whakim

31 ms·

361.
by whakim 5y ago
> I think that the whole "Windows is good for common users" idea is very outdated nowadays, it might have been the case a decade or so ago, but it certainly isn't anymore. I agree with you, but I think that "for commo
362.
by whakim 5y ago
The author is mostly talking about Soviet Communism, China pre-1976, etc. in which the government owns everything there is to own . The China of today isn't "centrally planning a whole society". It's a society in which
363.
by whakim 5y ago
> A massive shift happened when central banks started getting involved in direct purchases of various asset types and we started to see a major distortion happen in monetary policy that which has distorted the functioning of money itself
364.
by whakim 5y ago
I haven't particularly noticed a dropoff in quality (I'm not a frequent user though, so that doesn't say much), but I can easily imagine that many of their best journalists left, and given the situation described here (second
365.
by whakim 5y ago
I think the snarkiness of this comment (and the replies, to be fair - I'm not just picking on you) gloss over an actually important point that you're making: testing strategies and infrastructure involve a hidden cost-benefit anal
366.
by whakim 5y ago
But most types (besides primitives) in Java are nullable, right? Sorbet literally wouldn't let you write this code: https://sorbet.run/#%23%20typed%3A%20true%0Aextend%20T%3A%3A... Null is simply the most frequent examp
367.
by whakim 5y ago
If you're just testing pieces of code in isolation, then you're either writing lots of tests or making assumptions about the kinds of input that your function could reasonably receive or return. If you're testing end-to-end,
368.
by whakim 5y ago
I'm surprised that you never have bugs of the type "this thing is nil and I didn't expect it to be". This is by far the most common type of bug I see in production Ruby applications and it simply can't happen with
369.
by whakim 5y ago
> But, this particular comment thread is about addressing this class of bug in Ruby via tests, and my vote would be generally no. I'm pretty sure I started the comment thread ;). I think there's a couple of scenarios when a fun
370.
by whakim 5y ago
In my experience this here (usually some method unexpectedly getting passed `nil`) is the single biggest class of bugs in production Ruby applications. Also, what happens when you don't get a NoMethodError? Duck typing is an extremely
371.
by whakim 5y ago
I don't think that static typing obviates the need for tests. However: * Static typing catches many kinds of bugs earlier by simply not allowing you to write incorrect code in the first place. * No matter how good your test suite is, y
372.
by whakim 5y ago
Have you tried writing a Ruby app with Sorbet vs without? I have, within the last year, and that's been my experience.
373.
by whakim 5y ago
Ruby isn't forcing you to use static types. That being said, I actually think something like Sorbet makes even solo/small teams more productive because it trades some additional time writing boilerplate for dramatically reducing
374.
by whakim 5y ago
> I like democracy, but the problem is democracy in its current US form (parliamentary system is better but EU constitution is fucked and causes similar problems) is best at interpolating the options that have been presented. I agree wit
375.
by whakim 5y ago
> Really what we need to do is run more big policy experiments at the fed. I totally disagree with this. Big social policy involves/requires taxation, and a robust debate around what kind of tax regime we want to have in order to su
376.
by whakim 5y ago
There are plenty of examples of economic revolution that were totally bloodless. For example, over a period of 10 years in the early 1900s, Sweden transformed itself from one of the most explicitly censitarian regimes that history has kno
377.
by whakim 5y ago
I'm not really sure that "mainstream economic theory" genuinely believes or believed that monetary policy alone is a substitute for fiscal policy (in particular, redistribution via taxation - UBIs, capital endowments, equitab
378.
by whakim 5y ago
I'm not necessarily claiming that all abstractions are bad. I'm say that (as a general rule) engineers should be more willing to duplicate code.
379.
by whakim 5y ago
IME abstractions generally begin with the latter case. Perhaps there's one or two corner cases that the abstraction also covers, but it seems justifiable at the time because the core of the code really ought to work the same across all
380.
by whakim 5y ago
I'm not sure this conversation is going anywhere because (again, with context you'd realize this) narrowly missing the target by a day or two was par for the course with these types of engagements. If you're interested in lea
381.
by whakim 5y ago
You're getting fixated on the specifics of Tora Bora. Zoom out and look at the other big mountain operations over the following 15 years; you'll hear similar excuses "we needed this technology/we needed more men at this
382.
by whakim 5y ago
Yes, we narrowly missed Bin Laden at Tora Bora in 2001. But "just send more troops" and "use bigger bombs" betrays a lack of familiarity with combat in the mountainous and inhospitable parts of Afghanistan. There's
383.
by whakim 5y ago
> So if anything, we should have pursued Bin Laden even more vigorously back then. The Taliban were successful in buying enough time for him to hide with their false diplomacy. The problem was, real intelligence on the whereabouts of Bin
384.
by whakim 5y ago
These bus tickets would presumably come out of municipal budgets, right? So not only would such data exist, it would also have to be publicly accessible.
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by whakim 5y ago
Look, I don't know the actual numbers, but the GP cited "red states busing their homeless population" and then cited a NYT article about this very issue where the numbers presented contradicted that claim. If you do know of s
386.
by whakim 5y ago
The article you cited literally states that only 5 percent of Washington state's unhoused population became homeless out of the state.
387.
by whakim 5y ago
I don't think this is true because it is non-chronic homelessness which decreased in Nevada. Is there any evidence for this theory?
388.
by whakim 5y ago
Did you even read the article? The last two sentences are: "Still, I think we can see why people in Seattle might feel there’s a crisis. Maybe anecdotal knowledge ain’t so bad." The whole point of the article is that things vary w
389.
by whakim 5y ago
Military spending as a percent of national income rose a huge amount in the 1940s, but so did spending on pretty much everything else. Over the period from 1930 to 1950 the United States (as well as many other Western countries) transformed
390.
by whakim 5y ago
In addition to the points made in sibling comments, I want to point out that "showing excitement" (particularly in an interview context) can be culturally conditional. You may in fact be selecting for candidates with a European Am

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