wsy

Nobody forces you to use Visual Studio Code, vim and emacs are still around.

As VSC is vastly successful, the analogy with manufacturing or gaming industry obviously does not hold: the software development 'industry' does not only take a good look at VSC, it has already accepted it as viable product.

So Microsoft is right in investing into great IDE features rather than reducing VSCs resource footprint.

I assume that similar arguments can be made for every popular Electron-based application.

No, as the case at hand shows. Actually, the prosecutors seem to have done an amazing job, given that usually top management manages to isolate themselves quite will from shady practices of their corporation.

Logically, one would disclose as soon as the value of disclosing is larger than the value of non-disclosing. I hope we can agree that after 5 years, the benefit users have due to non-disclosing is near-zero, because virtually nobody will still use the vulnerable version. At the same time, if after 5 years the security gap is still unknown to the public, the value for other security researchers will be very large. So, for mobile phone software vulnerabilities, it is definitely better to disclose after 5 years than not to disclose.

Given that before the patch the value of non-disclosing is certainly higher, and after five years the value of disclosing is certainly higher, there must be some point in time from where on disclosing is the right choice. Therefore, the only question is when to disclose, not if to disclose.

If you ask "which new species will evolve next", then my answer is that species is a human-made category system nature doesn't care about.

Specifically in the area of bacteria, you can constantly observe evolution (e.g., pathogens becoming resistant to certain antibiotics).

When to label the result of such an evolution process as "new species" is a very arbitrary decision.

Not the OP, but I think ad blockers do 'destroy ad tech'. Not literally, but as outcome, if everybody would use them.

To everybody who wants to tackle this challenge: start by considering how you would protect your 'new internet' against SPAM and SEO attacks.

For example, if you build on a decentralized network, ask yourself how you can prevent SEO companies from adding a huge amount of nodes to promote certain sites.

Voting, equal rights, courts, published laws and regulations, just to name a few.

Part of many personal issues is that you "cheat yourself", or simply avoid tough topics (psychoanalysts call that resistance). A good therapist uncovers these topics, helps you to face them, and supports you in finding ways to deal with them. It is hard for me to imagine how one could do that without a human counterpart.

The human is only a second-level control in case the confidence level is too low, or the system can't match the face with the passport photo. Also, the face is matched against the photo stored in the electronic passport, not against a central database. With respect to resolution etc., there are specifications in place about the quality of the passport photo. If your photo doesn't meet them, you will be asked to submit another photo for your passport application.

Soon, "running on Kubernetes" will be like "running on Linux", i.e., it won't add any operational complexity because you anyway have a Kubernetes cluster running.

So maybe you are not there yet, but for a future-oriented CI/CD platform with self-hosting option, using Kubernetes as basis is a good approach.

It reflects well on the individual taking the initiative and giving the money, it reflects badly on every country where this is needed to give disadvantaged children equal opportunity.

Every rich person in almost every country in the world can spend money to improve education for disadvantaged children. So I fail to see what makes the country looking good here.

My example is about supply and demand, in particular if you are willing to pay a higher price than the supplier asks. Fungible or not doesn't matter at all, the only relevant factor for the discussion is the difference in price you are willing to pay and the supplier is asking.

Indeed, all business relationships are about trust. But they also are about business. I know of no other business relationship where the supplier expects that the consumer will pay him fairly. So what is so special about an employment contract, compared to all other businesses?

If you read the company's web site, and are a curious and interested person, then you should pretty quickly stumble upon things you would like to know which aren't written there. So if you come up empty, either you are not interested in that company at all, or your curiosity is so easily satisfied that a plain web site can answer all your questions. Both is not a great sign for a prospective employee.

Even suppose you apply to a straightforward company with an extremely detailed web site, so that all your questions have been answered already, then this is still a test if you can meet social expectations. You are indeed expected to have questions, and if you don't even follow this simple convention because you think you know everything already, then your social skills are probably underdeveloped.

Finally, even you already know much about the company (e.g., about the most important product), asking about things you know already and comparing this with what you are told in the application talk will give you additional valuable information. Are they excited about their product? Are they exaggerating? Are they bored when answering? Do they know the basic information on their own web site? If you don't use the opportunity to extract as much information as you can, it's simply not smart.

I never compared you or anyone else to coffee, and I'm not an employer.

My post was about viewing the employer-employee relationship as a business relationship _when you are the employee_.

The funny thing is, you really need to be willing to leave. HR and management can sense that. If it is only meant as bluff, it won't work.

A work contract is a simple supplier-consumer relationship. You are the supplier, and you essentially set the rate at which you offer your work hours.

When someone suddenly offers you the double rate, you should not feel insulted, but you should realize that need to work on rate negotiation skills. Then, if both offers are equally fine with respect to non-compensation aspects, simply take the higher offer.

Suppose you are willing to pay $4 for a coffee, and the café around the corner sells it for $2. Would you voluntarily pay $4?

These women were much more into 'things' than 'people'.

It would be your turn now to explain which biological characteristics of men cause a 90/10 distribution in coders today, and do not apply to coding in the 1950s.

Yes, in the context of a program to educate women specifically about how to code.

Comparable to what? I mentioned programming in the 1950s because all traits labeled in this discussion as "boys/males biologically have more of it than girls/women" have been as important for programming in the 1950s as they are now, it seems to me

If there was a program exclusively for men to support male primary school teachers, it would be a really great initiative.

Male software developers are already well off, that's why a program "men can code" already sounds a bit ridiculous. But if any rich guy or girl thinks that this is a great idea, I wouldn't mind. Opening paths that were closed before is always good, regardless if for women or men.

I tried to explain it before, but would like to repeat here again. By opening paths for people who couldn't go there before, you will make life for the ones already traveling on that path less nice. This is not discrimination.

We are talking about software developers. In the 1950s, most programmers were female. It doesn't seem to be a profession where male biological characteristics are essential to be successful. All the examples you mentioned are non-essential for being a good software developer.

I agree that your hypothetical is possible. However, in a field where men occupy 90% of all positions, I still find it hard to imagine that they discriminate against their own group, i.e. treat their fellow males "in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people" (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/discrimi...)

It is an empirical experiment, it only expects you to acknowledge that girls will become interested in male-dominated professions when getting in contact with the right role models. That is a fact, good/bad does not apply.

Now, indeed it is an additional question if we should foster such career choices for girls. My personal opinion is: the people most talented for it should become pilots. By further opening this career for girls, the talent pool is increased. Consequently, the pilots who make it will be more talented on average.

Some boys who could have become pilots in the past will now not be able to, because now their talent isn't sufficient anymore. Why should they be protected from the competition?

And to get back to the original topic, we indeed do have a shortage of software developers, so having more female developers would also benefit our economy.

You are right, the selection/motivation mechanics for students are very different from the ones for faculty.

It seems that we mainly disagree about what constitutes discrimination. In my opinion, it is about opportunities. When 90% of the developer jobs are performed by men, it is really hard for me to see how men as a group can be disadvantaged.

It might be that the 91st man will not get a job because it is given to the 10th woman. But as 90 out of 100 jobs are given to men, it seems obvious to me that the group of men has all the opportunities they can wish for.

Note that every explicit action taken to even out a disadvantage will hit individuals in the group which is not disadvantaged. For example, if a prestigious university hands out scholarships to poor students, fewer students from rich families will be accepted as a result. This is not disadvantaging the rich applicants, it is reducing their advantage a little.

Yes, I think it is conceivable. But at the same time, I have a hard time explaining a 10%/90% distribution just with biological differences. It seems to me that the biological differences are too small to explain such a huge skew. In particular, because the gender distribution for programmers was very different in the 1940s/1950s. At the same time, the cultural biases seem so obvious to me, that I think acknowledging them too would be a better basis for further discussion.

Ok, then let me ask differently: if upper management in all companies were mostly women, and they would justify this fact with the argument that they are naturally better with people, would it be ok for you if these women would prefer other women for open manager positions?

Nobody argues against letting people make their own choices. This whole discussion is about equal opportunities. And it starts in kindergarten, not with grown-ups

I also see balancing out the disadvantages of children, teenagers, and young adults from poor families as way more important than balancing out the disadvantages of well-off women. I totally agree that we have a long road ahead of us in this respect, as the Stanford numbers clearly show.

Still, your claim that nobody cares about the poor is not justified. Also, there are many just causes, and we can work on all of them in parallel.

It's also only anecdotically, but I think your art history example doesn't fly: https://art.stanford.edu/people/faculty

There are so many initiatives out there supporting poor people. True, this one does not. But it seems a bit far-fetched to conclude from this one example that the poor are not supported at all.

I'm working in tech as a man, and spend more than half of my work time in talking to people. Actually, the higher you go up in your career, the more you will spend time interacting with people, and the less with things. So should we aim to keep male coders, and foster female tech managers, because that fits the biological tendencies?

I definitely would like to see more male kindergarten teachers, because the fact that there are no role models for boys in kindergarten and primary school also has detrimental effects on boys and girls.

Finally, let's first agree that society still has a big impact. Then, we can discuss if it's worthwhile to do something about it or not.