HolyHaddock

Is it just pedantry? Even in the strongliest of practical strongly typed languages, two functions with the same signatures might fail to return on some inputs in the new version that it didn't in the old.

That's a practical distinction I care about that can't be computed.

Earnestly: Yes. But there may well be programming tasks or jobs that they are suited to, for which no understanding of boolean logic will make no difference on a day to day basis.

What's the scrum manifesto?

Thank you for the clarification.

> a practically-attainable real-world solution.

I can't be understanding this correctly. Please expand, I fear otherwise this is going to be at the back of my mind all day.

That's delightful, thank you for posting it!

Thank you both for the link and the google-fu tip.

Do you have a citation for that first claim? It fits my prejudices so neatly that I'd like to see the proof. I've tried to google a little for it with no success, so my apologies for any imposition.

> And frankly, if you can't point to bugs or performance issues, it's likely you don't need to be refactoring in the first place!

I feel this is a lack of clarity around the word refactoring. Improving the code in a way that fixes bugs is "bug fixing", in a way that makes it do its job faster is "optimisation" and in a way that improves the design is "refactoring".

Of course one can do several of them at the same time. And add features, at least in the small.

Refactoring can be a valuable activity for bits of a code base where the cost of change could be usefully reduced. It's useful to have a word that can be used to describe that activity that isn't commonly conflated with bug-fixing or optimisation.

At least one blogger preferred Googles assistant because she was ordering around an impersonal un-gendered corporation rather than what felt like an individual.

That said, this does seem like a great opportunity for Ask to bring Jeeves back.

> language is designed for communication between humans.

Unlike machines, humans do not always just want to exchange factual information about the world, and often use communication for additional purposes - jockeying for status, claiming membership in groups, and yes, playing games. This can even be quite enjoyable for the humans in question, for example, mutual flirtation.

In this example, one of the bits of information that can conveyed by being a bit more thoughtful about the use of pronouns is where the human in question might fall on a scale between "I am aware that there is pervasive and systematic discrimination against one class of human, and do not wish to take even small part in it." and "I believe all relevant systematic discrimination is in the past."

I'm afraid I'm missing the point too. Would you mind finding another way to make it?

If the core point of the essay is to cut the YAGNI and just get something shipped, aren't gamejames like Ludum Dare a great way to do that?

So what is the distinction? I mean that as a genuine question - Vidarh's position seems to be that the death penalty is intentionally taking a life, and shouldn't have a different moral standing to murder.

The response seems to be that that's a bad argument, they don't really believe that there's no distinction, and it would be stupid to believe that.

If I don't see a distinction of moral significance between the death penalty and, say, the CEO of a company deciding to painlessly execute one of their reports that they discover has gotten away with serious embezzling for multiple years, scorn doesn't help me understand the distinction someone else does see.