[diggan]

> When people delegate their brains to others, their own judgment naturally deteriorates and it makes them much easier to fool

A thought as old as thoughts about thoughts are, almost:

> For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.

The quote above is about books, from Plato's dialogue Phaedrus 14 (370-360 BCE). You by any chance feel the same about books as you feel about reusable JavaScript modules published on npm?

[lm28469]

This plato's quote about books is too often used as something like: "someone smart was wrong about something once, hence everyone is wrong about every new thing forever"

Nothing is black nor white but npm brought its fair share of dumb shit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm_left-pad_incident

[josh-at-banxa]

>Nothing is black nor white but npm brought its fair share of dumb shit

Sure. So too have books. In that instance, does the blame lie on the advent of books, or to the reader too naive to tell the difference?

[diggan]

> This plato's quote about books is too often used as something like: "someone smart was wrong about something once, hence everyone is wrong about every new thing forever"

I mean, it is fairly similar to what parent actually wrote, isn't it a relevant quote in the context? You're not actually arguing for one way or another, but simply because you've seen the quote multiple times before, it doesn't apply, or what are you trying to say?

How is the left_pad incident related to developers becoming easier to fool?

[seanthemon]

There should be a quote for that

[specialist]

Yes and: Technology (progress) always presents a tradeoff. It is never wholly positive. h/t Neil Postman's Technopoly.

On the balance, writing has been a net positive. Probably. Plato wasn't wrong; he could (or would) not anticipate the upsides.

[Veserv]

Not the OP, but yes. Blindly reciting and believing the contents of books without any discernment also makes you a fool.

If you do not believe that, then might I interest you in uncritically imbibing the succulent nectar of wisdom flowing from the Flat Earth Society?

[mikedelfino]

My layman’s understanding, based solely on the quote you cited, is that it criticizes books for not providing proper instruction — being just pupils, readers need a tutor. The only way this could relate to programming libraries being reused is if people didn’t even read the books back then, much like they don’t read the libraries' source code right now.

I’m by no means agreeing with the quote, nor am I against reusing programming libraries carelessly; I just don’t see how the two are related.