irishloop

Too many abstractions are bad. Too many code duplication is bad.

Part of being a good engineer is finding the right balance.

I know engineers who would gladly duplicate code all over the code base to avoid creating a new abstraction.

I know engineers who create polymorphic abstractions for a single caller with a very obvious set of parameters.

So much of wisdom is in finding balance and not being dogmatic about rules.

I think there are a few things that make it "worthy" of literary consideration:

1. Read a straight horror story, it's quite a surprising twist at the end

2. A critique on the senselessness of following tradition just for the sake of it -- the way a society can just go along with something without really understanding why

3. The banality of evil, and how it can often look like something totally ordinary, rather than some nefarious demon

I loved it when I first read it -- it truly shocked it in middle school and I still have a visceral feeling when thinking about it many years later

with a pre-built you're at the very least paying for someone to assemble it for you, so it's always going to be more expensive as a baseline

Except isn't it possible that pre-built companies actually get better deals on hardware bought in bulk, and therefore could offset the labor costs with cheaper materials?

Ruby has "undoubtedly" been dead for at least a decade now, or so I've heard. Glad to hear Python is undoubtedly joining the party.

Surely nothing has ever done wrong with this limitless source of clean energy to give people pause? There's no uninhabitable areas of the Earth due to this?

Looking through this list makes me feel as if I am not a terribly good programmer, as these all feel well beyond my capabilities.

Or maybe their actual problems are caused by automation, tax cuts on the rich, and a lack of social safety net that lets people live in dignity, but the media they consume mostly blames immigration and crime.

Political "reality" is rarely objective.

Yes. But also, all technologies will eventually be used as weapons. And so its important for us to understand how they can be weaponized and to consider the social cost of that weaponization.

If you don't own your infra, you are dependent.

You're dependent regardless. You are dependent on your service provider, your hardware, your UPS battery backup, your RAID drives being easily replaced, your backups.

It reminds me of people who raise their own chickens and think they're living off the grid. But they need the materials to build the coop, the chicken feed, fencing, etc.

Do you think there's a way to train focus?

I think I'm at a stage in my life where I can accept that I am not, nor will I ever be, one of the best programmers

I think we exist to bring new things into existence. If you ask me, to the extent there is a meaning of life, that’s it. We exist to create. It lights us up in a way nothing else does, putting something new into our world—and in doing so, fundamentally changing it, in whatever way, however big or small.

I find this a rather strange, limited way of looking at our existence.

I believe there is joy in creating. I believe there is joy in just spending time with the people you love. I believe there is joy in exploring new places, people, ideas. I believe there is joy in being still and present.

We are always looking for some singular, defining thing in our lives. What does it all mean. It has to be for something.

But I disagree. It doesn't have to be for anything. It's enough to just do what brings you joy, to evolve and change, to treat others in kindness. The rest is just personal preferences.

"Wherever you go, there you are"

No amount of fame or success will alter who you truly are inside. If anything, laying your happiness at the foot of external validation from others in the form of critical success or fame is a poisoned apple.

There are plenty of examples of wildly successful people unable to manage their own demons -- see Kurt Cobain or Anthony Bourdain.

Nihilism can take many forms and is not necessarily indicative of a optimistic or pessimistic worldview

Join my startup, where we harness the power of HackerNews arguing about 10x engineers into a new form of renewable energy

Yeah I never really learn something until I actually hack away at it, and even then I need to really understand things on a granular level.

They're paying for Pro

Being compensated fairly is important. But so is empathy from management. So is being flexible when I have stuff going in my life or need a mental health day.

It all adds up.

Meat and dairy specifically accounts for around 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

If people collectively just ate a bit less meat and dairy, it would go a long way. Don't even have to be perfect. Just show a little bit of restraint.

It seems the author has given their own meaning to Senior Engineer as a sort of weird gatekeeping, "you aren't a REAL senior engineer unless you're done X, Y, and Z"

My counterargument is that the very few job titles in Software Engineering was a bug, not a feature, and forced good engineers into management, as it was the only way to climb the career ladder.

By now creating more defined rungs on the latter, software engineers are able to climb a more reasonable career ladder with more than "junior engineer" and "forged in the crucible."

From the NYT:

For now, the announcement is largely symbolic. Israel is not a member of the court and does not recognize its jurisdiction in Israel or Gaza, meaning that Israeli leaders would face no risk of arrest at home.

The US is also not a member

No, you "shouldn't" feel vindictive. Vengeance doesn't really help anybody. We are all wronged, and we all wrong others. None of us is perfect.

Some are worse than others, and we have laws, and punishments, etc.

But I believe there is no morality to seeking pain in others; even if you believe they deserve it. It will not raise you up, so to speak.

Netflix tried to do this, but then studios wanted a piece of the pie, so they all spun up their own streaming services and then stopped licensing to their competitors.

Also, artists make virtually no money with Spotify, so it "works" for the consumer, but does it work for the artists?

Almost 3 in 4 Palestinians believe the October 7th attack was "correct"

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/poll-shows-palesti...

Israel is a close military ally and Palestine is... not.

There are no true neutral countries in the world. Everyone has allies who they treat differently than enemies.

There are no good guys or bad guys. There are only countries which do good and bad things.

Whether its in Palestine or Congo or China or Ukraine, the most even a superpower can do is leverage power to reduce killing and fatalities.

The Palestine/Israel conflict is significantly longer than any of the examples you gave.

Which is not to say that its impossible. But the older I get, the less hope I have.

Surely there's a scale?

Technically, any "killing a member of a group" would be a genocide under this definition.

Even if someone commits a mass murder against a group, we typically call it mass murder or a hate crime -- not genocide.

So there has to be some idea of what genocide is -- what is the scale, what is the intent? Is it to wipe out a people? Or is it something else?

25,000 death is a lot. I'd say its a war crime. An atrocity, perhaps. But a genocide? Against a population of 2 million? Idk. Maybe?

It seems that we have no common definition of the word

I once gave an Airbnb 4 stars because I was annoyed they had no way to make coffee, even though it was basically a hotel being run as an Airbnb. Like, not even a cheap Keurig in the lobby

They DMed me and told me that was bullshit and if I wanted coffee, I should've filtered by that amenity

Which is amazing because coffee is so expected you can't even search by it

Yes but aren't artists now compensated for their art being used in sampling? At least when it makes a profit?

I haven't heard of anyone being compensated for their works making profit for OpenAI

I... don't know what I expected