Let's talk meta

In my previous blog post about old techs causing problems in getting new developers on board. In it I had the following statement:

As a first order approximation, nobody under the age of 35 knows how to code in Perl, let alone would be willing to sacrifice their free time doing it.

When I wrote this, I spent a lot of time thinking whether I should add a footnote or extra sentence saying, roughly, that I'm not claiming that there are no people under 35 who know Perl, but that it is a skill that has gotten quite rare compared to ye olden times. The reason for adding extra text is that I feared that someone would inevitably come in and derail the discussion with some variation of "I'm under 35 and I know Perl, so the entire post is wrong".

In the end I chose not to put the clarification in the post. After all it was written slightly tongue-in-cheek, and even specifically says that this is not The Truth (TM), but just an approximation. The post was published. It got linked on a discussion forum. One of the very first comments was this:

This is what makes blogging on the Internet such a frustrating experience. Every single sentence you write has to be scrutinised from all angles and then padded and guarded so its meaning can not be sneakily undermined in this way. This is tiring, as it is difficult to get a good writing flow going. It may also make the text less readable and enjoyable. It makes blogging less fun and thus people less likely to want to do it.

An alternative to this is to not ready any comments. This works, but then you are flying blind. You can't tell what writing is good and which is not and you certainly can't improve. The Internet has ruined everything.

Meta-notes

Contrary to the claim made above, the Internet has not, in fact, ruined everything. The statement is hyperbole, stemming from the author's feelings of frustration. In reality the Internet has improved the quality of life of most people on the earth by a tremendous amount and should be considered as one of the greatest inventions of mankind.

"Ye olden times" was not written as "þe olden times" because in the thorny battle between orthographic accuracy and readability the latter won.

The phrase "flying blind" refers neither to actual flying nor to actual blindness. It is merely a figure of speech for any behaviour that is done in isolation without external feedback. You should never operate any vehicle under any sort of vision impairment unless you have been specifically trained and authorized to do so by the appropriate authorities.

Meta-meta-notes

The notes above were not written because the author thought that readers would take the original statements literally. Instead they are there to illustrate what would happen if the defensive approach to writing, as laid out in the post, were taken to absurd extremes. It exists purely for the purposes of comedy. As does this chapter.