Thought it was about electric fence the malloc debug library, and was surprised to see so many comments. Turns out it is not mentioned at all in the comments, so correcting that :)
The author, rather unfortunately, focuses primarily on the predation from the "generalized colleague", and that wasn't welcomed by many commenters, possibly because people in big-tech tend to be young and do need help, so have to ask for it.
But the way I see it, the predation is institutionalized in big companies.
-- The Intellectual Property department blocking the entire R&D of the entire product division for the whole day, to give a presentation on how to file a patent. Knowing full well that only a dozen of these people will every do, at best.
-- IT dept locking down everything, because, you know, there are risks and we don't want to take it. Doesn't matter if it slows down everyone else everywhere.
-- "Security" disabling access to slightest technical information, because, you know, someone could steal it. Just ask and you'll have access. (How does one asks for something one doesn't know exists?)
-- Purchasing that shortlists only some contracting shops and not accepting any others. Doesn't matter if the shortlisted one don't "carry" the competence (e.g., try EMC specialists).
All these people consider that as their achievements and are not shy about it when yearly appraisal comes. We all work as one team aren't we? And then comes the day of layoffs. One reason of it being that the R&D hasn't been performant enough. Guess what, we aren't so much of one team anymore.
I have two older sisters. They are way older than me, which means they left for college when I was very young (when I was bout 5 or 6). I don't think they went through the same stuff as me, but still lived through a lot of very fucked up shit. We live in the same city and are very close, we see each other for their kids birthday and all of that. I'm very lucky to have them.
I know why my mother had me years later, because when my father was angry he would yell at my mother "it's you who wanted another, so take care of him", but with more vicious insults. It turns out that when my mother had her first pregnancy, she was supposed to have a son but had a miscarriage in the toilet. I think this pretty much explains her using me to satisfy her emotional needs all the time; I literally was her emotional garbage can. Telling me how she feels like an ATM for the family, how she's lonely and not taken seriously by others; things that a husband have to deal with, not a child.
So anyway, my sisters began to extended family members about what happened in our house when they were young and also of what happened to me. Like me, it probably took them years to unshame themselves and flip the culpability unto the abusers. It created a scandal I think in the extended family, although always very hush hush, as is usual in small rural places.
My parents probably got a word of what my sisters told about them and then when my oldest sister got her first child, it was actually my parents who stopped talking to them. They never told me why they stopped talking to my sisters, but we figured it out. For some reason that enraged my father and forced my mother to stop talking to them but not to me. After a few years I got tired of seeing them trying to play nice and burning bridges after bridges with other family members and family friends, and I decided to cut them off. Although my sisters never made any kind of ultimatum, I could see how my parents were throwing a wrench between my and my sisters by only talking to me and not to them.
There are more details to this sordid story. It really could make for a full TV drama episode; these people love drama and being the victim. Don't fall for their game.
> And even if you write inefficient code, CPUs are so fast that you won't notice it.
I think you are arguing for the right cause but with wrong arguments. In C language, not understanding in details what exactly the code does, can be just as disastrous as in Verilog. Internet examples abound.
> ... malloc() returns a pointer to sequentially-addressable bytes ...
malloc () doesn't return even that. It returns 'void *' which isn't of much use without a further upcast. The required upcast, and the rest that follows, is the coder's own idea of what happens.
