anthonygd

> As a result, the industry shifted to encouraging the use of "real" programming languages for everything, even the simplest systems, because the greater up-front costs were saved many times over by having a sane story for long-term maintenance and improvement.

That makes a certain amount of sense; I know I've sworn at insane Excel spreadsheets that have lived far longer than they should have.

The thing I'd argue is that the vast majority of business tools are only useful for very few people for a very short period of time. Sometimes they are never useful. Doing those in a "real" language can have an ROI of centuries (or never), so just never get automated or tried. There's a very important place for cheap prototyping and if non-developers can do it that's even better.

Everyone thinks their thoughts are their own. Most people are wrong. That's the nature of being social creatures.

Well, obviously it's not just a US centric viewpoint. It's Chinese also.

I think the point is they say even when it's not beta, it still won't be the real thing, i.e. released version is still level 2. "FSD" is purely marketing.

It's tough when so many shallow dismissive articles show up.

That's an entirely circular argument and doesn't prove anything about Uncle Bob.

Question: Why should I listen to Uncle Bob? Answer: Because he wrote a book telling you what to do.

He's got some un-controversially good opinions but he also has some opinions that are just plain stupid. Since his opinions don't compile and aren't testable, it's not easy to rate their over all value.

> Why is voluntary segregation a bad thing?

Because everyone who doesn't like the consequences of their decisions will blame everyone else. They might even be right, but it could/would increase conflict. Boundaries are frequently decided via violence.

> Today "split the difference" comes in the form of symbolic activities like the ones mentioned here in the context of California where saying that a certain population is "15% white" could well mean that it is "70% asian", not "70% black". (e.g. even in the American South today it seems that white people are taking their kids out of the public schools to get them away from asians, not to get them away from blacks) Asians break the "race theory" enshrined in American law by being both successful (higher than average income) and discriminated against (whites and blacks who graduate Harvard get a ticket to the the elite, asians get a ticket to apply to med school)

Do you have any references for this? I'm aware of the Harvard lawsuit but I haven't really seen any research about widespread discrimination against Asians. I'm not saying it isn't there, just that I don't know anything about it or its scope.

I once under estimated how much cash I needed in Germany. The easiest way I could find to fix that was to use WU to send myself cash. It was far easier than dealing with my own bank to fix the ATM card. Bitcoin was a non-starter.

I just don't get the Western Union hate.

I just finished The Three Body Problem. It's the best science fiction I've read in a very long time. It is a trilogy so it'll take some time, but completely worth it.

You're completely correct but I'm not sure that negates the point.

What a person's specific religion is isn't interesting, just like their hobbies aren't interesting. They just don't say a lot about the person.

What _might_ be interesting, is if you only have one interest in life. e.g. Bubba Blue (from Forrest Gump) isn't someone I'd want to spend a lot of time with, even though I like shrimp.

I think the poster's point is that people are reducing themselves to 0 or 1. That's essentially the problem with identity politics, people are complicated with many facets; why would you latch on to 1 identifying trait?

I think you made a bit of a strawman there.

> If you have some academic training, try to stay informed about current affairs and participate in politics, people will demonize you for engaging in “political hobbyism”.

The article isn't demonizing people who stay informed and participate in politics. It's saying that staying informed != participating in politics. Which seems fair and isn't excluding anyone. If you just read the articles and chat with friends about politics, you are not _participating_ in politics.

"Political hobbyism" feels a bit like the style of virtue signaling that's ridiculed so much. You can show how smart you are, you can have all the most virtuous opinions but let's not pretend you're actually contributing.

In case you're serious: yes I have read the article.

Of course a one off non-peer reviewed piece isn't proof of anything but it does reference interesting data.

Heart disease, influenza, and pneumonia really are things that kill every year, so why don't you think they can be statistically analyzed? This year is different than previous years, but it seems odd if you're suggesting Covid is beneficial for heart disease.

I don't see why a large family would be an excuse. You need a large vehicle because you chose to need a large vehicle?

Slack is async in the same way phone calls are async. You absolutely don't have to respond immediately on a phone call or on slack, the technology really doesn't care.

They are both used conversationally though and that means they follow the social conventions around conversations.

Personally the more I use WSL the less inclined I am to ever use either direct Linux or MacOS again. Of course, that's WSL 2, there are definitely rough edges on WSL 1.

I really hope this trend for imperative titles ends soon.

I'm happy the author found terms that line up with their goals/interests. If they want to share their thought process, that's interesting as well.

If they tell me to comply with their opinion (which I disagree with), it moves from interesting to irritating. Sure, it's an emotional reaction but that's a giant part of communication.

FWIW - here's my complaint: if your code isn't in support of a product (or R&D for a product) it's a weekend play project. I don't mean that to be any more condescending than the "elegant code is the end" bit. As stated those Product/Infrastructure terms don't apply to how I think about roles and are just not useful. "Frontend"/"backend" aren't remotely complete, but they are fairly accurate and useful.

That doesn't imply that everything Apple does is good, it states that in this case Apple is doing good.

For a wildly different perspective: now that MS introduced WSL2 I no longer use pure Linux machines. Windows 10 + WSL2 is just quicker and more stable for me. I'm not saying it's perfect but I don't have video/audio/cam driver issues anymore.

I spend most of my time running VS Code and Terminal so results may vary of course. Started playing with the new Edge too...

I've been pretty pleased with MS recently. They're definitely not the crap factory they were when I was in school.

Did you just say most people are not educated enough to have free speech?

Using labels to short circuit debate works both ways equally well.

13. The blanket term "accountability" implies some sort of clear, reasoned collection of guidelines. The reality is that there is little consensus on public standards. If there were a real level of consensus this wouldn't be a topic.

14. Calling your mob a movement doesn't change it's nature. Movement is every bit as loaded of a term as culture.

15. That looks a lot like "If you disagree it's because you're a Victorian racist". From what I've seen, the vocals sides of this are both affluent whites claiming to have the moral high road.

Depends how you quantify privilege. I've seen a few convincing arguments that, for men at least, height is a better predictor of success than intelligence.

It's the "blatantly" part of that sentence which is causing backlash. It's extremely subjective. What's blatantly racist in your opinion could be blatantly anti-racist to someone else.

No. Congress writes laws but they're supposed to be careful because the Supreme Court interprets.

They'll essentially have to create a new bill (or tack this on to something else going through) and go through the full process, i.e. get senate approval and the presidential signature.

> Surely as a society we shouldn’t continue to naively assume that police are “responsible” like we’ve assumed in the past?

Of course we shouldn't assume it, but we absolutely should require it.

Uncertainty is a core part of policing which can't be removed.

In an educational setting you need to be clear whether you're talking about Computer _Science_, _Engineering_ or trade. There is value in all 3 approaches but don't make the mistake of thinking they're all the same.

Using the term "foundational language" makes me think Science, which has very little overlap with the trade approach. An engineering approach stands somewhere in between, but still has very different objectives than science.

While it might feel nice to give Facebook all the credit(/blame) it's just way too simple of a explanation. Ads have been effective for a long time regardless of the type of media. There were complaints about running presidential campaign ads during I Love Lucy in the 1950's.

Whenever I see one of these blame Facebook articles, I always think of what it's saying about the American public. If a significant number of people think of Facebook as a reputable source of truth, there really isn't much hope for the nation. Without an educated population capable of critical thinking there can't be a real democracy (or even a representative democracy).

> Also, I should mention that if someone wanted to cheat, they wouldn't plagiarize; they would simply get someone to write a paper for them. This service is far, far more common that you would believe.

When I was in school students did plagiarize a lot. It went out of style as software was introduced. I distinctly remember the panic'ed buzz as students discovered the teacher (or professor) was using detection software. The services you're talking about are common precisely because of plagiarism detection software.

I'm not disagreeing with your points about morality of it though, just the efficacy.

I haven't seen evidence the US didn't take the lock downs seriously. The goal initially was to flatten the curve aka. reduce/delay the load on hospitals. It was successful to the point hospitals had plenty ICU capacity and they had to layoff staff. Unfortunately there was no step 2 for the lockdowns.

It's been months now since epidemiologists acknowledged the US could not eradicate COVID-19 without a vaccine. I don't think any large country has been able to (China might be close?). Economists have all been clear that we can't lock down for another year.

There simply is no fight to have at this point. Mitigating damage is the only option.