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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 4th, 2023

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  • All junior devs should read OCs comment and really think about this.

    The issue is whether is_number() is performing a semantic language matter or checking whether the text input can be converted by the program to a number type.

    The former case - the semantic language test - is useful for chat based interactions, analysis of text (and ancient text - I love the cuneiform btw) and similar. In this mode, some applications don’t even have to be able to convert the text into eg binary (a ‘gazillion’ of something is quantifying it, but vaguely)

    The latter case (validating input) is useful where the input is controlled and users are supposed to enter numbers using a limited part of a standard keyboard. Clay tablets and triangular sticks are strictly excluded from this interface.

    Another example might be is_address(). Which of these are addresses? ‘10 Downing Street, London’, ‘193.168.1.1’, ‘Gettysberg’, ‘Sir/Madam’.

    To me this highlights that code is a lot less reusable between different projects/apps than it at first appears.






  • You need at least two copies in two different places - places that will not burn down/explode/flood/collapse/be locked down by the police at the same time.

    An enterprise is going to be commissioning new computers or reformatting existing ones at least once per day. This means the bitlocker key list would need printouts at least every day in two places.

    Given the above, it’s easy to see that this process will fail from time to time, in ways like accicentally leaking a document with all these keys.






  • That was one of the original proposed mechanisms to explain how the (obviously false) autism was caused.

    But since then, since thiomersal was removed, other ‘causes’ and moral issues have been invented, including cells from abortions.

    The one that makes me laugh the most is that it’s terrible that the poor poor baby is exposed to so many illnesses (measles, mumps, rubella, polio, tetanus, notovirus, rotovirus and more) in such a short space of time, it’s no wonder the poor dear’s immune system is compromised. And then the same mother drops the kid off at daycare and exposes the poor dear to all those viruses and more - and live viruses at that.

    There is no bleeding logic, just feels. And they get so angry at the fake harm that medicine is causing, and simultaneously actually causing real harms to real people.


  • I don’t think that the anti-oop collective is attacking polymorphism or overloading - both are important in functional programming. And let’s add encapsulation and implementation hiding to this list.

    The argument is that OOP makes the wrong abstractions. Inheritance (as OOP models it) is quite rare on business entities. The other major example cited is that an algorithm written in the OOP style ends up distributing its code across the different classes, and therefore

    1. It is difficult to understand: the developer has to open two, three or more different classes to view the whole algorithm
    2. It is inefficient: because the algorithm is distributed over many classes and instances, as the algorithm runs, there are a lot of unnecessary calls (eg one method on one instance has to iterate over many instances of its children, and each child has to iterate over its children) and data has to pass through these function calls.

    Instead of this, the functional programmer says, you should write the algorithm as a function (or several functions) in one place, so it’s the function that walks the object structure. The navigation is done using tools like apply or map rather than a loop in a method on the parent instance.

    A key insight in this approach is that the way an algorithm walks the data structure is the responsibility of the algorithm rather than a responsibility that is shared across many classes and subclasses.

    In general, I think this is a valid point - when you are writing algorithms over the whole dataset. OOP does have some counterpoints encapsulating behaviour on just that object for example validating the object’s private members, or data processing for that object and its immediate children or peers.