How Programmers View Things

This page was refactored to show that participants in this wiki approach issues with a questioning and analytical mindset. This is shown by emphasizing a programming relationship to the statements. You will clearly see that they reflect programming practices and approaches. Try your hand at other such pages, leaving the original alone, while discovering the validity of this notion. Try a page which seems to be unrelated to the purpose of this wiki, and refactor it, illustrating by attaching and grouping under an Emphasized heading, how it is a programming practice or approach. In so doing you will discover patterns of just HowProgrammersViewThings. You need not post the refactored page, as I have done, for it is primarily a discovery process. It may then help you to see that people on this wiki are not JustaProgrammer or as I am not -- JustaStudent

EmphasizedHeadings? -- Programming concepts exposed in arguments:

Project (page title) Specification: History: Statements - Notions: NamingConventions, Inclusions, Exclusions, Exceptions, and LanguagesUsed?: Terms -(Synonyms), Separation and Isolation: Cultural Distinctions Considered: What are the perceived requirements: Geographical and National Distinctions Considered: Notes, VersionHistory: ConsiderationOfAlternatives

Specification: Citizens of the U.S.A. tend to call themselves "Americans". To others, particularly those we share the hemisphere with, this undoubtedly reinforces their perception of us as arrogant. I'd like to propose a post-MonroeDoctrine?/ManifestDestiny? basis for calling ourselves "American".

(How about the fact that we speak English, and in the English language this is correct usage?)

History: From colonial days, when there were the Americans and the British. Until about 1760, Canada was French.

Statements - Notions: To be an American is to be a citizen of the Western hemisphere.

(This is patently false.)

NamingConventions, Inclusions, Exclusions, Exceptions, and LanguagesUsed?: (Does this include Western Antartica? -- internal nitpicker), and the implicated responsibility (among others) to learn the languages of the hemisphere. Spanish, English, Portuguese, French. Those are only the obvious ones. Think of San Francisco. Think of Toronto. Sao Paolo. Chiapas.

How many languages there? And all the dialects!

No, it does not. No more than calling oneself "European" requires one to speak English, Gaelic, Welsh, French, German, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, Italian, Romanque, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Bulgarian, Albanian, Serbian, Croatian, Greek, Romanian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Russian, and my apologies to anyone I've left out, and plus or minus one's definition of "Europe". -- MikeSmith

I know very few people who call themselves "European". IMO it's a politically motivated term, in this context, invented by the people who would force a "European Union" by lying to their citizens/subjects/electorate. Still, this is a whole other argument which belongs elsewhere .. and I'm weary of it already. -- MatthewAstley

Terms -(Synonyms), Separation and Isolation: If, say, Germans used the term "European" as a synonym for "German", that would be a parallel. Residents of the U.S.A. who casually call themselves "Americans" are likely to have little or no understanding of the other cultures of this hemisphere. It's a kind of know-nothing isolationism. -- tr

(This is an example of cultural imperialism mixed with sheer ignorance.)

Cultural Distinctions Considered: Culture's the real trouble. We Americans call ourselves that because that's what we learned. Furthermore, we don't have anything else to call ourselves, at least in English. The MexicanLanguage? offers "estadosunidenses", as mentioned below, but they also refer to the nation-state as "Los Estados Unidos" exclusively, without ever mentioning "America". I think French does the same. Brits I've talked to refer to "Americans" as the occupants and citizens of the USA. Spaniards seem to use "Americanos" for that purpose. It's just a name. Notice that you don't hear me calling myself a "North American". It's a fact, but that's a continent. In English, America is a country, North and South America are continents, and together they are the Americas (plural). If you see your people as oppressed by another group whose stated name is confusingly similar to that of an entity of which you are a part, you'll take offense at the name. Witness the discord between hackers, crackers, and the media.

You need LeavesOfGrass in your back pocket, BowlingForColumbine in your personal mp5 player, and OptimisticProgramming in your SpiritPack?.

What are the perceived requirements: I'm a UsAmerican?, Chicago style. And I don't know enough languages. And I don't know LeavesOfGrass by heart. And I don't understand CharltonHeston?. So I haven't met the requirements for AmerIcan? citizenship.

--TomRossen 200212140145 (edited to destig my sig and thank the anonymous samaritan for the PoemWiki link.) (they're often known as AnonymousDonors)

Okay, but if I change it now, your comment would look weird. So change it. What isn't signed is ready for refactoring. Even what is signed, if you're careful/polite.

Geographical and National Distinctions Considered: Part of the problem, I suppose, is that the US is named after a continent (well, two continents). So the short form of "United States of America" is most sensibly "America", which is more descriptive than "United States", even if people know which United States you're talking about. I mean, people from the "Federal Republic of Germany" don't call themselves "Federal Republicans".

I wonder if part of the confusion stems from the fact that a) the US is a nation, but not an ethnicity or b) perhaps the name USA, by encompassing two continents in its name, speaks to the then-popular belief in manifest destiny. That's mostly just idle theorizing, though; I don't know the history of the name very well.

(That is pretty much wrong. The name 'United States of America' arose because at the time it was coined, it was the only 'United States' of anything on either continent of the Americas (the proper term for North and South America). Later on, when other countries on the Americas gained independence, they all chose names that didn't collide with America's name to avoid confusion. Therefore, 'America' is a perfectly reasonable short form for 'United States of America' and any claims to the contrary are simply wrong. Especially the absurd claim that 'American' somehow refers to any citizen of the Americas.)

At any rate, different countries care about this at varying degrees. A curious thing to note is that Latin Americans tend to be very adamant about not calling USians "Americanos" -- they use "Estadounidenses" instead. But in my experience, Spaniards just use "Americanos". Less syllables. -- francis

I get the impression that Canadians disagree. They seem to be offended if I mistake one for an American, in a very similar way to a New Zealander mistaken for an Australian. This leads me to wonder whether Canadians [that I've met] have completely swallowed this line you now reject, that America == USA. -- MatthewAstley

Yeah - just another indignity that we've heaped on our northern neighbors. So are you a Brit? -- tr

Yes. Imagine the offence though if it turned out I was Irish! 8-)

Or French. -- tr

I don't know, but I suspect it would just be taken as a mistake, or even a compliment on my command of English. If I were French though, you'd better not accuse me of being Belgian (or is this one the other way around?). I wonder if there's a graph of these things, somewhere?

I never got to do the experiment in the end, but I suspect that a pair of tourists in (the Republic of) Ireland could amuse themselves getting alternate warm and cold welcomes, if one were American and the other English, and they took turns in asking directions.

Notes VersionHistory: (Following was formerly at the top. Deleted a comment (that said don't panic, we won't delete you) at the commentor's request, but I'm leaving my paranoid ramblings here for a while for y'all's entertainment.) Gotta hurry. There's an enforcement officer on my tail and this page could be deleted while you're reading it. Not because of any conspiracy to censor or suppress, but because my purpose has not been made clear and my style is a bit disconcerting. Because I decided to allow the poet in me access to this wiki. PoemWiki?

ConsiderationOfAlternatives

Frankly, I don't know of a simple alternative to "American" for citizens of the United States of America.

(There isn't one, nor does there need to be.)

CategoryPattern CategoryComparisons