In the future, all code is written by AI anyway.

First of all, we have to write the AI. And so far, we haven't even gotten close.

How do you securely transmit the start value to the other party?

Several couriers. Each with a (sometimes bogus) part of the key.

I don't see what is so hard about creating an unbreakable encryption code. You have a random number generator. Give it a start value. Produce a string of random letters as long as your message, and do an XOR with the text to be encrypted. The receiving people can only decode the message if they know the start value for the random number generator. Am I missing something?

Since corporations are people, they can pay their fare share.

Bill Gates doesn’t pay Microsoft’s taxes. You and I pay it in the form of higher prices when we buy Microsoft Word. The corporate income tax is a regressive tax that falls more on the poor. It amazes me that people can’t see this.

If you're deploying your jar without JRE...

The Java programs that I develop are not commercial products. They are utility programs that I use at work. On occasion a co-worker will remark, "That's cool where did you get that?". I will give them a copy and since they are developers they have no problem installing it. I am not trying to say that Java is great for everything. I am saying that I find it very useful.

your username indicates your bias

I tried about four usernames (including some that I thought were pretty obscure) and they all turned out to be used. Javagator popped into my head and it worked. Java is not my favorite language, C++ is, but if I have to write a program to run on more than one OS and runtime efficiency isn't a factor, I think Java is a good choice.

I will dare to say that C++ is doing portable software better than java.

I have Java programs with sophisticated user interfaces that I can run on both Linux and Windows with the same jar file. You can't do that with C++. I would like to try it with a Mac, but I do not have access to one right now.

Java is a toy language

I write a lot of utility programs in Java. They work on both Linux and Windows. I find Java reasonably powerful although not as fast as C++.

Give them questions like "Tell me your greatest weakness"?

I use to ask this question, but everybody answered "I sometimes work too hard".

Read the "Mythical Man Month". Experiments have been done that show that a factor of ten in productivity is not uncommon between programmers. And this was on fairly simple programs that any programmer could do. On more complex tasks I think the difference would be much higher.

what sort of questions do you ask

One question I ask is for them to give me an example of some difficult or challenging programming problem that they have solved at work. That way they don't have to try to come up with a solution to a tough problem on the fly.

Did they have actual science in ancient Greece?

Not really. Modern Science originated in Europe during the Renaissance.

In my job I need to know a significant amount of math, understand data structures and object oriented programming, and implement complex algorithms. Most liberal arts majors would be lost. There may be some programs where the user interface is the most important thing. A liberal arts major could be good at that. Even user interface design requires significant attention to detail to handle input errors.

The faithful will continue to believe, regardless of the scientific evidence.

Scientist B. F. Skinner has proven rather conclusively that people believe what they get reinforced for believing. Of course, most people don't believe that.

The Nazi government was really keen on restricting speech. How did that work out?