Letter to the Editor: Of Course There's Code in Your Code!

Dear Editor,

I nearly spilled my coffee reading Margaret Holloway's letter about "articles inside articles" causing "corruption in your data." Has she never heard of journalism? Or academic research? Or human conversation for that matter?

Margaret's comparison to "code in your code" being dangerous is utterly ridiculous. As a software developer of 15 years, let me be clear: ALL meaningful code contains other code. That's why we have functions, libraries, modules, and APIs. That's how we build complex systems! The notion that code referencing itself is inherently dangerous is like saying books shouldn't reference other books.

Her nephew's spreadsheet didn't crash because it referenced itself - it crashed because it was poorly designed with a circular reference. There's a difference between thoughtful meta-analysis and infinite loops.

Should we ban book reviews because they're "books about books"? Should we cancel literature classes because they analyze texts? Should newspapers stop covering news about newspapers? The absurdity is staggering.

The entire history of human progress is built on meta-content. We learn by analyzing, we grow by reflecting, we advance by building upon previous work. That's not "turtles all the way down" - that's civilization!

If Margaret wants to worry about something real, how about the actual technical problem: a content management system without proper validation? That's the issue, not journalists doing their jobs.

Perhaps instead of fearing "articles about articles," we should embrace the rich tapestry of discourse that makes our community vibrant. Just because your nephew broke Excel doesn't mean we should halt intellectual progress.

Sincerely, David Chen Software Engineer Phoenix, AZ