Depending on the language it could be tricky. For example in Ruby everything literally is an object. There are no standalone functions. Not having a class simply makes it hard to use. I can't autoload methods. I could group them in a module but that's not the point. So while coding in Ruby I'm planning to stay with small classes. I treat class as a smallest testable entity in Ruby.
On the contrary, in Python, a function is a first class citizen which can be selectively imported and easily tested.
As Smith described, people didn't invent money straight away. First, resources like salt and metals; then stuff you can melt (easily divisible). Then official coins of equal weight to fight counterfeiting and inaccuracy of weight.
I'm afraid this is one of the "history doesn't fit my ideology" pieces.
The first two words after the title are "Adam Smith". Later text confirms that it's the same person, with "The man who arguably founded modern economic theory, the 18th-century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, popularized the idea that barter was a precursor to money."
The idea of Smith, Ricardo and Marx, many interested economists and philosophers of economics argue, can still be used very fruitfully to analyze current economic and societal conditions. The fact that some of their analyses were dropped as the discipline of economics grew out of political economy is not necessarily a sign that the analyses were deficient. Alan Freeman has some essays on the ideological motivations which led to their analyses of labour and capital being dropped.
I expected such semi-negative, distrustful comment the second I finished reading this list. Some will dislike the individualistic, anti-collectivist character of it.
I would argue the list is not individualistic at all as, as others posters have mentioned, it implicitly reduces the individual person to their economic output (productivity).
A real individualistic list would focus on the quality of life of the individual.
Of course money is important in that regard but studies have pretty consistently shown that community, meaning, and I’ll throw in health, are the key components of individual happiness.
It's not individualist so much as corporatist, and not so much anti-collectivist as anti-humanist. This post exactly mirrors Stalinism in its reduction of humans to their capacity for production. Can we please just for once stop trying to portray anything but the most extreme pluto-techno-libertarian POV as pure communism?
Employing a euphemism to make something sound better is always fun (corporate "missions" and "visions" are often good examples) but that doesn't really change the underlying reality.
It always contains some information payload. If you felt triggered by it and failed to parse the content then maybe you're overly emotional.
For some people who aren't it's going to be useful assessment of how bad this code was.
I see this ongoing trend (Twitter) that by limiting the ways in which people can express themselves, you can in theory broaden the recipient circle (to include people who otherwise would be offended and wouldn't read).
In practice you not only limit the ways in which information can be distributed but often also barter away some people who weren't offended and would get useful information this way.
Looking at speech this way is also a bad idea because today's acceptable is tomorrow's unacceptable word and the only way to allow all information is to allow all speech.
All I'm saying is that there is a spectrum of ways to communicate about things like this, from "fuck you you piece of shit how dare you put out this garbage code" to "hey, bud, I see what you're trying to do. But there's a mistake here, which I can explain." Linus chose something closer to the left than the right. You can get the same technical ideas across either way, but as you move toward the latter mode of communication you will decrease the number of recipients who have trouble receiving your message because of its negative emotional content.
"maybe you're overly emotional." Feel free to label me however you please. It does not change the fact that if your goal is to communicate ideas efficiently, my way will help you avoid alienating some folks, and has no practical downside.
There's a big difference between ugly ad hominem comments and saying that your code is bs.
> and has no practical downside
That's the place when we differ in opinion. It has one direct downside of preventing some people from expressing their opinions and conveying the point. And another in the long run – setting up a precedents of what can and cannot be said.
> Feel free to label me however you please
It was general note not something directed at you.
There's plenty of people arguing that logic itself is white oppression mechanism so I'm not surprised.
This is a moral / philosophical problem not technological one.
We have lots of things opposing each other:
- democracy and majority vote vs minorities
- solving 80% of problems efficiently vs ideal utopia
The world itself is biased, we are all biased, we all have different moral values. There is no definitive moral rule with which we could compare anything and easily say it's good or bad.
Conservatism isn't inherently bad just like openness to new ideas isn't. We usually need the right proportion of both to go forward.
I'm not sure if the US freedoms are just talk because all those successful companies which Spain wants to tax were started in US not in EU.
So Spain with it's $12B of export can risk imposing tariffs (it's essentially a tax at mostly US companies) compared to e.g. Germany which exports much more.
According to CEIC Spain had $232B of tax revenue in 2018. The article suggests it's going to bring 850M EUR = $943M to state's coffers so would represent around 0.4% of yearly tax revenue.
How come it's easier to impose a tax on particular area (which sounds unfair) and risk international relations with US instead of doing something else to gain just 0.4%. Either it's ideologic or they really can't find the money.
One doesn’t have to be exponentially smarter than others in given moment – by compounding smart ideas and decisions one can get exponentially better outcomes in time.
On the contrary, in Python, a function is a first class citizen which can be selectively imported and easily tested.