aluth

Agreed, though I've found Seneca's letters to be more insightful (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistulae_Morales_ad_Lucilium), as well as the The Enchiridion (http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html).

I can appreciate the idea that one's work can (potentially) function as a superior alternative to children, with respect to legacy. In general, I'm all for elevating the rational part of Human mind. On the other hand, I think it's dangerous to describe the reproductive priorities of the "primitive" mind as a "silly desire". To put it more concretely, imagine a husband who has just learned that the children he's dedicated years of financial, emotional, and educational support are not his own. Imagine the gamut of emotions that cross his mind: anger/hatred toward his wife's deception; the humiliation that comes from being deceived; the conflict that comes from both loving the children, yet despising them for what they represent. How do you think that man would respond if you told him that his feelings were the consequence of a "silly desire". It's all well and good to have a world with gay uncles that support their nephews and nieces; but somebody's gotta make those nephews and nieces.

> Anyway, if you're choosing to have kids, one is enough. The real winners adopt.

Not from an evolutionary standpoint, lol

  Life is meant to be lived.

A tautology at best, but more likely empty rhetoric.

  Make healthier choices, but still enjoy.

This assumes healthy choices cannot produce enjoyment.

  Otherwise, what's the point?

In our modern times, it seems to me, the point of life is whatever you make of it. I'm getting the impression that the point of your life is to experience as much pleasure as possible, i.e.: hedonism. This is a perfectly valid approach to one's life, but I wouldn't assume that others are getting less enjoyment out of their existence simply because they choose to impose constraints on the pleasures they pursue.

Of course it was harmful, you were focusing on the wrong thing. The point of having methods with no more than [insert number] lines isn't because having a method with more than [insert number] lines is inherently bad. It's because long methods are usually an indication that the method is breaking the single responsibility principle. I get the impression that a bunch of programmers read Robert Martin's work, put no thought into what he was saying about short methods, concluded that the line count was the problem, and began proliferating that idea.

To give you an example, when using Java's stream functionality, I tend to insert every method call in the chain after stream() in a new line, for readability:

  ...
  entityIds.stream()
      .map()
      .filter()
      .collect();
  ...

When I scan the method to see if it should be broken down, the fact that this code occupies 4 lines doesn't really contribute much to my decision to refactor the method into several methods, because those 4 lines are accomplishing one thing.