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>So a "hello world" program is now political?

There's an implicit political statement in being able to write a simple one line hello world program and run it, using free software and information. Consider the counterfactual world where to even begin programming you have to pay for certification and training or specialized equipment/software. I know paid compilers, proprietary languages and closed specifications exist, but we can still just save print('hello world') to a file and run it using python which is freely available, or even better we can open devtools in our browser and jump into the console and run console.log('hello world') without even installing anything.


Also, the book that popularized "hello world" was very consciously advancing a programming-first pedagogical agenda, as opposed to building up a theoretical foundation first:

> The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.


> I think you just want to purposefully find a reason to be angry

Irony is dead.


"all software is political" is a textbook deepity: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity


You’re deliberately bringing up irrelevant minimal counter examples in bad faith.


Then you should be able to say where the political statement in omarchy resides, and what it is


It's right there, it's the guy who started it and can't help but share his politics unprompted


A minimal counterexample is a valid proof.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_counterexample

Please don't make personal attacks on other posters.


"Proofs" in this sense of the word are things that apply to mathematics and formal systems. Language is squishy. A minimal counterexample is potentially squishy enough to be meaningless.


Incorrect. "all software is political" is a proposition; it can be true or false.

If any minimal counterexample exists, then "all software is political" must necessarily be false.


It can also be "mostly true but exaggerated for polemic effect".

Or your definition of political might be different to the speakers.

Or it could be intended to highlight a way of perceiving the world and thus not be subject to truth claims.

Etc. This list can be extended indefinitely.

Language is not a game of symbol manipulation.


An absolute statement cannot be "mostly true."

The definition of political is irrelevant. The result is supertrue. "If even one example of software is not political, then 'all software is political' is false" is true under all admissible values of "political." This is simple logic.

All assertoric claims about the world are either true or false. If they are false they should be rejected. If they are true they should be spoken. Treating factual claims about the world as a partisan psychological litmus test is, in my judgment, morally repugnant. There are four lights.


Older Wittgenstein meet younger Wittgenstein.




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