I think the reason paw patrol is on there is it can be viewed as police state propaganda.

I never watched it, so I can’t speak for that, but I do know some people genuinely think that. I am thus not too sure that this is done ironically.

That’s the sort of indictment of C++ I like to hear. It’s not just me then. I sometimes feel like I’m taking crazy pills with some colleagues who are super enthusiastic about it still.

But again, I’m stupid, I know I’m stupid, and C++ has way too many features and convoluted behaviours which are hard for me to remember and reason about. It often feels like it makes me think more about the language problems than the actual problem I’m supposed to work on. It may say more about me than the language, but I do feel validated with comments like this.

I had no idea about the assertion! Thanks.

Yes, this is plain wrong or often unimportant on modern architecture, you’re right. I, certainly mistakenly, thought this was one of the reasons for the idiomatic version involving function composition, which is the thing I, subjectively, don’t enjoy as much.

I stand corrected.

Thanks for the detailed answer. Preaching to the choir.

The existence of the concept of ownership in languages like C++ is why I threw “moderately” in there. I agree depending on what you take that to mean, it may or may not do some heavy lifting.

For the rest, I’d divide it into hard facts (compiler messages are absolutely undeniable, in any circumstance) and things that can definitely be true depending on your personal use cases. I’m with you on this: for the vast vast majority of tasks commonly understood as software engineering, memory safety is a concern, and a lot, if not all, of your points, are valid.

I must humbly insist that it does not fit my needs, in the sense that memory safety is of no concern to me, and that the restrictions that a compiler-enforced approach imposes make me less productive, and, subjectively, also less enjoyable because causing more friction.

That being said, you may also not consider what I’m currently doing to be software engineering, and that’s totally fine. Then we’d agree entirely.

EDIT: also, there are very few languages less productive and beginner-friendly than C++ in my opinion. The proverbial bar is in hell. But you are talking to an unreasonable C++ hater.

What? You need to make a function to make a loop? That can’t be right???

Ah no, there is a misunderstanding. You can write C-loops, of course, they just could involve more work under the hood because in order to enforce memory safety, there needs to be some form of bounds checking that does not happen in C. Caveat: I don’t know whether that’s always true, and what the subtleties are. Maybe I’m wrong about that even, but what is true is that what I am about to say, you will encounter in Rust codebases.

By function composition I meant in the mathematical sense. So, this example explains the gist of it. You may need to throw in a lambda function in there to actually do the job, yeah. I don’t know what the compiler actually reduces that to though.

It’s just the more functional approach that you can also see with Haskell for example. I find it harder to parse, but that may be lack of training rather than intrinsic difficult.

Ah, a fellow C coder. Never did do assembly with chips older than x86_64 basically. The only old school stuff I touched was writing an interpreter for the CHIP-8. I tried writing some CHIP-8 too, but coming from more recent paradigms, it seemed quite unwieldy to me.

I like python for quick and dirty stuff, I don’t like python for being interpreted and it being not obvious what happens under the hood, memory wise, at a glance.

Seeing as you do C I’ll say this. The one thing I really did not enjoy, subjectively, with Rust, is that writing “C-style loops” comes with a performance penalty because there are bound checks happening, so the idiomatic version of a loop in Rust usually involves iterators and function composition.

I am stupid. C-loops are easy for me to understand. More sophisticated stuff is hard for my little brain. I’d rather be trusted with my memory access, and be reminded of my stupidity when comes the inevitable segfault. Keeps you humble.

Enjoy! I don’t know what you used to seriously program on but I am willing to bet that the ownership paradigm that it enforces is going to feel at least moderately new to you, unless you forced yourself to code that way anyways.

Plus, as long as you’re doing silly little home projects, the compiler errors are the absolute best I’ve ever seen. Literally just learn basic syntax, try it out, and when it does not compile, the compiler not only tells you why but also what it thinks you’re trying to do and how to fix.

Absolute gem of a learning tool.

No, Rust is to make you feel like you haven’t programmed seriously in 20 years when you first pick it up, even though you are actively doing it.

Before the angry rust “mob” comes to get me: this is a joke. I tried Rust out of genuine curiosity, cobbled together a silly little thing, and quite liked it. The borrow checker made me feel like a total beginner again, in some aspects, and it was great to get that feeling again.

Ultimately it does not fit my needs, but there are a few features I am pretty envious of. I can totally see why it’s getting such a following, and I hope it keeps growing.

It might be?..

Oops, I meant to say: “hayaaa”

Breaking pots. Don’t mind me.

EDIT: holdup, who are you calling a sysadmin? I administer my system, sure, but that’s about as far as I’m willing to go, thank you.

I’d love to keep it clean but too many devs think $HOME is up for grabs, as long as they prepend their directory names with a dot (they think I’ll never notice, but I notice, and I keep a list…)

Thanks, I gaslit myself into thinking I misunderstood what “technical science job” meant.

And I am talking about the fact that believing that nothing is complicated and that complexity is always made up can be a dangerous, anti-intellectual and anti-academic argument.

Of course, if you’re talking with people who don’t need to actually do the job and only understand enough of it, and you still speak like to a specialist, you’re not only in the middle, but also potentially (but not necessarily) kind of a dick.

But reading this and your example, and the fact we seem to be miscommunicating somewhat, I do wonder this: English is not my first language, what do you include in “technical science job”? Is it a specific job or group of jobs? I took it to mean any job with tech or science workers.

EDIT: further explanation of what went through in my head, which may clarify interpretation and intent. Having the management lingo example made me interpret that curve as a: all this jargon is just bullshit and you could do better without it. Definitely true imo with management lingo.

But what I was trying to say, maybe poorly, is that some technical jargon, in some areas, is meaningful. Explaining in layman’s term is dumbing down. Nothing wrong with that when it fits the purpose, but you still sacrifice something in the process.

“amongst the people who understand the jargon and notations, jargon and notations are layman’s term”

Sure, I guess that’s true if you limit your sample, this is not what I took the meme to mean but ok.

Anyone who took undergrad maths/science is not layman’s term.

I also disagree with this for the record but that’s besides the point.

My point being that for some stuff, you just can’t describe things as bags within bags, irrelevant of where you are on the scale, at least not without being quite intellectually dishonest and oversimplifying.

I am not saying I am on top of the scale, I am saying I’ve met and worked with people on top of the scale (and couldn’t keep up), and they don’t explain things with bags within bags.

EDIT: for clarity, there are things that are too complicated for everyone right now. One day we may understand them well enough that someone can explain it in layman’s term without loss of precision, but to get to that point, we must accept that we need to work with complex notations and lingo. Example: in the past, only Newton and Leibniz and a handful of others understood calculus. Now it’s taught in high school. Newton and Leibniz were not in the middle or the bell curve, nor did they overcomplicate their theory to make it sound fancy.

I am often torn a bit on this one, depending on the cases.

Don’t get me wrong, management lingo is undeniably bullshit, trying to hide how simple what you’re saying actually is, and giving yourself stature and legitimacy.

But I would argue that there are fields were the emergence of complex concepts (and lingo, and notations to define them) is a necessary evil. For sure even there, there are people who abuse it to big themselves up, but I also think a lot of the time, either the thing you’re speaking of is genuinely complicated, or it’s just not well understood enough. Sometimes I really wish I could say things in a simpler way, both in concepts and expression, but I can’t find a way to make it so. Not by malice, not to appear to know more, but genuinely because I don’t understand it enough yet either and that’s the best I’ve got.

Having experienced it first-hand, I am more forgiving to this (depending on the attitude of the person spouting the jargon) and don’t automatically assume all technical-sounding terms are automatically bullshit. They often are, but not always.

But management lingo is. 100%.

I am happy with my system and won’t distrohop again, I am happy with my system and won’t distrohop again, I am happy with my system and won’t distrohop again…

I mean, if your beliefs in the unix philosophy are still strong enough to do away with the convenience that is (or can be…) systemd, you deserve some respect.

It’s only a matter of time until you match that meme and there’s only one alternative.

_{arch btw…}