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The invocation of "colonialism" in tech discussions tends to be a pretty reliable indication that what follows will be gibberish.
by evantbyrne 3y ago
The invocation of "colonialism" in tech discussions tends to be a pretty reliable indication that what follows will be gibberish.
- angra_mainyu 3y agoI was hoping we could keep our zealousness to tabs vs spaces, 2 vs 3 vs 4 vs 8 indentation levels, etc.
- xeckr 3y agoDo you end all your statements in JS with semicolons? What, are you some sort of semicolonialist?
- brodouevencode 3y agoSemicolonizer
- ASalazarMX 3y agoDoes this make Erlang a colonialist?
- xeckr 3y agoI'm afraid so. You Erlangers are all cancelled now, together with the Python people.
- mmh0000 3y agoThis is a good point you bring up. It is evident that everyone knows the correct level of indentation is a tab character that is four spaces wide; you never use spaces for indentation, only tab characters. Any suitable programming language will immediately recognize a space as a typo and fail compilation.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y agoThe correct answer to the "tabs vs spaces" debate is tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment. This allows people to use any tab width they want and it will always look good. However, in the real world, attempting this won't work because there will be a minimum of 1 person in the team that configures their editor to convert tabs to spaces. Ideally, that person should have their PRs rejected and be scolded into fixing their editor. But the real result ends up just forcing everyone to use spaces.
- teddyh 3y agoNo, the actual perfect solution is Elastic Tabstops: <https://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/ https://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/>
- yencabulator 3y ago> The correct answer to the "tabs vs spaces" debate is tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment. I for one would like to live in an era where we move beyond monospace text.
- catchnear4321 3y agothat is indeed all considerably superfluous and a distraction from the one true law. the first element of an array is at index zero. only a filthy heathen starts at one. to add a one to the beginning is arrogance, the mark of a human needing to see itself everywhere, while zero is pure, a beginning. in before some one-head leaves a half-baked comment about why it makes more sense for the first element to start with one because one and first are same but different. so childish.
- teddyh 3y agoHere’s the ultimate authority on why computer languages should count from zero: <https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd08xx/EWD831.PDF https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd08xx/EWD831.PDF>
- ethbr1 3y agoThere are linguistic arguments that suggest 1-basing. [1] [1] http://kilby.stanford.edu/~rvg/ordinal.html http://kilby.stanford.edu/~rvg/ordinal.html
- catchnear4321 3y agothis is unfortunately not an entirely good argument… > Then the colleague continues by numbering the next apple "126", and the process ends at "188". At that point the colleague has to guess whether the counting started at 0 or at 1, i.e. whether the total number of apples is 188 or 189. false. the next person, having heard 188, only needs to know what follows. 189. as this is a job that has been divided, so long as the beginning stage is recorded somewhere, as well as the end stage, each worker (save first and last) exclusively need to know the number of the apple prior to their first for their first apple is not zero or one, it is the number immediately following last. n+1. counting could have started at -1. heathen.
- beepbooptheory 3y agoI'm just happy they are talking about it all! It's good to learn about things outside your main domain, especially with something like world history/geopolitics. Can you give examples of the gibberish? Genuinely fascinated to know what you are referring to. This kind of stuff in particular can be pretty disheartening to learn about in general, and I find misinformation/pathos around it can often come from resistance to confronting the sadder, more terrible aspects of it. Which is totally understandable honestly! But I haven't heard of "gibberish" before.. you mean like being nonsensical? Like its hard to understand? Edit: ok all the downvotes makes me think I am missing something here.. Is this kind of thing in the culture war now?? Like British empire history?? I know I'm not the smartest guy (by far), but I can't even guess what, like, the controversy could be here. Truly trying to have the discussion, and I give anyone permission to be mean and tell me how I am being dumb here, I'd just be happy to know precisely how I am being dumb here.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dijit 3y agoWait until you learn that there's no such thing as ethical consumption of anything under capitalism.
- eyelidlessness 3y ago> ok all the downvotes makes me think I am missing something here The thing you’re missing is that, to a certain prominent subset of the tech community which is also prominent here on HN, “politics” should be “kept out of” tech. Also from this point of view, “politics” is anything uncomfortable which doesn’t reinforce status quo power dynamics; reinforcing those however is “not politics”, and should be explicitly not kept out of tech. One such topic of “politics” is any analysis of how those power dynamics came to exist and be sustained on a global scale in the first place. Analysis of how they might be undone is right out.
- evantbyrne 3y agoRight. Yeah, that's definitely it.
- junofan 3y agoYeah at this point I wish the people who come up with this kind of stuff would skip the divisiveness and cut straight to the grift. Are we funding genocide studies? A new constellation of NGOs? I’m fine with grifting, but tech seems to take these things a little too literally.
- zaphirplane 3y agoThe gibberish is people from former colonial powers justifying past and current behaviour. As an observation
- evantbyrne 3y agoThere are valid and purposeful discussions about colonization. And then there's an awful lot of "decolonization" talk that is virtue signalling–or worse–a dog whistle. Calling out "people from former colonial powers" sure sounds like it falls into the latter.
- zaphirplane 3y agoWhy is calling out convoluted arguments justifying horrible acts by colonial powers dog whistle ? The submission is about a colonial power (uk) forcibly relocating the occupants of those Islands with the uk high court and court of appeal ruling it wrong; so Did the UN You think this is virtue signaling dig whistle? Strange
- evantbyrne 3y agoIf you want to be acknowledged as a scholar, then act like one instead of making suspicious statements about your opponents' demographics. It has been discussed ad nauseam at this point that the article provides a history lesson, but the suggestions are illogical or unactionable. It is just not that interesting or relevant.
- zaphirplane 3y agoWhere do I make a statement about my (your words) opponents demographics ? I don’t really see substance in your statements just accusations, vagueness and attempts to shut the dialogue. Someone wronged wants justice we don’t shut the conversation because it’s boring to you (assuming good intentions). No one is forcing you to participate. I regret giving your words the benefit of the doubt.