It's the non-engineers.

They have this misconception that people used to dealing with the intricate semantics of programming languages are going to be unaware of the intricate semantics of English. Therefore, if they ask a question once, and do not get an answer they like, they will repeatedly ask the same question in different guises, hoping to obtain the answer they wanted to hear.

This really comes down to who is more patient than whom.

I usually attempt to buffer my answers in order to soften the blow, but you can ask the same question as many ways as you want, and the answer will likely not change, so long as it is fundamentally the same question. And I usually have the patience of Job. However, there was one incident where I was up against a deadline, and was being asked to "just cobble together something that works, and we'll (read: you'll) fix it (read: in a binary compatible way) later. Which was an impossibility (I was working on some very complex database code written in C++ which did subschema definitional enforcement on an upper level database schema, and the semantics had to be correct for the data stored in the binary backing store to be usable going forward, when we did the next update). The code had to be *right*, as opposed to *right now*, and the time difference was important.

We had a UI person who was in a management position, and they brought her over to argue their case that immediate was better than correct (correct would fit under the deadline, but only if everyone left me alone to finish the code). The UI person was constantly revising the UI in each release, and each release was practically a full rewrite. And she did not understand why I could not write my code the same way she wrote hers. Finally having had enough, I explained "It's OK if your code is crap; you are going to rewrite it in the next release anyway. My code has to work now, and it has to continue to work going forward, and therefore it needs to be correct. I understand that you are feeling the approaching deadline. So am I. However, while your code can be crap, mine can't be because I have to maintain it going forward. Now if you will get the hell out of my office, I will be able to finish the code by the deadline."

Needless to say, there were some ruffled feathers. The director of engineering sided with me. I completed the (correct, rather than expedient) code by the deadline, and the product didn't turn into unmaintainable crap vis-a-vis the update process going forward.

What's the moral to this story?

Well, with specific regard to DICE:

(1) Repeatedly asking the same question in different ways is not going to get them a different answer, if the first answer was correct. Any other answer than that answer would be incorrect, for the question asked.

With specific regard to the current topic:

(2) Engineers who actually reliably, repeatedly, and consistently deliver what they are asked to deliver, within the timeframe that was agreed upon, can, and often do, wield more authority than the managers nominally set above them in the food chain, so it's not like going into management is going to give you any more real authority than you already have by way of your relationship with the team, and their trust of your judgement.

A management path can be a good idea if:

(A) You want more perks (stock options, etc.), although in a good company, if you are a great engineer, you will get those anyway

(B) You are tired of doing engineering for a living (which probably means you didn't qualify as "great engineer" under option 'A' anyway)

(C) You feel you would be more useful and/or happier in such a position (but if your happiness is based on power, don't expect it will necessarily follow)

(D) You are an OK (but not great) engineer at a company which engages in age discrimination, and you are happy to continue working for such a company going forward, and it's your only way to do so (at which point, I pretty much need to question your personal ethics)

Other than that... DICE: Asked and Answered. Please go on to the next survey question.

Contrarywise, show me a pilot who *can* rely on their instruments, and I'll show you one who can land at SFO in the fog.

They tried that back in the AllAdvantage.com days. It turned out to be unsustainable as CPM rates plummeted.

Except that people who wait a year have to make an effort to avoid spoilers and have no chance to discuss plot developments with their respective social groups.

So how do wash the wings right after takeoff?

I think that's going to add quite a lot of time if the plane has to circle really low for multiple passes each time for Jose to hose the wings off.

The C++ standard library is already licensed to the public through ISO, as are the POSIX APIs through IEEE.

How is it "content stealing" to view licensed video through Netflix? Or are you claiming that Netflix's license to the video it offers is invalid?

Most of us don't criticize wanting to earn a buck. We criticize anticompetitive methods of doing so, such as exclusive (or effectively exclusive) deals with all leading manufacturers of a particular class of hardware.

What is "IP"? Copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret are very different beasts. If you mean copyright, say copyright. If you mean patent, say patent. If you mean trademark, say trademark. If you mean trade secret, say trade secret. Or did you mean stealing an IP address?

Copyright infringement and theft are distinct offenses. In the United States, the former is always federal, and the latter is generally handled by the several states, becoming federal only if goods are carried across state lines.

Very little of the industrialized world is outside the jurisdiction of the Berne Convention. Where were you imagining that they would flee?

Good luck getting things like the film Song of the South, the film Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, and the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea on any service. None of these has ever been released even on DVD or BD in North America.

How the heck were you supposed to know that your code would run on a flat architecture? Pointer range comparison across unrelated C arrays has been undefined behavior as long as I can remember. Besides, even among flat architectures, the common ABI for the 65816 has 24-bit pointers and 16-bit ints, and the common ABI for the 68000 has 32-bit pointers and 16-bit ints.

Is systemd written in JQuery?

I think you maybe mean "Too much personal data to fail"... which is an incredibly disturbing thought.

Of course.

I will happily defend IKEA for selling me a chair that is limited from being able to do *anything* "every computer has been able to do for the last 50 years".

Except, you know, being sat on. If I can't sit on the chair, I'd be pretty unhappy. On the other hand, not every computer in the last 50 years has been large enough or flat enough to sit on. You gotta draw that line somewhere!

But what defines a "decent GitHub folio"? Does work in other programming languages count? Does work in other subfields of software engineering, such as video games vs. accounting software, count?

The interface in the PDF describes a mutable sparse array with immutable entries. To assign a new value, you'd delete the entry and then add a new one.