gerbilly

If I'd come here in when React was the new hotness and criticised it, I'm pretty sure I would have been shouted down.

In the meantime this one site I worked on, which used Java for server side rendering¹ with a bit of JQuery and custom scripts is still going strong.

1: It's ridiculous to hear JS people say how awesome server side rending is when basically every other language used for the web was server side, sometimes decades before it.

Wasn't this a bit of a self deprecating summary of his own career?

Many of the comments seem to assume that it was written by his colleagues and that the description of his career is condescending or snarky.

Personally, I find it really funny, and that it probably describes many of us, despite the fact that we think we are way too cool to ever be like the character described in the piece.

Most of today's new tech will become tomorrow's 'legacy'. Imagine how your awsum multi lambda hairball deployment will look in 30 years. (If it's even around in three decades.)

That comment wasn't about cheating it was about the communication medium. I.e. communicating via text or app vs. face to face. I.e. talking to each other like we're computers instead of face to face like people.

> Have you tried taking a taxi in a country where you didn’t know the language?

Yes, lots of times.

It helps to know the rudiments of the language, but mostly we communicated in a kind of pidgin.

Travel books used to have lists of phrases at the very back for this kind of thing. People figured it out.

> the things that created the impetus for ride sharing platforms

Ride sharing platforms weren't created to make things better for the drivers or for the customers, they were created to 'take over' an industry.

At first they will subsidize your rides to more effectively squeeze the old guys out by unfair competition.

Just you wait, if they ever do squeeze them out, and see if they don't become worse than taxis ever were.

Yeah, exactly the same caste system. I didn't say only waiters were in a lower caste. This kind of bullshit is everywhere.

Some establishments pool the tips (cash ones) and use to distribute it to the bussers (don't know about the cooking staff). Obviously this was not a universal practice.

> this incredible scope creep in the customer's responsibilities

It's the difference between being a consumer and being a citizen.

Yes I totally agree. When businesses push for going cashless, they are often doing it to claw back the tips customers are giving their workers.

Tips that have become customary because it's become accepted that a waiter mustn't be paid a living wage. Why has it become accepted, because we have a hidden caste system.

But the customers get to feel cool to frequent a place that 'gets it' because cash is or old people.

> Yea - And those darn kids play music too loud too!

I sure hope so.

> I visit NYC once a year. Plenty of people (esp immigrants from other cultures) don’t have “street smarts” that match what some urbanite 30 years ago would have.

Ironically, the immigrants probably have more street smarts.

> The driver claimed he didn’t know where my hotel was, or even the neighborhood (“Chelsea”).

And you rode with him anyway? Why would you do that?

Reliance on Apps to intermediate everything is bullshit in my opinion. Plus I personally specifically don't want to share my location with some app written by people I've never met who are 100% likely to either misuse it themselves or to sell it to someone who will.

When they want to take your freedom away, they won't come jackbooting in with rifles, they will do it by offering you convenience.

Geez, this was just basic street smarts when I was growing up. Ask some questions upfront.

Have cash on hand when dealing with taxis. Don't assume card terminals will work, or even that they won't skim your card.

You may say, 'That's why I hate taxis cos they scam you,' yet this thread has contains many examples of Uber(Eats)* scamming people too.

Why is that better? Cos it's accessed via smartphone for some reason?

Conjecture/Rant: There is a growing cohort of people who want everything to become 'frictionless'. They are even afraid to just talk to people, talk to girls, everything has to be through text or through an app. If they get their way humans will start to interact with each other more like machines than like people, hey, maybe even through APIs! Meanwhile, what makes life interesting 'is' friction between people and cultures.

> The sentence you quoted was directed at the other commenter's seeming implication that homosexuality's removal from the DSM is somehow an indictment of the psychiatric discipline

There must be some logical fallacy named for this. I've often seen this critique in terms of pandemic policy. ("Why should you believe what you're saying, when you've changed your mind before...")

I mean outside of scientific circles of course, you are reading that point too literally.

Ha thanks, I love a good argument.

>Putting aside the fact that your example isn't actually an insight

So put it aside then, and think of your own better analogy. It changes nothing from the point I was making.

> the "insights" produced in therapy are supposed to lead to change largely on their own.

No one has believed this in a long time.

> I prefer to solve my problems instead of trying to trick myself into thinking they're not what they are.

So do I but sometimes things break, permanently.

I can't bring dead people back to life, if I'm injured or disabled by an accident I can't 'fix' that, but I can find a way to change how I relate to that unfix-able problem. This goes beyond re-framing, of course.

As to childhood experiences and trauma, they are real and often elicit means of coping which later become ingrained habits which can cause dysfunction later on.

Therapy can help you recognise these (insight!) and then start you on the long slow path of unlearning them so they don't cause you problems anymore.