[ggambetta]

> No “real programmers” write code in Assembly.

This means the opposite of what she means, which is

> No, “real programmers” write code in Assembly.

because of the missing comma.

Insisting on good spelling and grammar is not about being annoying, it's about not accidentally writing the opposite of what you want to convey :(

[lo_zamoyski]

> Insisting on good spelling and grammar is not about being annoying, it's about not accidentally writing the opposite of what you want to convey :(

True, but in this case, you were able to infer the intended meaning from context, which is what reading is: interpreting text, which involves assigning meanings to symbols and resolving ambiguities to render the whole as intelligible as possible. Since nothing can be drawn out of the text per se, this means you are the one bringing all the meaning to the text. Whatever the author is conveying is, in one way or another, latent in the context that's already in your mind. Even fiction is composed of elements already in your mind.

(Which is why a lack of experience can be an obstacle to effective reading.)

[TeMPOraL]

> True, but in this case, you were able to infer the intended meaning from context, which is what reading is: interpreting text, which involves assigning meanings to symbols and resolving ambiguities to render the whole as intelligible as possible.

Yes, but each ambiguity in a given piece of text makes it harder to infer the intended meaning, in a way that's not linear with the number of ambiguities (or at least doesn't feel so). A missed comma here, an extra comma there, couple typos, and suddenly the text switches from understandable, if slightly tiresome to read, to entirely unintelligible sequence of glyphs that requires approaching it as a puzzle to have a chance at understanding what it says. The threshold for this switch is different for everyone, so it's in everyone's interest to keep your grammar and spelling correct.

[Joker_vD]

I was more perplexed by the usage of the word "dilemma" in the previous sentence, to be fair.

[junon]

Amazingly, I knew exactly what she meant. It's also entirely aside from the point of the article, and either interpretation still works toward making her underlying point.

[shiomiru]

I understood the intention behind the sentence as well, after all it's a common joke. However, it also distracted me from the post, and lead me to think about spelling instead of the author's compiler... which I don't think was intended.

[junon]

I respectfully disagree this is a problem for the author to fix.

[skwheel]

Oh my god, yes. I had to re-read that paragraph three times, and then open the xkcd to confirm what the author really meant. This absolutely killed the flow of the article for me.

[oneeyedpigeon]

The real flaw is that we've overloaded "no" to mean "zero" as well as the opposite of "yes". Without that ambiguity, the sentence would be fine (even if a comma were still technically correct).

[avgcorrection]

EDIT: The following is not not incorrect.

They mean the same thing.

> No “real programmers” write code in Assembly.

Scare quotes for sarcasm/inflection.

Would be better and more idiomatic as a singular noun.

> No, “real programmers” write code in Assembly.

The pause here just marks an interjection/response to something else. But it means the same thing (scare quotes and all).

[proto_lambda]

> They mean the same thing.

What? No, they don't. The first one means "There are no real programmers who write code in assembly", in other words "Real programmers don't write code in assembly", while the second one means "Real programmers write code in assembly". It is very literally the exact opposite.

[avgcorrection]

Dang. You’re right.

[photochemsyn]

Good grammar? "Real programmers" is a colloquialism, and being concerned about good grammar is an indication that the subject is formal or technical writing, in which such constructions should be avoided. "Real programmers" is borrowed from "real men" and that expression is a colloquial synonym for "douche bag", according to this reference:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=real%20men

This is clear if we ask, 'what's the opposite of a real programmer?' - perhaps an imaginary programmer?

[jasode]

>Good grammar? "Real programmers" is a colloquialism, [...] This is clear if we ask, 'what's the opposite of a real programmer?' - perhaps an imaginary programmer?

No, that's not the misinterpretation that gp (ggambetta) was trying explain with the missing commas causing parsing confusion.

The "real programmers" isn't the main confusion. It's the missing commas.

The author was trying to convey (with some sarcasm) how some programmers have a sense of superiority when they can program in the lower abstraction layer underneath the higher-level programming language others are using. E.g. You code in Javascript?!? Meh, real programmers code in C. You code in C?!? Real programmers code in assembly. etc.

It's only after some readers get to the 4th sentence ("butterflies") that the common joke is revealed and they backtrack to the previous sentences to realize they're missing commas that would have made the joke easier-to-read : It’s really an age old dilemma in computers: “real programmers” write code in C. No [,] “real programmers” write code in Assembly. No [,] “real programmers” write code in binary. No, wait, “real programmers” use butterflies.

Analogous to this XKCD joke about "purity" : https://xkcd.com/435/

The distraction of readers trying to parse the missing commas -- detracted from the author's intended rhetorical effect.

[skwheel]

Yes, exactly. I really thought the author was trying to argue that no one writes in assembly. But then when I reached the butterfly line, I realized it was just sloppy writing missing commas.