cmplxconjugate

> The main quality complaint is that the proofs are ugly, long, and incomprehensible.

Let's take an example: Maxwell's 1865 paper states electromagnetism as 20 equations in 20 unknowns, written out in components. His 1873 Treatise recasts parts of it in quaternions, which was even more esoteric. The four vector equations everyone learns are Heaviside's, from 1884-85, five years after Maxwell died. The clean form came from other people working on the ugly original. Had Maxwell waited until he had something elegant, it would have been a net negative to society. Yes there was cleanup but I would argue that's a part of learning and understanding.

I think part of this mentality is a perfectionists view that does not always align with our "messy" reality.

Poor support in some instances. Apple lagged for a long time for iPhone support. Discord mobile still does not support animated webp's.

One thing I've found in my own use of AI, which Gowers touches on in his point at the end but which I think deserves more attention: AI makes some previously non-trivial tasks trivial, but that doesn't make the work itself trivial. You naturally expand the scope of what you attempt and take on harder problems than you could before. The floor rises, and so does the ceiling. The open question is whether that still holds once models can also do the harder problems, or whether choosing and framing those problems remains the human part.

I have a sudden new appreciation for the Lincoln Memorial.

To my eye it looks like either (silk) screen printed or wood block pressed.

When I became a lead dev, one of the first issues I had was a 55 y/o dev who begrudgingly adopted git but consistently included commits like: “Monday morning commit”, “changed some things”, “commit”. He also refused to delete issue template examples and included it all with his own additions.

In the entire time we worked together over a few years, he refused to adapt to the rest of the team.

>This is probably an unpopular opinion.

I wouldn't say so. Historically it's quite common. Maxwell's EM papers used such convoluted notation it it quite difficult to read. It wasn't until they were reformulated in vector calculus that they became infinitely more digestible.

I think though your third point is the most important; right now people are focused on results.

As the saying goes: "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast".

I think maybe more that the users of this website, which is designed in a way that is intensely functional compared to other similar sites, just prefer less “useless” design features.

Personally I like the distinction between them as it gives me context for the object being a pointer, which helps with "at-a-glace" reading of clean code.

In 2018 I spent ~£6300 on train tickets for personal holiday travel all over the UK. Of that, almost 50% of it was refunded due to meeting requirements for partial refunds due to delayed/cancelled services.

After that experience, I purchased a car and motorbike and I will never be convinced to give up my independence in exchange for that abysmal service. It was completely morale breaking. What's worse is I then worked in Japan during 2019 and experienced some of the best service I could possibly think would be reasonable. It's hard to defend in any form the absolute depressing state of the UK rail service.

I have had a RX580, RX590, 6600XT, and 7900XT using Linux with minimal issues. My partner has had a RX590, 7700XT on Windows and she's had so many issues it's infuriating.

In around 2017 I had a scholarship at Wuhan University. During that time the university hosted a cultural fair for international students. What was most interesting to me (as someone from the UK) was that I met for the first time ever students from North Korea.

These students were smartly dressed (suited and booted), which in comparison to everyone else in casual clothes, made them stand out. They spoke excellent English and Chinese, they were polite and thoughtful. Each international group had to give a stage performance, to which the NK students performed a piece similar to Beijing Opera; it was without doubt the most well rehearsed, costumed and, vibrant performance of the lot.

It made me realise I had a very narrow perspective of NK.