Posts by Doctor Syntax 42414 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"- just because untrained devs can use Python, doesn't mean you must be an untrained dev to use Python. If it's the right tool for the job, use it, and if it's not then use something else."
If untrained devs are expected to use Python then maybe Python shouldn't bite. And don't expect them to know if it's the right tool for the job or what the right tool might be.
A glimpse of reality. This is how stuff happens. The first and maybe only version of the code is written for a single, constrained situation. My first FORTRAN program (the initial attraction was "You mean I don't have to do my own arithmetic any more?!") was to take readings from levelling (did you know there were surveyors staffs calibrated in decimal feet) and metric measurements from the Hiller borer and print out lists of numbers for me to draw stratigraphic sections by hand. Not too many people were going to want that one.
I admit to a certain amount of conflict over this one.
As a sometime scientist the computer was to be used as a tool like any other instrument such as a microscope. However you should know your tools, e.g. if you're a microscopist setting up the Kohler illumination should come naturally to you. If you're going to write programs to do a job you should take care over them.
OTOH a high level programming language should provide a high level abstraction of the platform and it might be reasonable to expect the provision of a view of directory contents consistent from platform to platform to be a part of that abstraction.
There's not a single word of not testing either. The original authors might have tested the life out of it - on the H/W & S/W they possessed. That doesn't mean they could guarantee to catch all corner cases on all other possible platforms including those yet to be designed.
"Similarly, why should a language's file system API presume to know what sort order an application wants (if any)"
Fair enough. But one of the functions of a high level language is to present the programmer with a platform that isn't dependent on low level stuff. That move started when symbolic assemblers replaced writing raw machine code - or possibly when people started writing machine code instead of using plug-boards and switches or whatever. It's not unreasonable to expect a language to offer an API option that at least provides a consistent order independent of platform.
There must be a glut of straw. It's the only explanation for so many straw men. First of all, in the linked Forbes article we have the comparison with hourly rates straw man. Then we have the comparison with the streamed games player. Finally we have the straw man of the family firm where the firm whose members can choose to pay themselves as much as they think they can afford. All this to support what are essentially auction prices for top managers.
We're asked to believe that if company A is prepared to pay more than company B for exec X then X must be worth that. But the comparison with the games player is worth examining more carefully. The earnings there directly reflect the fact that sufficient individual consumers are prepared to pay (I admit to wondering why) an overall sum great enough to pay the gamer. In this case the gamer is demonstrably providing value that justifies the payment. The issue which both this article and the Forbes article avoid is demonstrating that the high paid exec is providing value.
We should not be arguing that the exec doesn't put in several hundred times more hours than the line worker nor that he works hundreds of times harder but that he demonstrably provides hundreds of times more value to the business. The fact that this argument isn't being made suggests that all too often there's no such demonstration possible. The bidding should have been stopped before it got so high.
This becomes a particularly acute issue when - we can all put names to this - the big payments are being made to execs by companies which are visibly circling the drain if not heading directly down it.
It's impossible to avoid the suspicion that the auction is being rigged. The people doing the bidding also have their incomes determined in like manner and have no incentive to question the mechanism.
"E.g. a good TV and then something like a FireTV or a Raspi for media playback."
A good TV would be one that doesn't want to connect itself to the internet. Where do you get one of those these days? You might just about get away with not letting your TV connect but how soon is it going to be that you can't do that otherwise the damn thing will just have a temper tantrum and refuse to work at all?
"Online ads are extremely cheap."
They're an extremely cheap way of pissing off existing and potential customers. Don't believe me? Ask yourself why so many people run ad-blockers. Perhaps you run an ad-blocker; if so ask yourself why.
"It also allows advertisers to run many different campaigns at once targeted all over the place."
Are those the campaigns that try to sell you what you just bought?
Repeat after me: the only thing the advertising industry sells is advertising to advertisers.
"However this is less than 10% of "money" the rest is virtual and is worth more or less what people want to believe its worth.... And are alluded to as financial instruments..."
No, it's worth what people as a whole have decided it's worth. If I decide my investments are worth ten times what they are actually worth, I won't get any more money. People disagree on the actual worth of the things, but that's why we sell things we think are worth less than other people think they're worth.
I took "people" to mean "people as a whole". I think you and the OP are saying the same thing here. And governments also have their own ideas as to what they want people to believe (or decide) it's worth. To go back to your earlier point: That would only be the case if the treasury simply ordered notes printed up and started spending them. But they don't do that. No, they don't quite do that because of the inflationary effect so we get tricks such as "quantitative easing" played instead.
I think this is already in hand. Personally I wonder what the effects of this will be on ground water movements. Even just building houses seems to have effects on that here with some springs drying up and others appearing where they're not wanted (including through a retaining wall which was also the back wall of an outhouse). Drilling a deep hole for each house is going to have undesirable side effects somewhere.
It's what I call the seductive power of numbers. If you produce a number it must be right and it must be meaningful. That doesn't encourage taking care in measuring things. Measuring properly can be hard, at best it needs thinking about and at worst involves expensive equipment (CERN!) and processes; if you've already got a number why put in the extra work to get a "bettter" number?
Back in the early days of the OU I had a couple of students who were science teachers. Why faff about with the single balance and its weights when they had digital scales at school that read out numbers? So where do your numbers come from? How do you know they're right as opposed to just believing what the display says? The first time we got a digital balance in my lab I paid a visit to the local Weights and Measures department - handily our neighbours - to borrow a couple of their standard weights so I could check.
When the only upwards path is into management you end up with management by people who weren't recruited for managerial talent but could do the technical job and the technical job being done by people who weren't good enough to be promoted or too inexperienced to show whether they're good enough or not.
"attacks which iterate over IDs using the same password"
There's another place where chances are being lost - using the same ID on multiple sites. It doesn't help that so many sites insist on using the customer's email address as an ID and most people only have one. Dishonourable exceptions in my case are bank and GP both of whom allocate reasonably predictable IDs.
"Keep on living as if the Domesday book was published yesterday, Britons."
You appear to have attempted to make some point about this twice, The only point you've made is that you're familiar with the date and correct spelling of the popular name but have no knowledge of the contents. BTW it was compiled in 1086 but published much later; there's an English translation with a dodgy index published in paperback by Penguin.
What's quite clear was that in 1086 the great majority of the English (not British) population was not free. Here in the Danelaw things were a little better but not much. One consequence was that most people were not free to move from one manor to another except when, as seems to have happened in some cases, their lord actually moved them between is manors.
It strikes me that that situation is very much akin to the notion of having to register your presence when you move to a new town. We got rid of that here. We relish that freedom. It's not we who are stuck with medieval practices but it seems that you're so habituated to them that you don't notice you're still subject to them. Just one of life's little ironies.
There seems to be one common thing in all this: systems designed by organisations where either:
a) Questions such as "what happens when...?" or "What if...?" never get asked
b) They are asked but stamped on by manglement as "being negative" or the like
c) They are asked and get through but due to being Agile get postponed to a later iteration that hasn't happened yet and probably never will
d) Have no means or incentive for people at the sharp end to pass "This isn't working" messages back up the line.
Organisations all that have been racing to the bottom and got there.
I'm not sure there was ever an official explanation. There had been a lot of fake incendiary devices seized in the previous week and brought in for examination. My suspicion is that one of them wasn't fake and not recognised as such.
I was taking an OU field trip that day and hadn't listened to any news. The first I heard of it was when one of the students mentioned it.
