4 ms·

As a thought exercise, replace “programmers/employees/companies” with “criminals/inmates/prisons” in your argument and you will see parallels with modern law en

As a thought exercise, replace “programmers/employees/companies” with “criminals/inmates/prisons” in your argument and you will see parallels with modern law enforcement. Law enforcement embraces rehabilitation, prevention, and other mechanisms as well as simple punishment. Seems rather disingenuous to make a claim that negative reinforcement doesn’t work, vis-a-vis not having to be in jail.

verisimilitudes 4y ago
His self-interest makes his position understandable. Why, programming is just as real as other engineering, except for those nasty consequences for gross negligence, such as using the C/C++ languages or garbage similar to them.
WalterBright 4y ago
Jails shouldn't be for punishment. They should be for protecting society from people who can't live by the rules. Punitive prison sentences are uncivilized. Besides, pickpockets used to be hanged. Didn't stop them.
- verisimilitudes 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and flamewar comments? You've been doing an absolute ton of this and it's super not ok. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We have to ban accounts that break HN's rules like that. I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33145319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33145319 recently. Ok, you've posted one good thing (that one) recently. Still, it was pretty good and I'd rather persuade you to use the site as intended, if that's remotely possible, than to ban you. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, I'd personally appreciate it.
    - verisimilitudes 4y ago
      I'm tired, dang. I wanted to delete this account, but I'm not allowed to do so. I didn't use it for years until I tried to contact someone here. Now, when I even try to submit something here into which I've poured effort, it doesn't appear in the new section until after it can no longer qualify for the front page, as an underhanded method of trying to make me believe no one cares about it. Why is Hacker News filled with political nonsense that gets hundreds of comments, while the programming topics get few or go ignored? It is so frustrating to try to have a conversation here, where people rather downvote and flag than write rebuttals. I tried to contribute to this forum, but my novel work goes ignored; my submission here with highest score merely hit hipster bingo. What am I supposed to do?
      - dang 4y ago
        I don't understand what you mean by trying to contact someone, but if you mean contacting us, the way to do that is to email hn@ycombinator.com. Your account's submissions aren't specifically being penalized, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33052487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33052487 was killed by our software because your submission history is getting classified as "primarily promotional", which is against the site guidelines ("Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). The way to prevent that from is to post a diverse mix of interesting/unrelated articles and include your own stuff as part of the mix. Nearly everyone's "novel work goes ignored" - that's the unfortunate consequence of frontpage space being the scarcest resource (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). It's nothing personal—it's hard for everyone. Re the question of politics on HN, some political overlap is inevitable on a site whose mandate is intellectual curiosity. Lots of past explanations can be found here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... What you're supposed to do is follow the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I know HN can be frustrating, but vandalizing it with aggressive attacks and flamewar helps nothing.

verisimilitudes 4y ago

His self-interest makes his position understandable. Why, programming is just as real as other engineering, except for those nasty consequences for gross negligence, such as using the C/C++ languages or garbage similar to them.

WalterBright 4y ago

Jails shouldn't be for punishment. They should be for protecting society from people who can't live by the rules. Punitive prison sentences are uncivilized. Besides, pickpockets used to be hanged. Didn't stop them.

verisimilitudes 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and flamewar comments? You've been doing an absolute ton of this and it's super not ok. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We have to ban accounts that break HN's rules like that. I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33145319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33145319 recently. Ok, you've posted one good thing (that one) recently. Still, it was pretty good and I'd rather persuade you to use the site as intended, if that's remotely possible, than to ban you. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, I'd personally appreciate it.
  - verisimilitudes 4y ago
    I'm tired, dang. I wanted to delete this account, but I'm not allowed to do so. I didn't use it for years until I tried to contact someone here. Now, when I even try to submit something here into which I've poured effort, it doesn't appear in the new section until after it can no longer qualify for the front page, as an underhanded method of trying to make me believe no one cares about it. Why is Hacker News filled with political nonsense that gets hundreds of comments, while the programming topics get few or go ignored? It is so frustrating to try to have a conversation here, where people rather downvote and flag than write rebuttals. I tried to contribute to this forum, but my novel work goes ignored; my submission here with highest score merely hit hipster bingo. What am I supposed to do?
    - dang 4y ago
      I don't understand what you mean by trying to contact someone, but if you mean contacting us, the way to do that is to email hn@ycombinator.com. Your account's submissions aren't specifically being penalized, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33052487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33052487 was killed by our software because your submission history is getting classified as "primarily promotional", which is against the site guidelines ("Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). The way to prevent that from is to post a diverse mix of interesting/unrelated articles and include your own stuff as part of the mix. Nearly everyone's "novel work goes ignored" - that's the unfortunate consequence of frontpage space being the scarcest resource (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). It's nothing personal—it's hard for everyone. Re the question of politics on HN, some political overlap is inevitable on a site whose mandate is intellectual curiosity. Lots of past explanations can be found here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... What you're supposed to do is follow the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I know HN can be frustrating, but vandalizing it with aggressive attacks and flamewar helps nothing.