simplotek

> Bluntly, every person I know who's expressed these kinds of sentiments is guilty of the same mistake: externalizing their happiness.

I don't believe this take is fair or correct. FANG-like jobs are designed to depersonalize workers, compell them to work extremely long hours, force them to be constantly on and available, and basically live for the company, only to be pushed out of the company by design and get fired as disposable canon fodder at the slightest bump on the calendar.

The pay might be good, but it resembles a deal with the devil.

Have you ever wondered why the average tenure at some top tech companies is measured in months, and reaching a milestone like 4 or 5 years is lauded as a major achievement? I seriously doubt that so many people is just "externalizing their happiness". Sometimes it's really the job that kills you inside and does so by design, don't you think?

> This feels a little defensive, but also pretty out of line with the philosophy of the C++ standards committee. The committee has been aggressively stapling every new leg they could find to that dog for decades. They just chose not to staple this particular leg on until now.

Your comment doesn't bear any resemblance with reality. C++ started with a spartan standard library and only recently did it standardized it's file system API.

Compare that with what, say, POCO already offers. Or Boost. Or java/C#/Python/etc.

What exactly led you to believe that absurdity?

> I have no idea what you want.

I want you to either substantiate your extraordinary claims regarding C's supposedly security issues along with your personal assertions regarding Linux supposedly being riddled with security vulnerabilities. So far you either desperately tried to avoid the questions or put up strawmen. Either you support your claims and present your rationale or your claims are proven to be nonsense.

Nonsense links to 20 years worth of CVEs that boil down to an average of a few dozen random issues in a codebase of over 12M lines of code is complete nonsense, and showcases the exact opposite of your original claims, not to mention that most have zero to do with C at all.

So exactly where do you base your personal assertion that C is somehow riddled with security issues? Nowhere?

People like you need to either open your eyes and think through your baseless beliefs or stop being disingenuous. The world is very different than the bullshit claims that pops up in your Twitter feed.

> Ownership is about lifetimes, not use.

You're failing to understand that granting access to the raw pointer managed by a std::unique_ptr violates the precondition that the object owned by that smart pointer is managed exclusively by the smart pointer itself.

It's very strange how you fail to get this point when you're trying to complain about C++'s supposedly memory management issues in general, and in this particular case an error sparking from violating these invariants.

Failing to use a smart pointer, to the extent you even have to explicitly ignore errors from static code analyzers to make them, is not a language issue. It's a "pay attention to the big red error messages" issue.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. It makes absolutely no sense to spend so much time and energy mindlessly criticising a programming language to then try to argue that making one of the most basic errors was somehow an acceptable practice when it clearly isn't.

> Here are 2,300 CVEs in linux.

I'm not sure you're being serious. Do you understand your list is comprised of CVEs that date way back in time as far as 2003?

You're talking about an unfiltered, uncategorized list of reports that were published in last two decades.

At least a couple of entries from a decade ago referred to fixing kernel warnings.

And that's what you chose as the single best smoking gun to support your personal assertions on C?

> Of course there is extraction of a raw pointer or reference. But that's a perfectly normal way of writing C++.

No, it isn't. That's flagged by default settings of most static code analysis tools, and it requires explicitly going against the whole point of explicitly assigning ownership of an object.

> What number of vulns would be acceptable to you?

Please stop trying to avoid the question.

Either you based your personal assertions on concrete data, or you're just a clueless troll spewing baseless nonsense.

You've repeatedly tried to dance your way out if substantiating your extraordinary claims.

Either you're able to come up with any semblance of support for your claims, or you can't. What is it?

> Vulns are found at a roughly uniform rate.

I'm sorry, this means nothing.

As you made extraordinary claims regarding the security of Linux, did you based your personal assertion on any real world comparison between OSes? Because so far you failed to provide any support for your claim, beyond pointing out a mailing list thread on a single memory error in a RC1 within a 12M loc codebase.

> It is one example of gazillions.

It's literally a single memory error in over 12 million lines of code.

What exactly was the point you were trying to make?

> We've somehow as a community just come to accept that linux will be riddled with security vulns.

I'm sorry, your claim is pure nonsense detached from reality. What exactly led you to believe it's reasonable to jump from finding a single memory error among over 12M loc to "riddled with security vulnerabilities"? Linux quite literally dominates the list of most secure OSs. Where exactly do you base your personal assertion?

> Oodles of vulns in linux that are made possible by C's lack of safety guarantees.

I'm sorry, isn't your link about how a user found a memory error in the Linux codebase? It seems way farfetched to jump to your conclusion from that starting point. I mean, doesn't Linux have over 12 million lines of code right now?

> It would be more interesting to compare only the code of C++ and Rust written in the same timeframe. My expectation is that C++ wouldn't look as bad as stated in the article.

I agree. The article reads like it started with w conclusion and cherry-picked data to fit that.

> Using C++ for a greenfield project today should require some very good justification though.

Having to maintain legacy C++ applications is all the justification you need to have to understand that staring greenfield projects in C++ is quite frequently and by far the best option on the table

It makes absolutely no sense at all to multiply the tech stacks that a team needs to work on, let alone master, just because naive platitudes have been said about any novel tech stack. You do not make any application better or more secure if you get clueless developers onboarding onto new technologies and forcing them to maintain N+1 code bases and 2*n bindings.

This irrational dislike of C++ ignores the fact that adopting the latest C++ release and toggling static code analysis in your project, which nowadays comes for free, already gets any project way ahead of where naive retractors believe C++ is.

> You answered the question "why don't homeless people get jobs" with what you insist it should be reframed as.

No. The problem is not whether X has a job or not. The problem is why X was forced to lose their home. In this day and age you can still lose your home even if you are juggling multiple jobs.

> This is a fair question to ask, though. Why don’t they just get jobs? What are the structural issues in society that lead to this? Why are some people chronically homeless while the average length of homelessness (for those experiencing it) is “just” around 150 days? Why is getting a job not the solution for many? Why are there even people with jobs who are homeless?

I feel that it's more fruitful to not frame discussions on "why homeless people X" and instead think about why some of us end up losing any support and specially income so that the only and best option is to lose our home.

> Given the final program needs to be storable in RAM + Virtual Memory it surprises me that we still need the intermediate step of pushing to the file system only to then immediately reopen and merge those files.

You don't. I recommend you learn about unity builds, and how major build systems support toggling them at the project and subproject level.

The main reason why most people haven't heard about the concept and those who did the majority doesn't bother with it is that a) you have little to nothing to gain by them, b) you throw incremental builds out if the window, c) you ruin internal linkage and thus can introduce hard to track errors.

Also, it makes no sense at all to argue how the released software needs to run in memory to justify aspects related to how the software is built. At most you have arguments over code bloat and premature optimization, but at what cost?

> Right. The "once in X years" reporting is always exaggerated, by subtly constraining it to a specific geographical point.

Not really. You got it exactly backwards. The return period of an event is determined based on all recorded events. This does not mean that massive events that took place in the past didn't existed if no record was kept. Consequently, massive events are underrepresented both in magnitude and in frequency, and consequently estimates of their return period tend to be larger.

Think of it this way: the concept of the return period of an event (i.e., this is a one in X year's event) is determined based on the average time between similar events.

> the fairly recent event of 1740 foot/~550 meter tall tsunami wave

This isn't exactly true. The ~550 meter height corresponds to the height up to which trees were cleared. However, the tsunami was created by a massive landslide in a contained bay, which pushed the water uphill much like someone falling in a filled tub can push water up the walls.

> I don't personally see the utility in having a 100mbit connection on my phone.

Oh I do. I can grab my laptop, sit anywhere, grab my phone and setup a hotspot, and work away without any concern.

If 5G coverage was better, I would drop my gigabit internet provider right now.

> One could argue that giving one side enough support to keep fighting, but not enough to win, causes long term damage to them.

I don't agree. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been ongoing for around a decade, but only recently has support ramped up to adequate levels.

I recall that Germany's initial response to Russia's 2022 invasion was to pledge handing over helmets.

The goal of a conflict is to win, and what represents winning really depends on your situation. In Ukraine's position, winning might mean more than forcing out Russia from it's territory. For Ukraine, winning might mean breaking Russia's willingness to continue perpetrating a genocide that's ongoing for around a decade.

> You have many options. Joining another startup seems like an easy fix.

I have an honest but blunt question: how enticing is the idea of hiring a non-tech founder of a startup that failed only two years in and at best raised only 500k in funding?

> Ahh, trying to deflect the spotlight from your comrades, eh Ivan?

Your ad hominem makes it clear that you have no arguments to present. I don't have a dog in the US domestic politics race. I'm neither a US citizen nor live anywhere close to the US. I do have some knowledge into the volume of support from Ukraine's allies declared so far, and the US is by far the largest supporter. Only recently did the EU collectively surpassed the US.

https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/media-information/2022/...

If you have nothing productive to add, consider saying nothing.

> Aren't Democrats Putin agents for not providing more aid to Ukraine though? Zelenskyy clearly has said they need more, so the logical conclusion is that Putin ordered those in power to reject those requests and only provide a reduced amount of aid.

There is nothing logical about your statement. The US government, thanks to Biden's administration, is by far Ukraine's largest backer.

> In my personal life experience with abusive people, I find it makes me want to be more in favor of unconditional help for others, not less.

This has nothing to do with conditional or conditional help, or help at all. You feel compelled to fool yourself into believing you're not being exploited, but you're the only one believing that nonsense. You're dealt with like the mark in a con, and not exercising any common sense does not make you more pious, just an easy mark without self esteem.

The people that leech off of you are not the ones who need it the most. They are just the ones that don't mind profiting from less than ethical and moral means.

> Second, I think the "money well spent" part is that you helped her in some small amount, when it was obvious she was suffering, and you didn't expect anything in return.

It seems you have been lucky enough to be living a sheltered life, without any acquaintance having tried to chat you up to their advantage.

Unfortunately there are plenty of people in the real world who are either takers or outright set to exploit you. Not many, but enough to have people learn the wisdom of saying "no" to sob stories.

I once came across a guy who apparently lived close to me who was asking for money for a taxi ride because he was out of gas and had to go to the hospital to check up on his kid who had an emergency and blablabla. I gave the guy 10€ and wished him well. Fast forward a couple of weeks and I stumble upon the same guy right on the same spot. He clearly didn't recognize me as he asked me again for money for a taxi ride because he ran out of gas and his kid was just admitted to the hospital and blablabla. I asked him if he didn't asked for that same request a few weeks ago, to which he just stood there looking at me without saying a word, and after a couple of seconds he turned back and proceeded to walk away and never be seen again.

In the pre mass online shopping days I also had a close friend who just moved to another city. Our friend group had thrown him a big farewell party and everyone promised to keep in touch and visit all the time and all those things. After a few days that friend reached out to us saying he now lived right next to a consumer electronics megashop, and if any of us wanted anything shipped then we could simply send him the cash and he would buy the stuff we needed. A couple of guys from the friend group took him on his offer and sent him cash transfers, and that friend proceeded to ghost everyone.

Sadly I have other personal anecdotes, some of which real sob stories.

It really depends on what you mean by helping people with a small amount. Those who profit from your actions do benefit from the money they get from you even if it's under false pretenses. Robbers who steal stuff from people around them are also helped by getting their hands on il gotten gains.

> The problem is that organisations want a magic formula that will solve all their problems. So they buy an off-the-shelf process with no regards to how it even came to be.

I feel we need to take a step back and look at the organizational problem. Is your job to get things done in a team environment or waste time and effort reinventing the wheel of how to organize work in software development projects? If you're there to ship software then you adopt pre-established organizational methods and adapt them to better suit your team and org's needs.

It turns out that planning projects with high levels of uncertainty and frequent changes in goals and requirements is hard, and thus a JIT/dead reckoning approach to planning with all the stakeholders involved provides acceptable results while minimizing uncertainty.

So what are you going to do, if your goal is to get stuff out of the door? Are you going to reinvent the wheel or are you going to get stuff done with standard approaches?

> (...) all out of their ass?

This blend of mindless contrarianism gets tiresome. If this discussion was about hand-writing, you'd be accusing left-ti-right languages of being pulled out of the ass as well just because it's the standard shared by most.

People feel the need to plan work, estimate work effort, and allocate resources to get stuff done. Some people adopted these methods and they get value out of them. Not everyone has the luxury of picking up tickets created by magic and "it's done when it's done".

If you have a better way of doing this then be my guest and use it, but I have a nagging feeling you'd shit on that too just to feel smarter than everyone.

> The problem is when housing prices are at an all time high and it's almost impossible to find somewhere to rent, even with money in your pocket (...)

I have to call bullshit on this one. A few years ago I moved to a different country and I had an awful time trying to find an apartment to rent. Between awfully expensive flats and squalors, I was forced to extend my stay at an hotel for an additional month. This all ended when I managed to land a flat in a airbnb-like service. It was cheaper than half the apartments I visited at the time, and right in the city center. I spent over a month in that apartment and eventually landed a decent long-term rental, but if it wasn't for the airbnb-like service either I would be forced to burn through cash to stay at hotels or settle with being exploited by abusive landlords. Midway through I even considered just sticking with the airbnb-like service even though I'd risk being out-booked.

Perhaps people like you could spend a minute thinking things through and consider why there is demand for offers somewhere between hotels and long-term rentals, which frequently are completely out of reach of those who have to move to a new city in a short notice.

> No ORM. Sucks having to learn a new ORM every project.

I don't quite follow your logic. ORMs provide a lot of critical features for free right out of the box which take a lot of time and effort to roll out by hand. Database migrations are perhaps the hardest to get right, for example. Why do you believe that the trivial job of onboarding onto a ORM is too much to handle, but manually rolling out and maintaining and debugging hand-written code is somehow an acceptable loss of productivity?

> Yes. The law is worthless for jobs that have complex pay structure.

I disagree. Comparing base pay is the only objective way to compare salaries. You start to get something a kin to fraud when starting to compare "complex pay structures", which are easy to manipulate and use to screw you over if handled by less scrupulous employers/managers.

Also, it seems the law forces companies to list base pay, but they are very well able to complement that info with what they offer to complement the base pay.

> It seems like the free market ideal would be to allow them and if people didn't like them they wouldn't sign them. No one telling anyone what to do.

I’ve grown to learn that arguments on labour markets and free market ideals tend to be very simplistic and, knowingly or not, always boil down to victim blaming.

When we’ve unemployed and actively looking for a job, if we have bills to pay and our budget is tight, our goal is to get a source of income as soon as possible. Consequently, we are vulnerable for unscrupulous conditions, such as non-competes. This does not mean that the job market finds them acceptable or encourages them. It just means employees that push these abusive conditions upon their new hires are abusing their dominant position to exploit workers, specially those in vulnerable positions.