nowadays Brand Safety.
>>>
>>> Yes, this is all a bit more than "Pick a name, and run with it". But hey,
>>> the world isn't what it used to be. 30 years ago, I could fix most anything
>>> that 'sploded in my car with the tools I had in my garage - nowadays, not so
>>> much.
>>> Does this mean that we should al study up on marketing, or pay for brand
>>> management, or whatever?  Not at all. It does, however, mean that we should,
>>> at the very least, be aware that these things exist, and act appropriately.
>>>
>>> Last of all, regarding the "I shouldn't have to do this" argument - of
>>> course you don't have to do this. It just depends on what you're trying to
>>> get out of the marketplace - the sad truth is that the better mousetrap
>>> doesn't always win out.  The problem is that
>>>    - A poor name can nuke all the work that you've done, and all the
>>> goodwill that you've built
>>>    - At best you're going to have to spend time, energy, and money to
>>> educate the market about your product's value. Headwinds do *not* help -
>>> you'll be fighting in the market against al the competition that doesn't
>>> have those headwinds, and, well, is your product that much better that the
>>> headwinds don't matter?
>>>    - You get but one chance to make a first impression, and the product's
>>> name is, usually, that first impression.  Be aware of this in the markets
>>> that you are targeting....
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> --
>>> Mahesh Paolini-Subramanya
>>> That tall bald Indian guy..
>>> Twitter |
>>> Blog |
>>> G+
>>>  |
>>> LinkedIn
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 9:19 PM, Jesper Louis Andersen
>>> <jesper.louis.andersen@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 4:41 PM Fred Hebert <mononcqc@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> It is very possible. This mailing list is full of folks boasting of
>>>>> writing systems that run on hundreds or thousands of nodes and handle more
>>>>> load than anything else out there with amazing uptime figures And somehow,
>>>>> nobody can be assed to just look up words in a search engine or use the link
>>>>> Mahesh posted that is meant just for that?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This is good advice. I'll just add you need to keep redoing your search
>>>> as the list of bad words tend to change over time. So a word which is
>>>> perfect now can be "illegal" tomorrow. However, the risk of words changing
>>>> behind your back is much smaller. It can be literal hell for a brand if it
>>>> gets caught in such a fistfight.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Mahesh Paolini-Subramanya
>>> That tall bald Indian guy..
>>> Twitter |
>>> Blog |
>>> G+
>>>  |
>>> LinkedIn
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> erlang-questions mailing list
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>>
>>
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