Religious-Oriented Programming

I came across a thread today on javalobby. Actually, I was referred by Ricky Clarkson who seems to challenge the Java Religious Establishment with seemingly greater patience than I could possibly exercise. Here is a link to the thread.

I have long postulated that programming in general and Java particularly, exhibits some strikingly similar attributes of religious establishments. I have discussed this hypothesis with a few people and we have even come up with the idea of finding a correlation between preferred programming language and religious conviction. Of course, this was all discussion and no “doing”, but it’s an interesting discussion nevertheless. We even entertain conjectures about what we believe the outcome to be. Mostly, correlating religious ideologies that are founded on the most powerful delusions and programming languages that are also founded on extreme delusion and then extrapolating along less mature religions with more transparent delusionary characteristics.

Many people point to some of the absurdities that come out of religious establishments for humiliation, because they are well, quite blatantly in violation of sound logical reasoning. As a side note, I often observe this violation being resolved by resorting to Fideism – a symptom of the religion sickness that I hope to write about soon. I actually empathise with the people who have been manipulated into such extreme delusions. I do not encourage human suffering and I do whatever I can in terms of self-discipline to ensure that I do not denigrate to the perverted practice of esteem boosts by pointing at the weaknesses of others – mostly, because I hope and expect the same from others (I am a moral Altruist).

I encourage you to do so as well as you read the following quotes from the aforementioned thread:

• Other languages have lots of problems that java just doesn’t have.

• Most language concurrency models are inferior to Java’s.

• Most languages don’t have as good functional programming as Java.

• Java’s type system is precise and predictable, more so than many languages.

Notice how this person is convinced that these statements are true. There is no act of conscious intellectual fraud here. Ask yourself why? How on earth could someone have been led into believing such absurdities? My point is for example, there are some very plausible explanations and methods of counselling for believers in the Judæo-Christian delusion; can we use these lessons to describe the behaviour of the person quoted above, and therefore, offer counsel to this person, who is also suffering delusions? Is the approach that Ricky Clarkson is taking – assumingly to heighten the awareness of the audience of his words – a sound one? Can we make predictions about its outcome?

The infamous Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) quote seems apt:

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called Religion.