Considered Harmful Considered Harmful
February 18th, 2008
Okay, the novelty of exploiting use-mention ambiguity wore off awhile ago. That’s okay.
It’s possibly time we stopped considering things harmful. The idea is somewhat puzzling; it seems as though the thing under consideration might not actually be recognized as harmful for any other reason than that we are considering it such. A panel of experts, perched somewhere behind your shoulder, has unanimously agreed that what you’re about to do may, in fact, be harmful. Dispensing with things such as proof, we’ll just consider it harmful and be done with it.
What are you doing? Don’t you know that’s considered harmful?
The trouble with this is that, to be consistent, we can’t even consider “considered harmful” harmful without violating our new rule. You see? That’s what happens when we start inventing considerations without regard to rhyme, reason, or reality.
3 Responses to “Considered Harmful Considered Harmful”
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February 19th, 2008 at 06:27 AM
What terminology would you use, then? I’m not saying your point’s not valid, but when you resort to “proof” then the whole idea of antipatterns being something to avoid goes out the window… because every antipattern has been successfully employed somewhere. Granted, the cliche has been horribly overused, but in my mind it’s synonymous with “is an antipattern.”
February 19th, 2008 at 09:26 AM
Well… I was at least partly just riffing on a post _why wrote about hacking, generally.
But seriously. If practice xyz is “harmful”, tell me why.
If the answer is, “It makes code difficult to maintain,” then let’s say that.
If the answer is, “That will break as soon as the API for module x changes”, then let’s say that.
If the answer is, “That is harmful just because I think the code written that way is not aesthetically pleasing,” then let’s say that. Then at least we’ll know what is meant.
“Considered harmful” just begs the questions “Harmful how? Considered by whom? Why?”
Now, as you put it, “is an antipattern”—basically, you’ve just redefined it into a phrase that makes more sense. And in the sense that a certain thing (GOTO, anyone?) is arguably Not A Good Thing, I can understand the continued use of the phrase.
So I suppose, yes, I was partly just picking at semantics; but really, also partly asking for us to just state clearly: Is x harmful? Why?
February 19th, 2008 at 01:47 PM
Yeah, as a standalone statement it’s not terribly helpful. But then neither is “is an antipattern,” aside from the idea that antipattern may or may not be more specific (depends on who you ask, imo). That said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the ”...considered harmful” cliche (thank you, Dijkstra), it’s been as the title of an essay (including the ever popular “GOTO considered harmful considered harmful”), so I’ve found there’s usually explanation behind it.