JeffSnazz

What matters is the structure of the program per se. The entire concept of the happy or error path is a cultural phenomenon that requires explicit acknowledgment and rejection to solve (excepting languages that demand error-handling to function)

In my experience, these metaphors are introduced to meet time constraints and produce shitty software.

It's fine to talk about these metaphors as efficiency-accelerants, but they don't produce quality software. Not that there are many companies trying to do that these days.

That doesn't really excuse it, the news outlet has a responsibility to educate itself on basic matters (eg ML vs AI). Even if they have refused to do so before now.

Granted, I've not met many newsrooms with a serious conceptualization of "responsibility" beyond whatever bullshit they learned in school.

What is preventing Microsoft from fixing this?

> I don't think it's putting down other people you've worked with, holding yourself up as some paragon, OR belittling your own abilities. People tend to focus on the happy path. It's good to be aware of that and try to correct it. It doesn't require or imply thinking poorly of other people.

My experience definitely counters your own!

> The Windows Registry is far better than the the INI Hell(tm) that preceded it or the chaos that is assorted text files on Linux.

What excuse is there for the registry? Why are we stuck with 1980s solutions for 2024 problems? Why is there not simply some directory devoted per-app for configuration? How is this any better than "chaos that is assorted text files on Linux"? Of note—you can edit the linux configuration files with any editor you give a shit about, not just a one-off proprietary tool that obviously sucks ass.

I don't tend towards expressing personal comparisons "in public" since they seem both inevitable regardless of the situation and disrespectful to bring up as a topic of interest—not to mention potentially exposing you as incompetent yourself. I guess not everyone else feels the same way.

Hell, I'm free now! Everyone I've ever worked with sucks donkey-dick for not coding how I do!

> Military expenditure is more about being ready "just in case"

A rule of thumb I've found to be useful is that if you make a weapon you'll find a use for it. Being ready "just in case" is some of the most homicidal thought patterns in history.

A great counter-example is nukes, but I suspect it's just a matter of time until one either accidentally fires or our insane assumption that states are rational actors collapses.

> which is ridiculous when looking at the numbers

show me the numbers

> what I'm trying to point out is that having a first-class industrial base, with enough experts, well running supply-chains, and so on, is different from eclipsing China in straight to trash gadget output.

Absolutely true! But we're nowhere near able to do the latter, so what's the point in caring?

> social mobility

Unrelated, but this is a misnomer. The correct term would be "economic mobility". Social concerns are necessarily orthogonal (i.e. intersectional) to economic ones. I understand that social mobility is the common term but it's extremely disingenuous when it only intersects with social interests through economic interests.

Economic mobility is also strictly less interesting than wealth disparity—being able to move up the social ladder doesn't matter much if there's still self-aggrandizing ghouls controlling most of the economy and the market fails to represent the public.

> This is why I am extra vigilant, pendantic and strict when writing or reviewing code that handles exception and error paths.

I realize that this is a different person from you, but that's the attitude I am replying to.

> It's defensive programming.

This would necessarily presume applying the same attitude towards the happy path—you're describing something short of that.

Or to put it a different way: defensive programming necessarily implies a skepticism that you even are sure what the happy/error paths are!

> 3) as a way to earn their living. Here generative AI will make a difference in some art professions, but that doesn't seem to be the implied scenario of the comment I was replying to.

wat

> Most people would always face an uphill battle, producing mediocre art which only a few (likely with some personal connection) would appreciate.

Now there's no need to care about them at all!

This attitude seems a little silly to me—being "extra vigilant, pedantic and strict" about happy-path code would necessarily imply the same about "exception and error paths". Generally speaking, bugs mostly appear in a binary fashion and not in varying degrees—ie your code either reflect expected behavior or doesn't.

What's the windows development environment like? Have they excised the nightmare that is the windows registry yet?

> We stopped building highways, and switched from Moses' model of building enough roads to the "urbanist" model. Where we put in transit that makes it easy to go to the downtown ONLY.

I don't think we've switched out of the Moses model yet, or we only did in the last twenty years or so—the urbanist model is still idealistic in most cities. And frankly the urbanist model probably still won't be sufficient without public housing—I'm guessing a popular push for that is still about 10-20 years out.

Obviously, prioritizing driving around a city isn't going to do jack-shit for anyone who isn't trying to prioritize driving around a city. Public transit works well enough for most folks!

Fair enough.

Counterpoint: all open-source software. It's obvious what causes this behavior: for-profit software production is a cancer.

"How to Blow Up a Pipeline" by Andreas Malm, published by Verso Press in 2021, ISBN 1-839-76025-7

There's always the wealth-transfer option if you object to the ethics of property destruction!

The other options are even more homicidal/genocidal/apocalyptic for our civilization—you just aren't obligated to think about it today.

> there's no point in having all kinds of low-added-value industry in high-income places

The point is economic and social stability. If you don't value that over short-term economic efficiency (i.e. profits), of course, I can understand why you would be resistant to this line of thought.

Also, this betrays your belief that "high income places" have significant-added-value compared to low income places! I don't believe this is true, especially over the long term. This is an illusion formed from wealth-extraction.

> So that they can be replaced with cleaner power or just to bribe people into staying poor?

This is a straightforward wealth-transfer. It is up to the recipient to decide how they want to use it, but it should be noted this is attached to a statement to not build coal plants. Given the obvious correlation between energy production and economic productivity this should work out ok as well as delivering a long-overdue balancing of power among economically disparate peoples. The last effect is why I know this will not happen until it is too late (probably already).

> So that people starve to death?

That's coming regardless. Nonetheless, strategic targeting should avoid this.

...yea, too little, too late, in a highly ineffective manner. We're not going to consume our way out of climate change and that's all VCs are capable of doing. In fact our addiction to managing our society via consumption is very directly related to ongoing climate change.

You want to know what would actually look like addressing the problem? Paying poor countries to not build coal plants. Blowing up infrastructure. Etc. Reduction of emissions is the only thing that matters at this point.

Yea, if only the laws reflected what people actually want. "legitimate" is only as good as the laws that back it.

Better than caring about climate change!

(I believe venture capital is destroying our society.)

Boy you fellas sure know how to talk a guy up!

Legal, but wrong. There is no such thing as a ambiguous consent, and it's a fucking catastrophe that we've legislated ambiguous consent into our statute.

> Don't you ever use two screens?

My eyes can only look at one thing at a time.

> They can happen at the same time.

Ok, maybe I should have said "one of these depends on the other"

> This is something that takes generations to build, but can get lost, very quickly.

Sure, hence my assessment of 5 decades.

That's not really a trouble at all if you're used to dealing with mail

> The US has not lost industry.

Compared to China's absolutely staggering industrialization it has!