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In my experience it depends on the nature of that client. A drawback to having a dominant client is that they have a lot more leverage in roadmap, prioritisation, and product fit. That can seriously impact the internal coherence and maintainability of the product. Too many bits of business logic lodges in weird places because the client didn't want to write custom behaviours, and no time to tidy it up because they're always demanding their next wishlist feature to be deployed yesterday.

Maybe I misunderstood, but it seemed to me that the smoking example was evidence for your claim:

> colloquially, people say something is bad when they mean worse than the alternative [as opposed to absolutely bad]

I don't think it does support that claim, for the reasons I've given.

Fine it has some cognitive benefits, but in terms of physical health it's absurdly net negative. Long term smokers have a huge likelihood of dying from a smoking-related illness. That's what people mean when they say it's bad... they're not internally comparing it to caffeine.

Sparkling water has a significantly lower ph than still water.

> Formula is trying to replace something that evolution has come up with...

Sure but the vast majority of what people use and consume is a replacement for what "evolution has come up with". That doesn't inherently make it "bad".

LLMs require massive datasets and massively parallel algorithms for processing them.

I'm not convinced by the smoking vs caffeine analogy. Smoking has no physical upside and in the long-term is extremely detrimental to health.

The formula vs breast milk feels more comparable to something like still vs sparkling water. You need to get your fluids from one or the other. Sparkling is arguably marginally worse for your tooth enamel than still. Yet I don't hear people saying that sparkling water is "bad" for you.

Achievement can be good. But an upbringing which heavily idolises achievement can well be problematic, and probably isn't worth it. And your arguments to the contrary feel epistemically circular. You're using your belief that achievement is good to evaluate whether your upbringing was good, but that belief was itself installed by the upbringing, so it can't logically function as independent confirmation

But to answer your question, yes, there are serious moral frameworks in which achievement (of the sort you mean) is neutral or even undesirable. From a Buddhist or Stoic standpoint, being attached to material achievement is as a source of suffering. For hedonists, achievement is only good insofar as it produces happiness. In care ethics, relationships matter much more than accomplishment. All of which is to say that it's not a self-evident truth that achievement is inherently good.

I'm not saying that any value judgement is a bad thing. (Although such a statement would be amusingly ironic). I'm saying that you're viewing your upbringing strictly through the lens it handed you.

As far as I can make out, your argument goes like this:

Strict parenting is good because it produces high achievers. I think achievement is good because I was conditioned to think it was good. I was conditioned to think it was good as a result of strict parenting.

Effectively: strict parenting is good because I was strictly parented.

> when you do work hard and you are satisfied with yourself

Ime if you constantly need to prove yourself then you rarely feel this; when you do, the feeling is ephemeral.

> achieving something to make your dead parents happy is better than achieving nothing at all

This feels circular. It assumes a value judgement about achievement which stems from your upbringing.

> have high expectations of them and are gravely, mortally disappointed if they let us down

That sounds like a recipe for long-term psychological complexes. I know plenty of high-achievers that don't constantly feel like they have to prove themselves. And I wish I didn't have to work so hard to challenge that feeling in myself.

> A cursed problem, in his definition, is an unsolvable design problem rooted in a conflict between two promises that can’t coexist. You made both promises, on purpose, and they contradict each other, and no amount of clever tuning gets you out. You can only cut through it and give something up.

> His example is a free-for-all fighting game. You promised players a test of combat skill, and you promised them a game worth winning. But the way you win a free-for-all is politics — alliances, betrayal, ganging up on the best player — so the two promises eat each other. You can’t fix it with a patch. You can only decide which promise to sacrifice.

Is anyone else confused about this? I'm not sure exactly how these promises contradict. Is the idea that politics makes a game less "worth winning"?

I put bad in quotes because you're claiming something is absolutely bad, but all your points are about how it is relatively worse than breast milk (which is a pretty high bar).

Studies on the long-term health impacts of breast vs formula milk are difficult to take anything away from. They're often observational rather than interventional, and it's hard to separate the type of milk from the feeding method. For example, a baby may benefit from the "skin to skin" aspect of breast feeding, but you could replicate this with a niche formula feeding method.

I don't think we really know how much worse formula is for babies than breast milk. It's probably that there's an increased risk in early infections. But in developed countries with good maternity guidance, the actual absolute risks of infections and SIDS are very low with either breast or formula.

Mathematics also strives for correctness before aesthetics, but is often considered an art. Programming is little different imo.

When you have scoured your deepest understanding for hours - or days - in order to rewrite a function so that it is easier to read, shorter, more correct, and a thoughtful expression of your own insights and understanding; then you will see how programming can be art.

It may be less nutrient-dense than breast milk, but that doesn't make it "bad"

> Vegetable oil is often the #1 ingredient and is not even close to having the same density as breast milk

Density of what?

No, you're still missing the point. "Remarkable" and "incredible" are not objective ways to describe something.

Is it really free, open and uncensored if it suspends journalists for covering the ElonJet story, and artificially bumps Elon's own tweets?

It sounds like Asahi are holding themselves to a higher standard;hey won't violate copyright even if no one can prove it.

Remarkable, perhaps? I'd hesitate to use "incredible" because his background privilege and wealth makes it all... well, more credible; and using such an unalloyed, positive word feels wrong given the costs to his relationships and his promotions of far-right groups and conspiracy theories. His path is unique, but it's believable and nuanced.

That's beside the point though, which is that you can't say something being "incredible" is a fact. It's a subjective judgement.

I suspect the US allows/ignores some nuclear programs if they think it's in their geopolitical interest. India is a counter-balance to China and Russia. Pakistan is a counter-balance to India. Keeping everyone armed to the teeth and on their toes is better for the US than forming blocs.

The very page you linked states that it's recognised as an empirical phenomenon by Adam Smith, who predates Marx.

Giving concrete examples of what work goes into the job would be more persuasive than ranting about how hard it is.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. That he's launched so many rockets to orbit is a fact. That this is an "incredible achievement" is a subjective interpretation.

The 1yo stage is surprisingly convenient for that sort of stuff. At ages 2-4 they're much more mobile and experimental and harder to watch. Then from 4 or 5 upwards they're at school a lot and starting to lose interest in what their parents want to do.

Also, the first 18 months establish a good deal of a person's attachment security, connection to parents, and emotional intelligence. The brain continues to be flexible for some time, but gradually becomes harder to rewire.

You both have valid points.

One one hand, "implicit memory" [0] begins at birth and being around one's father building impressive things is a huge bonding experience. Research seems to say that even at 1yo these things imprint on our brains.

On the other hand, it shouldn't get to a point where a 1yo is crawling into freshly laid concrete. There are safer ways to do it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_memory

"Incredible" is a subjective word. It describes how one feels about his achievements. It also has a strong connotation of positivity (you don't usually hear people say that the Holocaust was an incredible achievement despite the unique amount of planning and effort that went into it). This is not in the realm of facts.

It could be factual to say "I find his achievements incredible" or "many people find his achievements incredible". But not "he has achieved incredible things".

> there are only two things universities need to change to be perfect at preparing founders: they need to make students feel that starting a startup is something they can do, and they need to encourage them to work on their own projects

Don't many universities already do something like this? Pretty sure we had projects where you could either select a project template or propose your own.

> Until you've seen some founders in real life, you tend to think that starting startups is something done by other people. Seeing them pops that bubble.

I've met a few founders and find that they have a totally different personality to me. Extremely self-assured, decisive, much more focused on the high-level than the low. Often from wealthy or privileged backgrounds where taking risks is... well, less risky.

I would be the same way if either: I didn't have dependents and heavy responsibilities, or: I had enough in savings to last a few years without income. I'm fascinated to see where software engineering is going to go, but I can't be comfortable about a threat to my ability to pay my mortgage and give my family a decent life.

> there has been little progress or few new fields in the past 10 years or so in business that ask for implementation of new algorithms

Transit routing is still moving fast in this area. We're still figuring out the best ways to return thousands-by-thousands transit time matrices with query-time truck dimensions and traffic updates. It can't be the only field!

> It's completely missed that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part

There's truth to this but it's an overstatement as it stands. For example, GDPR rules are less strict for small companies.

> 1) “We were” (sorry I had to do it).

He might be from around London