Will_Parker's comments

> SQL

And, not to put too fine a point on it, being extremely proficient will give you a massive competitive edge in the industry.

I also think a lot of programmers could get a sort of enlightenment by getting very proficient in SQL. (To the point where you can do general programming in it using recursive CTEs if you have to, even though probably impractical for real use cases.)

What's your plausible scientific reason that blocking droplets doesn't reduce the chance of spreading the virus? My prior is, it does, based on my experience of the mask getting wet when talking.

So how does it not work? I talk, mask gets wet. Doesn't it mean it's blocking some of the droplets from spraying out? Why not?

> You cannot win against true believers

I'm a true believer in the drug's seventy year safety record when given as a prophylactic for malaria prevention millions of times and over the counter in many places.

> In some cases, for some people, wearing a mask can be neutral or even net-negative.

If you don't wear it on your face.

> There is no scientific evidence they are effective in reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission

It's a disease spread by exhaled droplets. How the heck could masks _not_ work? Why has common sense, as an acceptable way to obtain knowledge, died in the general public?

In terms of purity, sure, but pragmatically, meh. You do need to round to cents in ui and after every calculation though. Exercise: how large do amounts need to be before losing a penny?

I used to evangelize integer cents but then I worked on a few systems with floats and the world didn't fall over.

> In my experience it always ends up a jumble where indentation is screwed up and no particular tab setting makes things right.

Consider linting tools in your build.

Fair enough, but nothing about eating 50kg of meat per person per year suggests not treating it as primary or essential.

> The US in particular is wedded to the notion that meat is essential and primary food, and it set up its entire agriculture industry to making that cheap

Nothing is particular about the US here, humans are omnivores whose optimal diet for health contains both meat and plants.

Numbers like 8088 vs 80286 vs 80386DX vs 80386SX (which was basically a 286 iirc) were confusing to people back then too. :) Then you had the 486SX and DX and Cyrix introducing things like the 486DLC...

> The immediate retort is that John Deere's approach is maximally profitable-- but is it?

If your profit has to come from sales, but a lot of theirs comes from locking you into a maintenance profit, isn't this a big problem, when they can lower their sale prices much lower than yours?

See what happened when printer manufacturers figured out it was more profitable to sell you ink than printers, even taking a loss on the first sale. They all had to do it once one did. Everyone knew the printers were getting cheap and terrible, but still very few wanted to pay 2x as much on the initial purchase.

With games and other software as well, we see more and more monetizing with ads, DLC and subscriptions, even though most gamers would probably say this had made games worse overall.

Some of them are complicated crud web apps.

Consciousness :trollface:

> We only need one set of gendered pronouns

Which set do you think would suffice?

> So, why are you troubled that you can't debate this particular thing, when I'm sure there are things you shouldn't debate about your colleagues?

I'm troubled by the top-down nature of what is decided to be beyond debate vs not: it feels like it is leading to a scary kind of authoritarianism I don't want.

For fun, I'll throw you a specific plausible hypothetical. If an app has a gender identity field, and a user enters "Apache Helicopter", should this be treated as valid data or not?

I'm not interested in debating it here, because it could damage my career, which is my point.

In fact, even debating whether I should be able to debate it could damage my career. I believe this widespread use of silencing tactics, by implicit threat, has gone too far.

I'm saying the establishment, including tech, doesn't permit open critical discussion on the topic of gender.

And any sort of diversion from that approved narrative, like suggesting that some of this is going a little too far, will make you a pariah in the industry. This is what I'm getting in, in questioning how much "the establishment" allows vigorous debate.