> It can be accessed from behind VPNs without any issues, so effectively it doesn't matter that it's not e2e encrypted.
How do these two things correlate? I thought the benefit of E2E encryption is the fact that no one can decrypt your messages except for the participants in the conversation. There’s no keys anywhere on a server that an admin could use to decrypt the conversation. How would being behind a VPN negate that? The VPN still has to go through Discord servers where a key is presumably stored if the information is encrypted at all.
I’m all for using C for native development (and because I find it fun to work in occasionally), but I agree with your sentiment here. Not only do you have to manage memory manually, but you also have to do a lot more work for basic string manipulation which is the vast majority of web work. I would much rather work with a language with built in support for string manipulation and well known 3rd party libraries with good ergonomics for working with JSON, which a lot of your APIs will most likely be using.
Yep. The company that my 401K is managed through began sending me these stupid emails about “Tips to manage your wealth”, and it was marked as an email that could not be unsubscribed from because it was pertinent to my account. It took an angry note left on their feedback form with a threat to report them to get those emails to finally stop showing up. It’s disgusting. I literally can’t even tell which emails I need to pay attention to that are about my 401K because they mingle spam in there.
I saw another commenter explain that it’s passed by reference, but I agree with you. The C++ Core Guidelines even mention that it’s better to use raw pointers (or pass by value and return a value) in cases like this to make the intent clear.
A pointer parameter can be null and it doesn't make sense for this parameter to be null, so IMO a reference is the better choice here.
A non-const reference is just as clear a signal that the parameter may be modified as a non-const pointer. If there's no modification const ref should be used.
It's about clarity of intent at the call site. Passing by mutable ref looks like `foo`, same as passing by value, but passing mutability of a value by pointer is textually readably different: `&foo`. That's the purpose of the pass by pointer style.
You could choose to textually "tag" passing by mutable ref by passing `&foo` but this can rub people the wrong way, just like chaining pointer outvars with `&out_foo`.
If you want clarity of intent define dummy in and out macros but please don't make clean reference-taking APIs a mess by turning them into pointers for no good reason
In theory a from_char with an optional output parameter could be useful to validate that the next field is a number and/or discard it without needing to parse it; it might even be worth optimizing for that case.
I really don’t understand what you’re saying here. Letters have existed for literally thousands of years at this point and people were able to communicate effectively through that. Several countries were founded and destroyed with coordination through written communication.
I know plenty of people that still study the letters that were used to communicate while founding the United States. It seems to me that the last 20 years has led to a massive decrease in the effectiveness of written communication because people don’t have to be clear or concise anymore.
Perhaps they still study those letters due to the ambiguity in understanding of what those people meant?
We also don’t know that they understood each other as effectively as they would have if they communicated verbally in person.
It is far easier to understand someone’s true meaning in person thanks to tone and body language. Communication in person is quicker because typing/writing is slow. That speed allows for faster ideation and iteration.
It’s not impossible to communicate in written form at all but I don’t believe it’s as effective.
To your first point, we write more emails, more DMs, more online comments, more text messages etc than ever before. We clearly communicate more in written form now than at any point in history.
> Essentially these are people who don't actually want to work and would be just as happy or happier on UBI.
As one of “these people”, I enjoy my job, but I can recognize the fact that it’s just a job. I’m amazed that you would classify people that don’t center their whole life around their job as people that would be just as happy without a job.
I have a lot of other hobbies. I definitely would not be happier if you just took one of them away and gave me money instead.
> I enjoy my job, but I can recognize the fact that it’s just a job.
There's an old saying that "you become what you do". It's fine if your employment is "just a job" for you and you have hobbies you prefer.
But don't be amazed that there are people who define themselves by their careers as much as others define themselves by their hobbies. That's who you're competing with.
I personally have not seen that workaholic employees get consistent preference in workplaces. Often they get shafted the hardest, particularly in highly competitive workplaces (where, for example, supervisors may undermine their best employees who might threaten their own ambitions).
And the hardest workers are also prone to burnout, which often leads to catastrophic career failures: quitting suddenly with no backup plan, changing careers, having a breakdown and ending up nonfunctional for months at a time.
I have worked in a variety of workplaces, some that were circling the toilet, some that were leading their industries and nonetheless still shooting higher, and some that thought/hoped they were the latter but just didn't have what it takes.
The most consistently successful companies I've worked for have their employees work like tortoises, not hares. They want us to work hard, but sustainably. They discourage all that hypercompetitive nonsense that rewards backstabbers over hard workers, and they encourage us to have a life outside of work to keep us sane. They do this not out of the kindness of their hearts, but because they are insatiably greedy and focused: they want our next 20+ years of productivity and experience.
