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This does seem to be the problem in my view attention is a 0-sum game on one social media networks, and it's easier to get attention by being divisive and combative and by spreading outrage than by trying to actually engage with people. The places become toxic as a result.

You can directly serialize and deserialize plain old Java objects to and from a native format and it's trivial to do so, but serializing to and from JSON is trickier because JSON is meant to represent dynamically typed data stored in maps and lists, but Java doesn't naturally store data in that manner. Java's manner is more obtuse, but if you could be certain that both the producer and the consumer of an object was going to be Java, creating a serialization format that could be transparently used would be a straightforward task. That is, so long as both the source and target of your serialization are in the same language, the problem is a lot simpler, and if your language happens to be closer Javascript (the source of JSON) it's also relatively simpler to write a JSON parser for it.

What's worse is that I couldn't really get away from caffiene altogether, things like chocolate contain caffiene as well as a surprising number of drinks which aren't required to advertise their caffine quantity. So I'd occasionally end up getting some caffiene by accident and because I had been avoiding it, I wouldn't have enough of a tolerance to deal with it. I'd have a drink that I didn't know contained caffiene and would suddenly find myself wired with my hands shaking uncontrollably. That hasn't happened since I starting drinking coffee on weekdays again. Having more caffiene than I meant to is still a problem, but not nearly as big a problem as it used to be.

Furthermore, Brooks doesn't actually argue that there is no way to tackle essential complexity when writing new software. What he says is that there is no single technique that will speed up the process of writing code across the board, that is, there is no silver bullet. However, he does make allowance for techniques that allow us to break up complex systems into smaller systems which can then be solved independently. He specifically mentions object oriented programming as a tool which makes it easier for programmers to write software as components but CPAN would have been a better example. He just doesn't allow that OOP by itself would allow for an order of magnitute improvement (something which I think that experience has born out.)

The author of this essay, points out a couple of operational tasks which involve programming were easier for them than they would have been 34 years ago because faster hardware noow exists and because software that already takes care of a subset of the problem now exists when it didn't before. Partially, this is confirmation of Brooks' idea that breaking down problems it the way to go long-term, but more critically, it's a failure to realize on the part of the author that they're speaking of productivity in their role as the user of a computer system whereas Brooks is speaking about productivity in designing new software products.

edit:

I think that the fundamental root of the essay's problem is that the author seems to have misssed what Brooks was referring to which he discussed accidental vs essential complexity. Brooks specifically pointed out that he was referencing Aristotle when he used those terms, and in this case essential doesn't mean unavoidable, but a part of the essential character of the problem itself. A more modern terminology would be intrinsic vs extrinsic. Complexity is extrinsic to programming if it comes from something other than the nature of the problem itself. If my computer is too slow to allow me to write a program, then that's probably not due the the nature of the program itself (except indirectly) and so represents a form of accidental complexity. Feature requirements however, represent essential complexity. You can manage essential complexity according to Brooks by dividing the problem up or avoiding altogether, but it's not something that will go away simply with better tooling or a better methodology, (unless that better tooling replaces software that you otherwise would have written.

Or, as I like frame the issue, there's a difference between a datastore and a database. Datastores/persistence engines store your data in manner that you can get it back later. Think of a key-value store for example. A database, however, assists you with the management of your data, including helping to ensure correctness of the data, tracking changes, among other things. For most systems lot of work is already managed in-database whether you like it or not.

Complaining about social, political, or economic trends is not authoritarianism.

Doing it from source also has the advantage that the package maintainers can customize the build process so that it works better with their system. Photoshoto and MS Word are closed source and proprietary, which creates issues if you want to package them.

Are you sure that's true? In medicine, apparently placebos have an effect even if you know that it's a placebo. I imagine that even if you know that it's theoretically useless, being hooked up to a machine that can read your vitals while lying would still be nerve wracking.

Nope, that was the only unfriendly thing I said. Just turn on showdead if you want to read it.

Not to mention that road building was a military practice done by the army to facility the moving of large armies. Travel time took priority.

Also, on the subject of maps of Rome that look like subway maps, the Peutingeriana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana is supposedly based on a Roman original and definitely feels like a subway map, prioritizing the connections between cities rather than their correct spatial distribution.

I'd suggest that you are probably dismissing political alignment too quickly, however. Even if they seem similar to you, the difference might seem important to them. Late Roman Christians fought literal wars over the presence of a letter 'i' in a single word, denoting a difference that probably wouldn't seem all that important to someone who wasn't a Christian, for instance.

Bear in mind that tripletao's thesis is clearly that the NY article is a bad faith essay. That's his conclusion, not his premise.

He might at some later date decide that he needs to erase his iInternet presence entirely, but I don't think that's his current game.

But that's really a distraction from the core issue. The thing about at-will employment is the it presumes that the employment relationship is largely between the employer and the employee. That assumption breaks down in the face of an Internet mob. This is part of the reason why the proof standard for how you treat complete strangers is different than the proof standard for how you treat people you know, including employees.

Furthermore, in the theory that underpins American capitalism, employment is an economic relationship. For example, if a burger flipper is sufficiently bad at flipping burgers, he shouldn't be a burger flipper, because her status as a burger flipper is predicated on her ability to do that job. Even in the most socialist systems that I'm aware of, basic competence is considered a prerequisite for holding a job. Moral qualities are usually considered less important unless they impact the job. In the American system, people are theoretically hired and fired primarily based on their ability to do their job, but Internet mobs change this equation thoroughly. Now, your political opinions affect your employability as well.

I think that this has profound implications for democracy.