antris

Sure, you could make a fix for this specific case, but the problem mentioned in the blog post is not even close to the only problem of non-ASCII characters. In theory, yes, we could make a language and a full suite of tooling that would play nice with non-ASCII characters. But it's not like the whole non English speaking world is waiting for this to happen. People code in English even in teams where everyone speaks Finnish. Nobody even questions it, because it's so obvious that all code should be in English and ASCII. Everyone has shot their foot, putting in non-ASCII characters in the source code at some point of their career, if they have ever dared to try. That's how the reality is, and at the same time I hear people saying that the existence of those Finnish programmers means we have to have Unicode in source code.

>That's not what I said at all. I don't see how you came to this conclusion.

I didn't say you said it. I said that's how it (probably accidentally) comes across when you talk about something so carelessly. Non English speakers care about compatibility and security and take those seriously, therefore we pretty much always write code in English and ASCII.

My native language has non-ASCII characters and I do not expect nor do I want to be able to type them outside string literals. Specifically for the reasons stated in the blog post, among others. Writing in my native language is far, far down in the list of priorities as a professional coder, when security / compatibility are there too. Suggesting that non-native English speakers have to be able to code in their native language also would suggest that non-native coders do not take security / compatibility seriously, which would mean that they are unprofessional. I'm pretty sure that it's not your intention to suggest that, but that's kind of how it comes across. With all the problems eliminated by the use of English and ASCII, it would strike me as amateurish to not use English and ASCII wherever possible.

No one is claiming that there's a piece of code that detects a Twitter user being a right-wing politician and then showing it to more users.

Whether the bias is deliberate or not, it's still a bias. Right wing gets their message amplified more than the left.

Or, it's just the regular old way capitalism works. Any sufficiently large company will start to vertically integrate to maximize their profits. If not Apple / Google, it could have been Intel / Qualcomm who started vertically integrating by offering their own laptops, phones, OSes and App Stores.

The big fish eats the small ones. That's capitalism 101.

Also, do you really expect these glasses to somehow disable themselves when they're in a non-public setting? The moment these kinds of glasses hit the market, some people will record pretty much anything they want, anywhere they like and nobody will know its happening.

This already is happening with phones to an extent. Many non-public spaces where photography is banned and privacy is expected are having problems with enforcing it. These kinds of spy glasses would make the problem even worse. At least you can collect peoples phones and cameras at the entrance, or see when they are being used inappropriately and throw them out. If cameras enter eyewear, then you cannot have a private space without collecting all eyewear too. And if you allow people to enter with eyewear, you have no idea when they are taking pictures, which makes the ban completely unenforceable.

I have no problem with these devices in specialty professional fields, but an invisible camera constantly directed out and controlled by individuals who I do not know at every corner in society sounds like a dystopia. The "people taking out their phones in public whenever something happens, and even when not" is bad enough, but at least I am aware that someones taking pictures.

The exact kind of know-it-all attitude I was talking about. Thanks for the demonstration :)

This is the kind of simple and effective solution that programmers who think they know everything would scoff at.

Love it.

Covid misinformation currently kills people every day. And I have relatives who are on the clock, waiting if they are going to end up on ICU. Because some scumbags on the internet decided to bank on misinformation and tell them that the covid vaccine is dangerous.

It would help if someone defined what constitutes "using functional programming".

I mean, this is functional programming:

   function add(a, b) { return a + b }

Which often isn't the case.

Companies have lots of priorities that have nothing to do with end users at all. For example:

- it does not matter how good your product is, if your company dies because there's a competitor that does not need to make profit and can temporarily offer their services for free, until your company is driven out of the market

- dark patterns are well documented examples how working directly against good user experience can increase profits

- lobbying politicians to drive out competition is extremely profitable, and does not take interests of the userbase into account at all

There are probably numerous other, obvious examples how capitalism disincentivises companies from serving their customers well, but instead incentivizes gaming the system.

The correlation between user experience and profitability is shaky at best. One could argue that user experience has almost nothing to with how businesses operate.

I really wish anti-capitalist sentiment would grow louder in IT. This is pretty much capitalist critique 101. Companies chasing profit are often blind not only to the negative effects of their businesses, but even to the needs of their customers.

It's extremely difficult for companies to stay content in their current business model without growing. If the company is not willing to be sold to a larger company, a larger company (often FAANG) will pump nearly limitless capital into building a free competitor that will eat your userbase. This happens over and over again, so it's not very practical to just say "companies should stay where they are good at". The system disincentivizes this, and companies staying still will always get knocked down.

We need a systemic change.

Now the internet, and increasingly mobile internet is becoming the default way of accessing almost any service, so having a phone that works for you is something that people are ready to pay for. You end up using it so much, that people feel like it's not a waste of money.

How long did you have to think to produce that thought? Or did it just pop into your head instantly?

The point is, you cannot think of an upcoming thought, before you have it in your head. Otherwise you would be seeing into the future.

What you are talking about in your comment is reaching a conclusion based on previous thoughts. Yes, often we link our thoughts together into a narrative or a conclusion after we've had the thoughts, but the thoughts themselves? Those seem to come out of nowhere.

Which has already happened for every generation for the past few centuries. Peoples lifestyles change all the time. There's no need to ask, it is an inevitable thing that happens, you can't freeze time.

Wtf? Nearly every human has personal transportation built in. It's called having legs.

>you're going to end up asking humanity to give up much the lifestyle it's grown accustomed to over the last 150 years.

Which is a totally reasonable ask considering the climate.

But these problems are way, way larger than one single company. Are we really expecting Apple as a company within the global capitalist system to just isolate itself from the network and do everything themselves without relying on anyone anywhere? At that point no company in the world is antifragile, and never can be if it works within the capitalist system or relies on any sort of co-operation between people.

Or, if I am wrong, and indeed antifragile means immortal then I don't know why we are talking about antifragility rather than whether Apple is a company that cannot be affected negatively no matter what happens in the world. I'd also like to know why is there a need for a new synonym for immortality.