Parochialism in Programming
I spoke at the Clojure Provo meetup last night, titling the talk "Programming is Folklore." But perhaps a more clear way to talk about what I meant is to talk about "parochialism" in programming. This morning, I woke up and jotted down a "summarized" version for a friend, included here: With the benefit of hindsight (and some more sleep), I wanted to state the point more clearly. The first is that everyone is parochial, because seeking universality on *one* axis often forces you to narrow your focus on others. Consider five different programmers: - one raised in a mountain commune where every apprentice, as a rite of passage, must write their own language---and they do this every year. They do it as a medium of expression! - one who after college, goes to work for Google, and never leaves. Google has a lot of special internal tools they've developed, and a lot of ex-googlers complain that they miss having access to that ec...