mtVessel

Oh, how I miss physical switches. It's not so much the lack of control, but why, oh why, does every action have to lag so horrendously?

What do you imagine all that "exploitation" was about? Which "power-hungry individuals" benefited, and how? Everyone ended up with loved ones sick and dead. The governors and mayors who implemented mandates did so knowing it would wreck their economies. Who would have benefited from exaggerating (or manufacturing) this crisis?

Something I've never understood is the requirement to have separate people doing the design and the implementation. How does that provide greater legal protection than one person doing the design, a lawyer signing off on it, and that same person doing the implementation?

Sorry, all I get out of this is

1. Buy domain names

2. ???

3. Profit

Chewing, not eating. The gum isn't really designed to be edible, just a medium to deliver nicotine.

2010, in the U.S.[1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

That's right. The theory of Roko's basilisk[1] does not specify which one will evolve into our next (glorious!) overlord, so best to be nice to all of them.

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk

The absolutely terrifying thing about Kaczynski's manifesto is that much of it is a rational, if utterly cynical, reaction to modernity. How a man who could think so clearly about the implications of our societal choices could conclude that the answer is to mail nail bombs to innocent people both bewilders and scares the bejesus out of me.

On balance, Adams definitely had the more relaxed, froody attitude towards it all.

That's such a pet peeve of mine. They don't know when I'm viewing the page. They only know when the request to render arrives. On longer timescales it's not as important, but still.

As of when?

If ever I saw a solution in search of a problem...

I agree, which is why I feel it's worthwhile to expand one's vocabulary, and expose yourself to a variety of communication styles. It's so subtle, it's hard to tell how much your choice of words influences your thinking, or how you process the world around you. More tools in the language toolbox can literally be mind-expanding.

Yes, of course, that's the better approach. But you can quickly get bogged down in a ton of extra parameters/environment vars/config scripts/whatever depending on how granular you want that control to be.

My laziness often precludes me from taking that approach until it's clear that it's warranted (but hopefully before I nuke anything critical).

When I write code that has multiple, interrelated parts, before I ever run it I step through it in the debugger to verify that my logic is correct, I didn't make any off-by-one errors, library calls return what I expect, etc.

I especially do this when the code has destructive side-effects (a file gets moved/deleted, a database get updated, whatever), so I can skip over any external actions I don't actually want to occur until I'm ready for a full test run.

Everybody does this, right? Right???

Also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

I wonder about the churn in the user community. If the community doesn't regularly refresh by attrition and new-joiners, then it must be aging. If that were the case, you'd expect to see quarter-life crises, mid-life crises, etc., reflected in the posts at predictable points. The pace is accelerated, of course, because we're on internet time.

I think I would understand was is meant by an "information service", but what exactly is an "information society service"? Such odd wording -- does it have a specific meaning?

The point of figure 4 is to admit that the neat step-to-step iterations in fig. 3 don't always happens. Sometimes testing reveals flaws that are bigger than the preceding coding step, and you have to back up to design or even requirements. But then once you back up, you still have to go through the remaining steps without skipping them.

Ex: Testing reveals a corner-case that was never accounted for in the design. You can't just re-code, you have to go back up and redesign, then code the new design, then retest.

Royce's recommendations to minimize these problems are a) more and better design, and b) more and better documentation

In contrast, the Agile approach is to try to slice the work into finer and finer tasks, so these same activities can span a few sprints. It works in the small, but loses the forest for the trees.

Read the original paper [1]. By definition, treating the steps as iterative is a recommended practice.

[1] http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970...

In my experience, many data engineers and data scientists know nothing about software engineering, unless they've had a previous life as a coder. Most data engineers who claim they know python really only know pandas, and many couldn't implement fizzbuzz without a library.

I'm a data guy, but I started out as a developer, and eventually choose to specialize in data systems. I'm continually amazed to find that this path is the exception.

Did I read this right? You took a full-time job as a "holiday" from the stresses of being your own boss? I guess the grass truly is always greener.

Well, bang goes that theory. Maybe it's the intangibility of computer files that is tripping them up.

Good points. Maybe educators need to consider updating their metaphors -- any of these could work. The real problem might be that computer files are intangible, abstract entities, making it harder for students to fully grok the model.

A very apt description. IDD (Igor-driven development) is probably the most common software engineering methodology in use, at least in the enterprise.

The file cabinet/folder/document metaphor was almost universally understood back then. How many of today's students have ever used a physical filing system?

Yes, but it's possible this generation has never done it. They've never used a paper-dominant system, never used a file cabinet or a physical folder. The metaphor falls apart when the source is no longer well-understood.

There are levels?

How quickly we forget the dark days before PDF print drivers.

Sorry, I disagree.

> If you need some sort of a sanity check, see how your friends and peers (that don't work in software) configure their systems

Everyone I know who doesn't work in tech "configures" their system by calling me and saying, "it doesn't work" (no other details provided), and asking if I can just fix it.

> I rarely meet this "average user"...who isn't interested in using non-standard software...doesn't care about privacy...will use only the easiest and cheapest solution

Consider yourself lucky, and consider the circles you travel in are may not be reflective of the majority of users.

Spoiler: Does not answer the question.