[ringm]

I would not agree with you, and I think you can't compare programming and math in this regard. The "beliefs" they are talking about are rather trivial: strictly formal abstract logical statements which look very hard from intuitive point of view, but they are relatively easy to construct and relatively easy to disprove (provide a counterexample for). An attempt to base your work on one would instantly lead to an error in a proof, which will be found upon review.

On the other hand, programming is actually a branch of engineering, a much less formal discipline. TIMTOWTDI, and not just in Perl. Everything in programming is subjective. Results of programmer's work aren't simply "correct" or "erroneous". Basing your work on a "false belief" will just require spending more effort on it, or lead to a lower quality product.

You can imagine an objective false belief, but it would be some kind of triviality, like wrong understanding of initialization order for base classes in C++, or behavior of modulus operator for negative numbers. Nobody is discussing this kind of stuff with any grandeur.

edit: tl;dr: in math it may be hard to understand whether you're objectively wrong. In programming it is usually as trivial as a compile-time or runtime error, so programmers will usually discuss subjective issues.

[jrockway]

In programming it is usually as trivial as a compile-time or runtime error, so programmers will usually discuss subjective issues.

But if you look at the SO threads, the subjective issues aren't related to programming, they are mostly related to sitting at a desk or working for other people. That has as much to do with programming as telescopes have to do with physics.