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Comment by shevy-java | Hacker News Reader

I imagine Gaza may currently be one of the most difficult environments to write software code in. I happily admit that I would not be able to be productive in such an environment - my environment here in Europe is really quite sheltered (guess this also depends on where one lives; areas close to Russia may not feel as comfortable as in central Europe or Western Europe). The only distraction I have here is youtube music playing in the background - that's about it. My brain wouldn't be able to operate well in any high risk high danger environment or any non-standard environment in general.

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I taught myself to write an original software application in JavaScript while living in Afghanistan about 16 years ago.

I suspect Gaza is maybe 10x, or much more, challenging environment. I often didn’t have access to internet, but in Gaza I suspect electricity is universally hard to find. I was only out of pocket on electricity while waiting for flights, which is a lot more time than you would imagine. I also had reliable access to food and water even when my travel and living situation was completely mysterious.

Based on my own experiences danger is far less distracting than hunger and fatigue. You can generally get through danger and still be interested in learning, but it’s hard to learn if your brain doesn’t have the rest and resources it needs.

Even in Ukraine it's quite possible to code. I worked at Google with people who stayed in Ukraine after Russia started the war. I can't say they were unaffected - there was stuff like meetings interrupted by missile alerts - but they managed to do normal work despite the ongoing war.

40% of the bombing victims in Gaza are under 10 years old

https://msf.org.uk/article/gaza-msf-survey-shows-almost-half...

Comparing it to the war in Ukraine ("Even in Ukraine") isn't really helpful or informative, to understand the condition under which Palestinians are surviving.

The website you linked to specifies a subtly different thing from what you’re asserting:

>”Forty-eight percent of the people who died from blast injuries among our colleagues' households were children and 40 percent were under 10 years old.”

That is quite different from saying that “ 40% of the bombing victims in Gaza are under 10 years old”.

Can you clarify the difference between "bombing victims" and "people who died from blast injuries"? I'm not seeing it.

It says the dataset is 'colleague's households' which might be different from all of gaza.

I'd assume that "victims" includes injured, not just killed.

The "among our colleagues' households" is the key part. It's not generalizable to the whole of Gaza.

This is really splitting hairs, but i think it's:

48% of bombing victims/people who died from blast injury are children

of those children 40% were under 10 years of age

so .48 * .4 = 0.192 meaning roughly 20% of bomb deaths were under 10.

But like if you're having this conversation you've already lost. There's no way to frame it so it's not horrific.

The text does not say "of those children", the text says that 48% of the whole are children, and 40% are under 10 years. I agree it's a little ambiguous, but I read that as meaning that 40% of the total bombing victims were under 10 years.

> Comparing it to the war in Ukraine ("Even in Ukraine") isn't really helpful or informative

Why not?

40% of bombing victims in Gaza are under 10. What fraction of the population is? How does that compare to Ukraine’s demographic and bombing victim distributions?

These are valid questions for contextualising a conflict.

Unfortunately the reality in Gaza is way more severe than the reality in Ukraine in nearly every conceivable metric: deaths, famine, buildings destroyed, farms, schools, hospitals, journalists killed, shortages (by blockade) of essential goods...

And Ukraine is a massive war with over a million casualties, so imagine that.

Just the fact that there is now a whole generation of children who have missed over two years of school.

One child missing two years of school is already a tragedy. A whole generation missing school, starving, under constant risk of violence and death, this is the first thing I think of when I think of Gaza.

I'm not even a Palestine "supporter" but I will not longer support the state of Israel for any reason, even if the "good guys" come to power.

a lot of these kids are missing limbs, it breaks my heart

How is it more severe if the Ukraine war resulted in over a million casualties?

Actually the answer is almost 40%. Gaza had a young and fast growing (one of the fastest in the world) population before the war. Some estimates even indicate their population has continued to grow (though at a very reduced rate) even during, but no reliable statistics have been collected.

The majority of deaths in Gaza are women and children. Nearly 70%.[1] The reason we talk about "women and children" in Gaza is because Israel can accuse any adult man of being a militant. Statistics from Ukraine are harder to get but according to the OHCR,[2] we know that 39% of non-combatant casualties are women and less than 5% are children. What percent of total deaths are civilians is the hard part, but in Donbas about 25% of casualties were civilian.[3]

  (.39 + .05) * .25 = .11

So we have a 70% women/children rate vs about a 11% (very very roughly calculated) women/children rate. Yes the nature of these conflicts are extremely different.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5wel11pgdo

[2] https://www.ohchr.org/en/meeting-summaries/2023/07/ukraine-c...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...

> So we have a 70% women/children rate vs about a 11% (very very roughly calculated) women/children rate

Sure. This is how "comparing it to the war in Ukraine" is both helpful and informative.

I have a couple of programmers currently in ukraine. Unless you are in a war zone there is low risk and life is mostly normal. Only risk right now is no electricity or getting snatched on the street to be sent to war.

I had a colleague in Ukraine and one day we joined the daily meeting and the team lead announced that guy is detained by that Ukranian org that abducts people. I never heard from him again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_Center_of_Recruitm...

> I happily admit that I would not be able to be productive in such an environment

No shit. 80%+ percent of the country is rubble.

To be more precise — in the UN's analysis using satellite imagery they estimated 81% to 84% of all buildings have been damaged or destroyed as of October 2025. That percentage also includes 90% of all residential buildings

https://theconversation.com/--267431

it's a nitpick, but country is Palestine, and Gaza is part of it

>I imagine Gaza may currently be one of the most difficult environments to write software code in.

That you think this says a lot about our news environment. I can think of a dozen places in Africa.

Burundi has entered the chat. Strange you're getting downvoted.

Is there anywhere worse than Yemen?

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