FWIW, UChicago is known for having one of the most conservative economics departments in the country/world. Over 50% of UChicago students major in econ (often as part of a double major), though most UChicago students are liberals.
Nitpick with #16: I don't like when there is no "why" associated with a style rule. I'm speaking specifically to #3, "Capitalize the subject line". Why is this preferred to not capitalizing a subject line? Is there a reason, or is it an arbitrary decision (which would be fine - sometimes a style decision is, "We need a standard, and we chose this one." But I think the author of the style guide should explain that that's what they're doing).
But in general I liked the article. It's under-appreciated how helpful a good commit log is.
Sometimes commit message deserves to be moderately long, like a paragraph or more. If one did not reference a code review or issue tracker link, for example, the need would likely be common. Even with an issue tracker there's value in capturing a few sentences of detail and sometimes more in the commit.
By capitalizing the commit message, it is natural to extend it from a single sentence phrase to a paragraph with an introductory sentence. I think of commit messages as analogous to JavaDoc where the first sentence or first line is taken as the subject, or like a document with a heading. It would be silly for short commit messages not to use capitalization while long do. A capitalized message works as a short description of the intro to a paragraph. Generally. once you're writing more than a single standalone sentence, capitalize. In a permanent medium where it can be either one, also capitalize.
A capitalized sentence or sentence fragment works in many contexts, like within a document or email. It would be annoying to convert going back and forth. Lastly, commit messages can sometimes act as names or proper nouns, and capitalization reinforces that role. Capitalization looks better as project or item headers in an issue tracker, and so to the extent that commits follow items, it's nice to consistently capitalize.
Capitalize commit messages because when Git tools generate commit messages, they generate capitalized ones. (Be consistent.)
I grok not capitalizing IM or IRC or other chat conversations, though I do if I start writing messages longer than a sentence. For everything but IM, capitalization constitutes the norm and good professional style.
This rationale might not be entirely satisfying, because why does English have capitalization to begin with? That's a linguistic question I don't know the answer to. However, I do know that the norms that lead to sentence capitalization also apply to commit messages and code documentation Not capitalizing them feels like refusing to capitalize any other writing: a potential distraction from the content.
If the component name is conventionally written in lower case, because it's a technical term, then I think a comment written in this way counts as good style. I might choose to capitalize Foo myself, but I think foo is defensible in that context.
Where `<type>` is the type of change (e.g. `feat` for a feature or `docs` for doc updates), `<scope>` is the scope of a change, `<subject>` is the subject line, with the first letter uncapitalized, `<body>` being an explanation of the change in imperative, present tense, and the `<footer>` containing information about breaking changes and any issues the commit closes.
I like it because I find that adhering to this style lets me have a nice seat of easy to read commits which explain their purpose and scope clearly.
Also, it lets me use a tool like `clog-cli` [1] to generate pretty changelogs [2] automatically!
The only nitpick I have with this style is the fact that they recommend not capitalizing the first letter of the subject line. This means that, for example, in emails or when creating a PR, I have to capitalize the summary so that it looks correct. Minor, but annoying.
Capitalizing the subject line makes commit logs much easier to read in my opinion. There's a reason we capitalize letters at the beginning of sentences
But it's not the beginning of a sentence. It's supposed to be a continuation of the implicit phrase "When applied this commit will ..." In which case capitalizing makes no sense.
> It's supposed to be a continuation of the implicit phrase "When applied this commit will ..."
No: it's supposed to be written in imperative form. For those of us who are not linguists, it's easiest to explain this as a continuation of that phrase. However, it isn't a continuation. It stands on its own.
This is my concern as well - if I want to use Org Mode for everything, including "random thing that just occurred to me that I need to do," then what do I do if "random thing that just occurred to me that I need to do" occurs to me while I'm on my phone, not my computer? I want one unified way to organize my TODOs, and it seems like org-mode isn't great for that.
There's a mobile app you can use to note stuff down straight to an org-mode file and then sync it up via Dropbox. Otherwise, I'd note it down in whatever other app you have. If you're following any kind of productivity methodology like GTD, you'll probably have a time in which you can simply retype your notes from your mobile to your org-mode system.
As a candidate, I would be a little wary of this process. You're asking me to put in multiple hours of work, but you only put in 7 minutes. So the incentives are misaligned: you are incented to give these challenges to many people, even if they have a low chance of passing through. But as a candidate, I don't want to sped multiple hours if I have a low chance of passing through. This is one reason why full-day on-site interviews aren't so bad - if I've gotten to that stage, I'm probably pretty likely to get an offer.
First, I don't concede the idea that this is a concern I need to ameliorate, because the work-sample process consumes fewer hours of candidate time than the conventional interview does, and, better still, consumes those times as, when, and where the candidate chooses to make them available: an hour a night during the week, say. Do the work from your favorite quiet bar. Do it during your coffee break.
I am spending a lot of time these days talking to people interviewing in the valley, and what I'm seeing is that the norm candidates are subjected to is 7+ hours of 6-7 on-site interviews. Candidates have to go through all the interviews, even if the first interview has effectively ejected them from the process.
Compared to that horrid process, I don't believe I have to justify anything about my process.
But, if you read downthread, you'll see that we in fact did a lot to ameliorate the (bogus, I think) concern that we were incentivized to soak up hopeless effort from lots of people.
I was thinking something similar. When one party can waste the other party's time at little cost to their own, the situation can be abused. If a job ad wants you to submit to a test before you even talk to a hiring manager, this is a signal that the employer doesn't care about wasting your time. I can see the advantages to automating the hiring process but as a candidate I am less inclined to engage with a party that has no "skin in the game".
Think of the design world:
Potential client "A" asks multiple desperate artists to work on spec in hopes that they will get the commission.
Potential client "B" call you up and talks to you, sends you some napkin sketches and generally engages with you for an hour before asking you to do a design.
Both clients want you to do a design (test) but one clearly doesn't have any skin in the game.
Assuming you're a decent designer, which client do you respond to?
Many of the bootcamps are relatively young with not that many attendees per year. Back-of-the-envelope calculation: ~50 per cohort, 6 cohorts per year is 300 students per year, times 3 or so years is around a thousand total enrollees. 100 reviews is 10% of people reviewing - that seems pretty high to me.
FWIW: I did a bootcamp, loved it, never wrote a review. Just laziness/generally don't write reviews for things. I would guess many people don't write reviews for the same reason.
At the end of the day, the most electable candidate tends to get nominated. Not always, but typically. And Hillary, even despite her challenges, is much more electable than Bernie, because she's much closer to the center. Of course, continuing email controversies could change that. But unless they do, Bernie's chances of winning are near 0.
In 2000, both Gore and Bush were always the frontrunners, and then they both won the primaries in landslides. I believe they both won every state, except Bush lost New Hampshire to McCain.
Also in 2008, you're exaggerating the extent to which the punditry favored Giuliani; he was a frontrunner, but not at all considered a shoo-in the way Hillary is.
The problem with Bernie is that he has very limited appeal outside of the areas where he's campaigning (overwhelmingly white, also a lot of college towns). He has a chance if he can improve his standing among minority voters somehow, but even then it's a long shot.
Cornel West, a highly respected person in the black community, just endorsed Sanders[1]. What's interesting, and not surprising if you know West, is that he's support of Sanders is much stronger than his support of Obama 8 years ago.
I think it will be far easier for black voters to get behind Sanders than behind Clinton. I'll suggest the same is true for Hispanic voters.
Since blacks aren't going to get behind any of the GOP candidates, the question is more about whether they will sit out this election.
"the punditry favored Giuliani; he was a frontrunner, but not at all considered a shoo-in the way Hillary is."
That is all I was claiming. Hillary is an unusual case; I've not seen this level of "shoo-in" before.
Also, just to be clear, I'm not making grandiose claims that I know something about the race, nor am I claiming that this is somehow identical to previous situations [1]... it's more that I know that something isn't true: The punditariat is wildly overconfident, and their current confidence in their beliefs is wrong. Even if they are ultimately correct, they're still overconfident right now. The echo chamber does that.
[1]: It never really is, and there's a certain amount of anti-inductiveness to similar situations in politics: http://lesswrong.com/lw/yv/markets_are_antiinductive/ If you see a similarity that favors X, in general, so do X's opponents, and they're likely to do something that will, as a side effect, break the similarity somehow.
>In 2000, both Gore and Bush were always the frontrunners, and then they both won the primaries in landslides. I believe they both won every state, except Bush lost New Hampshire to McCain.
I think the question is: does the ability of pundits to predict elections correlate or anticorrelate with voter participation rates?
Or in simpler terms: do pundits predict well when primaries are democratic and reflect the will of the people, or when they're isolated, low-information games that mostly reflect punditry itself?
It is also worth noting that in 2008 the Clinton campaign was a lot weaker than it currently is and Obama's campaign was a lot stronger than Sanders' current campaign. [1]
