No relation to the sports channel.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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    • The compiler hates you
    • The compiler sees nothing wrong with your code and is just giving error messages to look busy
    • The compiler was written by a maniac with a semicolon fixation
    • The compiler could optimize your code, but it’s just not feeling it today
    • The compiler wonders why you can’t match braces right like your brother does
    • The compiler had a torrid affair with a Perl interpreter in 2006
    • The compiler likes big butts and cannot lie
    • The compiler wants to grow up to be an IDE but hasn’t told its parents they need to send it to GUI school yet
    • The compiler reads Nazis on Twitter but only to make fun of them
    • The compiler works for the Servants of Cthulhu


  • Language arises out of social behavior, beginning with imitation and reinforcement in early childhood. Children who don’t learn language (by interacting with adults and older children) in the critical period of early childhood, suffer serious developmental problems. So language is fundamentally anti-solipsistic, even anti-individualistic: you only acquire it by being brought into a community of language-users.

    And written language begins as an encoding for spoken (or signed) language: everyone learns to speak (or sign) before they learn to read, and learning to read starts with learning associations between written structures and spoken ones. (For English-speakers, that means phonics: the relationship between letters or groups of letters, and sounds.)

    Meaning isn’t “assigned” solipsistically; rather it’s “acquired” from a community of use. A single user can’t decide for themselves that “dog” means squirrel. I suspect that if you look at the word “dog” and try to convince yourself that it refers to a bushy-tailed tree-climbing nut-munching rodent, you will be aware that you are doing something very silly, something deliberately contrary to your knowledge.