I disagree, simpler code can be better if the library is well known. Otherwise we would never be using utility libraries. Though yes, coupling indiscriminately is problematic
Yes and the word drivel is a patronizing word betraying a self-importance that can lead to neediness/abasement in people that admire you, and a disgust in people that don't. Putting yourself on a pedastel is a bad practice in my opinion.
His last line '...I can't have their drivel constantly loop around in my head' is repulsive.
If someone is disgusted or offended that I am not going to treat every interaction with equal importance, they really don't have to associate with me. That's plain and simple. Am I an asshole? Well, ask different people and you'll get varying responses; I know this because when I was becoming more aware of who I am, I wanted to find out how I was perceived. Sure, a lot of people will always be nice and not say an unkind word, but I also don't think some of those people would voluntarily befriend me on an extracurricular basis if they were that disgusted by me.
Yes, my last line was undoubtedly harsh. That's certainly not how I always feel, and probably not most of the time. But it can sometimes be "drivel" because they'll know that I'm particularly engrossed with something, and they should know that I prefer solitude in those cases, yet they try to get me to spend my time on things I don't have any real interest in. Usually, I'll try to schedule a time to make them happy, but I still do not appreciate interruption when I'm busy, and I'm often going to take my time in replying to requests.
Besides, if you lived my life, you might see things this way.
I'm guessing based on his reference to the public school system treating his way of thinking like a disease that he's probably somewhere mild on the autism spectrum, so thinking about social nuances isn't his strong suit.
Assuming that's correct, I don't think its fair to characterize his thinking as repulsive when its really just a coping mechanism for dealing with his personal limitations. Its rude, yes, but its not meant to be malicious or cruel.
While I'm sure your intentions are good, I'd be careful to make unprofessional psychological diagnoses over the internet. People should find that more offensive than my relatively benign choice of words. I'm not offended by what you have to say, but it's not exactly correct.
To provide some background, I was referring to my being diagnosed with ADD back in school. I'm unsure whether I even have it since I was a fat loner kid back in school who was disinterested in being somewhere he was frequently being harassed. I don't think most grown adults would bother accomplishing much in an office where some dweeb was regularly sabotaging them. Grown ups found it easier to drug me than to discipline multiple bullies. I do think it's possible that I have ADD, but I don't think that's the underlying reason as to why I was being drugged rather than being put in an environment where I could thrive. The latter is much harder for an inefficient, dysfunctional system.
You're wrong in that I do actually think about social nuances a lot. My lightbulb is a little dim in that area, my second nature being more of a third nature with those things, but that doesn't mean I'm unaware of them at all. I acknowledge and understand why some people find me rude, and that's not evidence of autism.
As you say, I'm not a cruel person. I go out of my way to help friends when they are in need, to encourage others, to make amends when I know I've done wrong, etc. I think about other's feelings a lot because I have a lot of intense feelings myself. Sure, I'm rude, but not usually, and not to be cruel. I've never used words like "drivel" to someone's face, and usually do my best to honor people's communications or at least humor them when I'm not exactly thrilled with what they have to say. But I'm not ashamed to say that when someone texts me some viral video or whatnot, that it's an interruption not worthy of a timely response.
Some people ought to grow up, though. The fact that someone is disgusted because of a person's diction, or that the latter person thinks people say a lot of irrelevant things, shows a lack of empowerment. A person confident in themself shouldn't feel such distaste for the relatively minor shortcomings of others. I'm sure that most people find my interests to be drivel, and I'm not bothered by that in the slightest.
I do love people, for sure, but I don't require them to love me back, as would be suggested by me putting on a face and doing things to try keep their love. I think I require very little from people, and if a person can't handle me or my choice of words on Hacker News, they're free to move on.
I understand and I agree. People, especially on internet, as you can see in the comments above, are so quick to put their conditioning of words and feelings onto others, in a way where the words you say is not really coming to them in regard of your own true meaning but rather by their own meaning, their own codification of language and thinking. They become angry and come to criticism rather than listening and understanding who you are, as you are.
They react, and think you are an asshole. That tells me they themselves are not willing to recognize their own cruelty and anger and pain. They are vulnerable. Rather than merely listening and saying that they are happy to know you know yourself they say things that make you seem so unknowable to yourself, since they themselves might, too, not aware of truly who they are.
Isn't a joke "alive" until the explanation? So those that 'got' the joke would've enjoyed the joke, before moving onto read the next line. So reading the explanation of the joke wouldn't interfere with their enjoyment of the joke since they already enjoyed it prior to reading the explanation.
If you're telling a joke, you don't want emotional context switching. A quick explanation, laughter might be preserved (so the above pun may or may not inhibit the execution of the original joke).
But every joke has an emotional gravity and the longer you compliment it with other emotions (e.g. intellectual explanations), eventually escape velocity is reached and you're in an entirely different emotional state.
Huh? That's entirely incorrect. There's definitely a middle class that isn't working paycheck to paycheck but can't afford million dollar homes, vacas and college for their kids.
There's also a part of that middle class who can afford vacations and college for their kids, but not million dollar homes. Even if that group is likely bigger outside of the US (since hey, college in European countries like the UK is damn cheap by comparison), it still exists over there in the US too. Neither of those things necessarily require a millionaire income.
To me the point is that "other middle class" you mention, call it lower middle class, is shrinking, falling into the lower class. Because of loss of decent paying factory jobs, retail shrinking, etc. If you are an adult today without special education, it's really hard to have a decent lifestyle. Most of my friends are programmers or teachers, and they most all of them have decent jobs. The teachers are increasingly in that lower middle class category. Software engineers are more fortunate.
We are, I earn significantly more than my partner who has a degree and I don't have a degree.
It's one of the last fields that without a degree you can still earn a good living if you can break into it somehow (in my case it was side gigs/contracting to crappy full time position to none-crappy full time position to decent full time position).
Though I'm in the UK, I gather the degree requirement is a harder line in the US, also worth noting that by and large university education has had no correlation with programmer ability (in business settings) in my experience, I've met good/bad with degree/without degree.
Interestingly the one correlation I have observed is how fascinating people find the field when they are children, young geeks become older geeks.
On an unrelated note, this is why I think the programs that encourage young girls to get into computing/programming are the ones with the best likely RoI in terms of re-balancing the field.
I think it used to be easier in the US to be a dev without a degree, but it's hard to get all the background to pass interviews without serious education, things like time complexity and their of computation.
Yeah, seems like wealth is generally created over generations, rather than lifetimes (common case might be something like: 0 - 1 your grandparents immigrate and work hard to survive, 1-10 your parents work hard to go from subsistence to middle class, 10 - 100 you have enough safety net to take risks/follow passions/start successful bussinesses). Of course there's always exceptions.
Its not unexpected, but still alarming given the recent news on how and the extent to which third party apps are mining your data/sending targeted ads/manipulating people with data that's given for a benign purpose like inviting friends from your contacts (Trojan horse).
As I understand once some app gets your data, is USA there is a freedom to do whatever the company wants, and sell or share them with anyone including the governemnt.
At least Wikipedia says [1]:
> In general terms, in the U.S., whoever can be troubled to key in the data, is deemed to own the right to store and use it, even if the data was collected without permission, except to any extent regulated by laws and rules...
