locknitpicker

> but that'd be unprecedented

Not really. The unprecedented part was how come contracts proponents decided to push a proposal against all feedback and concerns, knowing very well it was falling to build up any form of consensus.

Contracts proponents knew for years the featured proposal was opposed as it was riddled with fundamental technical flaws. The unprecedented part was the way they said "screw them" and pushed forth anyway, hoping the formality would build enough pressure to force anyone opposing the feature to succumb to the bureaucratic pressure and silence their concerns.

This contracts stunt reeks of corporate chicanery. I mean, what was the plan here? Ignore everyone, get the bureaucratic foot in the door, and then blackmail all dissenting voices of sabotaging the process if contracts proponents didn't had their way?

> Because they didn’t vote the way the author wanted them to.

That's my opinion as well. It's a smear campaign lashing back at people who dared to point out flaws.

> There's an argument that Contracts reduces the complexity of using the language because it offers a more readable alternative to template metaprogramming

Like most people in this thread, you should really read up on contracts before commenting. The contracts proposal is for runtime assertions, and their problem is that they are poorly specified and fundamentally broken. Their proponents haven't been addressing any of their concerns and tried to push a half baked version of them down everyone's throats, which was why they failed to pass.

> The problem is that a bunch of people who didn't care for them did something very extreme by voting against approving C++26.

The only extreme and tone deaf thing I see in this story is how contracts proponents were faced with multiple papers demonstrating quite clearly and extensively how they were broken in specification and in form, but still tried to ignore all the criticism and force them through a consensus process in spite of being clearly opposed.

How does this make any sense? What was the plan here? To blackmail the C++ community to accept a broken feature under threat of the proposal not passing?

Make it make sense?

What I want to see is the people who tried to force contacts upon the process in spite of all opposition to come forth and explain their rationale. It was highly absurd and even unthinkable to force a broken feature down C++'s throats with bureaucratic chicanery, and then complain that the same bureaucracy has mechanisms to stop it's abuse. I for one would like to hear an explanation.

> Correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't follow C++ very closely, but based on previous discussions on HN, the opposition paper obliquely referenced in the blog post was presumably Bjarne Stroustrup's (...)

I've noticed that Bjarne Stroustrup is being subjected to a smear campaign, when things are far simpler and far less conspiratorial than they are making out to be.

There are indeed papers demonstrating that not only is the current proposal for contracts broken but it also fails to adhere to core C++ principles. They have been published since at least 2017. Contracts aren't new, nor the problems they introduced. They've been routinely removed from C++ standards, and so far the proposal wasn't fixed.

So ask yourself this: why was a notoriously broken feature forced into the proposal when it was clear it wasn't going to pass?

From an outsider's point of view, I see this from a different perspective. Contracts proponents tried to use bureaucratic tricks and threats of abnormal processes to force a broken feature they knew for years that wasn't supported or passing the smell test. And now that they saw their efforts thwarted , the complain that their plan failed and they have opposition?

I mean, there is even a paper dating back to 2025 called "contracts concerns" and from 2026 called "contracts fundamental flaws". The C++ standard is a consensus-driven process. Does this look like consensus? Clearly no.

So we have a group of people who ignored the calls that they were pushing a broken feature, but tried to railroad the process anyway and ignore any concern or warning. Then, when they tried to force their way through the process, their bluff was called and their threats failed. And now they are lashing back.

> If you lived to 20 you had a pretty good chance of making it to 70

The facts don't quite line up with your belief. In the middle ages, those reaching 20 had an expected remaining life of around 20 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

Thank you for posting this comment. What a gem, and a treat to read.

> "Permit level” is doing a lot of lifting.

Have you considered the possibility that they meant exactly what they stated? That the output is good enough to reasonably believe it can be built and pass inspection,but it may still include flaws in details?

> Why would Russia need crypto, when they can trade with China or buy through middle men in Dubai or similar places ?

I'm not sure you understand how international sanctions work, particularly the scheme imposed on Russia.

For example, read up on Russia's rupee surplus

https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/india-russia-susp...

> It's slightly unrealic idea though, as most of internet users are consumers, and that's the role they really prefer. That's why Dropbox gained popularity in spite of, you know, the fact that we all can do it with FTP.

Dropbox gained popularity because none of us can or want to bother to do it with FTP, with the exception of a very small and determined minority.

Why do you think that even FANG engineers use cloud storage systems such as Dropbox/iCloud/OneDrive/Google Drive/etc. Can't an elite software engineer put together a FTP server?

Why do you think Dropbox et al are still a thing in spite of projects such as Syncthing?

This is not the only instance where user experience and convenience show their value. Look at Docker, for example. The "aktually" crowd will be fast to say that anyone can do the same with chroot et al, but they will again be missing the whole point. It's the same thing why Microsoft tried to invest in Aspire even though Docker is here.

It's like complaining that people can buy bread when all they need to make their own is flour, water, salt, and yeast. That's completely besides the point, ain't it?

> At some point it clicked to me that crypto people don’t really care about the utility. Main purpose is creating new players in the world with immense amounts of power.

There are many types of crypto people. Some of them are not crypto people per se, but people who saw crypto as a means to an end. Among them, there are plenty of people who seem to be invested in sheer fraud.

It's also important to note that there are many sides to the scheme. There's for example the instant transactions side, and the long term bet in scarcity. For example, Russia has been leaning heavily on crypto to circumvent sanctions due to their invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/08/russias-use-of-...

> In the end, it did produce a lot of rich people out of thin air, and I guess, served its purpose.

It was not out of thin air. This is literally a grift where the people holding the bag saw their money find its way to the pockets of those who got rich from it.

> id still argue they had a better standard of living than someone that works 8-10h/day and then comes home to cook and clean?

You're somehow succumbing to the fallacy of the edilic life of old.

The same life where you had to have a dozen of kids to overcome infant mortality, and each time a woman gave birth it was like a Russian roulette.

And the average life expectancy was what? 40 years? You didn't had a midlife crisis because you'd be dead by then.

> Technology makes a lot of things better. Like eliminating symptoms of 95% of cystic fibrosis victims.

Counterpoint: any leaking abandoned oil well. Check out YouTube videos documenting the abandoned oil wells in West Texas, which are dumping industrial volumes of water into abandoned land.

> The games are fast and with much better, consistent payoff than other sports such as football and soccer.

Soccer is a slow burn where a game is always standing on a fragile equilibrium. Football and baseball are mainly boring because they are turn-based, with long periods of nothing happening between brief action moments.

Basketball is the only dominant US sports that matches soccer in terms of excitement and teams standing on a fragile equilibrium. Of course the NBA screws this up by stretching finals games into 7-game series, capping soccer-levels of excitement derived from winner-takes-all tournaments. It's no coincidence that NCAA tournaments manages to build up so much attention and such a dedicated following.

> It was hard to ask any question. Sometimes it felt if a few characters match it will be closed off as dupe.

I feel this is the critical bit. People are quick to dismiss this problem as a moderation problem, but I don't agree. I believe it was a query problem, and the absolute lack of support for tying both questions and answers to specific software versions, or range of software versions. So you'd see answers from ages ago marked as the right answer to a question, even though it was using some deprecated version.

Questions on how to address the same issue when new versions were out where closed as duplicates because literally the question was asked before and answered as well. But the answer nowadays would not be applicable.

Then to sidestep this problem you see the phenomenon where ancient questions end up having multiple answers, with newer answers even out voting the accepted answer. And even those would be deprecated as well.

So SO was designed as a system where a single question can only possibly have a single accepted answer. Ever. And anyone asking similar questions would by design be routed to he question that was asked and answered. But the system was designed over the concept of static information and static notion of truth. Which the world definitely doesn't follow.

Yes, ESP32s are not exactly like RPis. And that is fine.

Do you need a full blown Linux desktop to blink a led light? Or drive a servo? Or even have a HTTP server? No.

> Is that a change in the valuation of the pi or of the dollar?

I believe that revenue maximization plays a role. So it's inflation in a way, but not the kind where bom costs are forwarded to consumers.

> Those are entirely different operational models.

In some of the tinkering applications, RPis are shoehorned into the very operarional model that is followed by ESP32s.

ESP32s may be harder to debug but they allow us to remove a big chunk of the complexity that lies between our code and what we want the device to do.

I think your criticism is more in line with "they are not exactly the same as RPis". And that is fine.

> Even at 10€ it was tantalizing. Please, give us something in that price range.

A few years ago we could get our hands on a Orange Pi Zero, with wifi, Ethernet, and 512MB of RAM, for less than $10. I think I bought mine for slightly over $5.

Now they sell for a tad over $30. What a shame.

We now have the ESP32 line of microcontrollers. That should scratch some of the itches.

> The not so good ones, are doing the same bullshit they did before, but now the don't even bother to check it.

What bothers me greatly is how the not so good ones are now delegating all their contributions, code and otherwise, to AI assistants, and fail to to any cursory check in what they are delivering. It's sheer laziness and irresponsibility.

So far I've seen junior developers who found sudden passions for code reviews to post high volume of comments on any PR to showcase their technical prowess, but the comments clearly don't match the code or context and we're obviously posted without looking. I've also seen old but barely competent developers leaning quite heavily on AI assistants to formulate troubleshooting theories that are based on scenarios that deeply contrast with the actual problem, and go to the extent of announcing they identified root causes when they didn't even tried to reproduce them in the actual system, because if they had tried they would notice the whole theory is impossible.

Everyone talks about high productivity gains, but these types manage to use AI to waste everyone's time.

You're trying too hard to play the role of the "aktually" guy. Assuming good intentions and taking a pass at replying would have been a better contribution to the discussion.

I don't know about the US, but not even FANGs pay six figure salaries to most of their European employees. Perhaps L7 and up.

> I can, easily, wouldn’t feel the cost in any way.

You are not in the median. Half of Americans claim they do not have emergency funds, and over a quarter cannot pay their monthly bills.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/10/14/many-amer...

> I actually have seen good coworkers get chopped down because they cared more about the system than others egos.

What does this even mean? This sounds like an euphemism for someone being a jerk just because they wanted to unilaterally push changes to the code.

> It saddens me when management supports egos more than the product. It shows up years later to the customers.

Management are hired to support the people that maintain the product, and help them work together. If a developer fails to work together with coworkers, it's the manager's job to either help that developer right their wrongs, or support other developers by getting rid of the problematic one.

> Being “easy to work with” is unfortunately often confused with supporting other people agendas.

I don't think this is hard or complex. It's an easy question with a simple answer: do you like working with user foo? Whether you answer yes or no, why?

If virtually all your coworkers answer no, and the org feels it's in their interest to kick you out, then what lesson do you take from that?

And let's not forget that someone going around inventing fires to put out that he alone can put out is also something that fits the description of an agenda.

So no, sometimes the world is not our to get you. Sometimes you cause grief to everyone around you, to the point that it's a net benefit to get rid of you.

People need to stop confusing geeks and nerds with being socially awkward and outright sociopaths. Enjoying tinkering with things doesn't require you to be abhorrent or lack any social skills. You're not smart or intelligent if you believe it's a good idea to go around telling others to fix problems they don't have and being obnoxious about it. Being able to fix a bug does not change that.

> If GPU were from the get go designed as a parallelism tool first and video game tools second the hardware architecture and the language would probably be different than today and simpler (...)

The market demand was for video game tools, though.

People didn't wanted faster compute, they wanted their computer games to work smoothly on the hardware they already own. Therefore, they preferred to spend 100-200€ on a point upgrade, much like RAM, than scrapping their 2k€ PC.

To give people a reason to buy these upgrades, games had to use them. Therefore video cards were designed specially for the usecases and development flow that game developers already followed.

If it wasn't for the video game market, NVidia wouldn't exist as we know it today.

> What is weird is criticizing people who acknowledge good things because of past bad things when nothing anyone said here, that I can see, anything close to "they are redeemed rejoice!"

This is like going to a politician's event and seeing him giving away lollipops to toddlers and kissing babies. But it's the same politician caught in corruption and embezzlement scandals.

You look at that and praise how they have redeemed. Other people look at that and see a corrupt politician handing out candy.

People tell us who they are through their actions. If you prove yourself to be capable of morally reprehensible things to the point throughout the years you build a reputation for all the morally reprehensible things you do, does your potential to do morally reprehensible things change if you go way out of your way to let people know that sometimes something's you do aren't morally reprehensible?

> After their effort to take credit for the research of others last time, it's within OpenAI's best interests to go the extra mile to convince skeptics to not dismiss new research findings.

This.

The truth if the matter is that this is still a publicity stunt. This investment of time, effort, and compute is aimed at building a reputation that this company's model is better than the competition's. The previous publicity stunt brew up in their face, and now they seem to be trying to adapt and double down.

> After becoming highly visible for bringing things to attention, I was offered a package to leave, I assume so they could go back to a culture of top down authority and silence.

If we asked your coworkers to tell us what happened, would they say "he was easy to work with and so generous with their time by fixing issues all over the org"?

Or would they say something completely different?

> I recently saw someone cry when a person very kindly asked them to explain a discrepancy.

Perhaps what you perceived as someone being emotional was actually someone who spent a long time barely functioning due to things that have been happening in their life, and that small event just so happened to be a straw that broke the camel's back.

People around you are going through stuff. Everyone is. Someone's stuff is easy to carry, someone else's stuff isn't. "Back in the day" people also carried their burden with them. This is nothing new. Perhaps you never noticed because so far everyone you dealt with was great at masking, and desperately want to avoid having to see coworkers like you worsen their burden by doing what feels like kicking them while they are down.