alexfoxgill

+1, i also like Sam Harris's Making Sense which is a little more pompous but still interesting

Voluntary tax is charity. The whole point of tax is that it applies to everyone by some set of rules that democracy has arrived at.

that probably wouldn't be sufficient to instantly grasp which bracket in a set of five opening brackets corresponded to its closing bracket. humans are not great at visually assessing minor differences in absolute size

I will never forget the hours I lost debugging an issue where I had not realised that if you declare any variable in scope that coincidentally has the same name as an implicit that you're relying on, the implicit will be shadowed and unable to resolve. Of course, it 'makes sense' when you consider that you would be unable to refer to it by name explicitly... But if you're not using the name, the fact that it can have an impact on visibility is pretty confusing