"This Post Is Not About Python" seems to suggest the fans are acting irrationally by letting their political brain take over. Failure to "calmly evaluate the downsides of your favorite options because you see them as attacks on the target of your fandom" is a mistake on their part that only hurts them. I think this understates the fans' case. When they see criticism of their favorite platform as an attack, it is because it is an attack in the war over network effects. Losing this war doesn't just deprive your platform of the benefits of popularity; it actively harms it by diverting shared resources.

I'll quote "Technology Holy Wars are Coordination Problems": [1]

> The enduring phenomenon of holy wars in computing, such as the bitterness around the prolonged Python 2 to Python 3 migration, is not due to mere pettiness or love of conflict, but because they are a coordination problem: the problem is not getting everyone to make a good decision, but making the same decision.

I agree that you can make better software engineering decisions if you avoid thinking like a fan and that a poor choice of language can fail a project from the start. In light of what is at stake, though, "engineers should never be fans" is an unrealistic call for peace. It reminds me of this: [2]

> There’s a passage in the Principia Discordia where Malaclypse complains to the Goddess about the evils of human society. “Everyone is hurting each other, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war.”

> The Goddess answers: “What is the matter with that, if it’s what you want to do?”

> Malaclypse: “But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it!”

> Goddess: “Oh. Well, then stop.”

[1] https://gwern.net/holy-war

[2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/