Well, who knows? The trajectory has been set in and it is downwards. After Nero and the year of the four emperors the Roman Empire still had ways to go. So, I would say also the US can potentially recover. On the other hand the saying 'it cannot possibly get worse than this' has also been disproven may times in history. In any case, I like to sum it all up by saying "The US is a superpower attempting to become a third world country".
I delegated this errand to my manservant. I am quite unaware of what means of access he may have at his disposal but I trust that his resourceful nature will suffice to provide a precis of this internet website.
Sure, it is quite easy to install python from source. Usually I am doing it because I need older version for work projects. Of course, the other thing that one needs in that kind of situations is virtual environments. This makes it also quite easy to ensure that you always run the correct python. Create a venv with a specific version of python and once you are in that venv, the 'python' command will automatically run that python version. That way it is easy to use an unlimited number of python version next to each other.
Yes, this sound like it is true. But is it good? I mean, if I accept this idea, I start feeling more like a pet living in the house that is my platform then as a human who creates things. Also, it can be inefficient in that the same program or algorithm ends up being implemented in every language. Also, the article does mention that there is some pain in between programming language, e.g., when writing language bindings. I would push this point a bit further and note that we have too many tools and it is extremely painful to have to know all of them. Nowadays with AI it gets a bit more easy because it can help a lot with unfamiliar tools, but still that sounds like a problem that would not need to be solved if it was not created in the first place. Multiple programming languages tend to multiply the number of tools needed. I have been feeling for decades that C++ is a good language because it can be both low level and high level and can therefore take away the need for multiple programming languages. The world seems to be taking a different course, obviously, and in my opinion it makes people less free and less powerful than they otherwise could be.
Right. Because If I want feature A and it is available in configuration among features A through Z I will always perfectly pick the right letter of the alphabet and I will not at all be irritated by having 26 options that I have no idea about what is the difference between them.
But I think there's anyway a point there. I watched a talk once and it was humorously said that the amount of time spent discussing whether solution A is better than B is more than implementing both A and B and seeing in practice. It's funny because it's true.
I kept my old laptop (bought in 2007) alive for quite a while too. But last year I finally retired it. I also used archlinux 32 which worked fine for a while. But at some point the breakages really got too bad. I was using xfce4. For a while the xfce4-terminal was broken and would not start. That has the easy workaround of using xterm instead. But there were more breakages and it just started taking too much time. Quite a bit of software is ditching, or has ditched, 32-bit support.
Well, Joel is not saying not to refactor anything. In fact he is advocating improving the code quality in small steps. What is missing there is that in practice improving code quality in small steps requires automated tests . But I guess he can be forgiven given when he wrote the article.
You can talk about UBI if you want to appear nice but people on UBI are also rather useless. Of course the real solution to the problem will be the change of carbon based life into silicon based life and the extermination of the former kind of life. Which is not the elected representatives problem if it happens to happen more than 4 years into the future.
We currently have a not-insignificant population living the UBI dream. No job, section 8 housing, food stamps, free healthcare via going to the emergency room for everything and not simply not paying, as well as other social programs.
What great art are these folks producing since they aren't burdened by having to work to survive? Mumble rap on Soundcloud? Shitty graffiti on every building?
More of a lot of things. Universal healthcare (as opposed to employer-provided plans) encourages people to start their own businesses. UBI would be similar, but moreso.
No. The duplication is seldomly that clean. It has started to diverge in subtle ways where the question becomes whether that was the intention or not. In the worst possible cases it has resulted in 8000-line functions full of duplication. 're-architecting the whole system to remove a bad abstraction' sounds fear mongering. That never happens.
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