amerika_blog

Perl is the ultimate hacker's language.

It was for the 90s and 00s what Microsoft BASIC was to the 1980s.

However, I think it's also coming back. Most of the "inefficiencies" it got tagged with were relics of the server model at the time, like CGI.

Now many are seeing that mastery of a general-purpose language is better than knowledge of specialized methods in a specialized language.

The first is flexible; the latter is not.

The Perl culture is very much "Wild West" meets the race to space.

It's a language for people who are comfortable enough around theory that they don't need syntax to force them to use it.

At the same time, it's highly evolutionary -- it supports the fastest, dirtiest, hackinest method of getting to the goal -- and thus has prototyping built in to production.

I often write Perl scripts twice. The first is a tape-up job to "git 'er done" and the second is a more elegant and architected approached.

This method matches the configuration of most jobs. The client doesn't (fully) know what they want. Last-minute, world-bending exceptions arise. Well-intentioned schemes gang aft agley.

With this prototyping-production, I'm able to get something up and working, and can fix it later if the client has foresight.

Theory is great. I am the first to defend theory. But if it doesn't correspond to application, there's another word for it: arbitrary.

(You may note the difference between two predominant value systems illustrated in that sentence.)

Still the best all-purpose language. Trend languages like Ruby and Haskell are flashes in the pan.

"We are not inherently better than those people, we're just luckier about our surroundings."

It seems to me people choose their own actions. When enough choose badly, the society as a whole decays.

I support the NSA monitoring.

No, not a troll.

At this point, the USA has a ton of enemies. Filtering through emails, phone, etc. is a good way to catch these. We need to give law enforcement the tools it needs.

Seeing how this access was abused to hunt down Tea Party groups convinces me that the NSA needs to be de-politicized, not shut down.

I think we'll find that this monitoring is inevitable because the technology is there and also, since the technology is there, if it is not used and a terrorist incident occurs, people will be held responsible for NOT using it.

It can't end soon enough.

The open internet meant that anyone with TCP/IP could see all content.

Facebook put everything behind a wall that was both effective at blocking open access and ineffective at protecting privacy.

The centralization of the internet into a handful of sites -- Twitter, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Google -- is destructive to the original mission and concept of the internet.

You know Dot Com Bubble 3.0 is about to burst when some site gets funding for interpreting rap lyrics.

The truth is often hidden in plain sight simply because most will never go looking for it.

These are coffee table books about interesting/ironic details of our world, not any actual reshaping. I used to read such books in the pursuit of being an "intellectual," then picked up Marcus Aurelius and realized how puerile all the coffee-table folderol really is.

"Working hard" is confusing the tool for the objective.

Are they working effectively?

That last word is the important one. It implies a connection between the work and reality.

Otherwise, people gladly work hard... on irrelevant bullshit that makes them look good but doesn't advance the company.

Modern media is a good way to make yourself neurotic. Fear sells and misery sells. Everything else is not of interest.

"When an organized group of people uses force to take your belongings, leveraging tactics of fear for political ends, isn't that firmly within the definition of terrorism?"

No, that's democracy.

And the dumbest ideas always win, because the broadest section of the population can understand them.

My kids are growing up on classical music. It helps accelerate this process.

The scholar-gentry are false elites who have no idea how disconnected from reality they are.

Source: former one, fall from grace, mostly by choice.

Government is the enemy.

That means no wealth redistribution.

Can the internet balance these two?

This sounds like politics to me more than anything else.

Having everyone learn to code is like having everyone be a paralegal.

Most will be bad at it. Neither is particularly difficult, but specialization is a matter of personality more than anything else.

Will you do a Slayer cover?

I didn't know this. Thanks for elaborating. I always enjoyed Germany, but I liked France too.

Good synopsis. Check out the discussion on Reddit itself:

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1si31j/reddits_...

Reddit is designed for SEO gaming.

The point is to have your bots/friends downvote everything but your submission.

It works every time.

Ask these guys:

http://www.o9a.org/

And spending $100 on Chinese food, instead of $40 on non-perishables, is?

Why are there so many Romanians and Bulgarians in Germany? Seems a weird choice to make. I mean, Germany's a lovely place, but why a mass exodus to there? "It's Tuesday, let's move to Germany."

That's not a terrible idea at all. Around here, you can also get bean filling in jars, which is another good source of protein (and flatulence, but what isn't these days).

"It makes me sick that I pay around 40% in state and federal taxes and social security (not that much lower than Western European countries) yet there is still so much poverty and poverty related issues in our country."

Maybe the problem isn't the money involved, but the methods involved. After all, they say that to repeat the same actions and expect different results is a form of pathology.

Depending on the definition of "healthy."

Eating normal food, with some organics but not all, is reasonably affordable if you're willing to cook.

That takes longer, but results are better.

I don't know how people afford to eat out. It seems that unless you go Taco Bell (and there's no shame in that) two people is $25-50 per meal.

My original statement is quite helpful, if you're trying to get yourself out of a financial hole. Restaurant eating is savagely expensive. I learned that the first time I had to loop a paycheck. It's not complete advice, meaning that not eating at restaurants alone won't lift you from poverty, but getting into the restaurant habit is a good way to stay broke.

"The reason for all the vitriol is that he wasn't suitably enthusiastic -- he didn't pay all the required lip service, he isn't perceived to feel people's pain."

I agree. He's a strong leader who didn't start doing everything "for the poor" and instead focused on making the city strong and beating back the criminal element that ruined it.

That's never popular with the self-pity/white knighting crowd (who seem to have discovered HN, alas).

You're having a mental failure here:

"I'm curious: if you found another engineer who was in a messy codebase doing something something seemingly crazy, would you 1) assume they're an idiot or 2) reserve judgment until you know more?"

I might say:

"Having a messy codebase is a way to keep having bugs."

That's analogous to my original statement.

Much of journalism is actually fiction, mainly because it shows you one detail and neglects to mention context.

Source: former journalist.