The best language, methodology, algorithm, compiler, toolchain, and design pattern is the one you *know*.

To an extent.

I made a very careful decision a few years ago to choose to learn Python to compliment my use of C, because I knew that I would soon need to write some programs to accomplish functionality which would be exceedingly tedious in C. But I could certainly have done it in C.

Python was so easy to get started with it blew my freaking mind. It blew even more when some aspects of the programs I wrote with it literally took a single line to do what would have required an entire subsystem to first be composed in C.

Summary: Use the right tool for the job. Sometimes the time investment to learn a new tool works out to be less than the time which would be wasted by staying in one's comfort zone.

That said, "tool chains" are another matter. These days it seems I spend at least 50% of my time battling (or just waiting for) development environments that are simply impossible to change, and only about 10-15% of the time designing and coding, with the remainder testing and debugging.

E.g., Xilinx is soldered on to the board it took me 6 months to design into the hardware that took several years to design. TI is soldered onto the other board.

There is no turning back. So I must work with their tools.

"So when policy, not science dictates what is healthy for you, "

But since the medical profession is supposed to be "science," why did they promulgate the same bullshit? It seems they should have blown the whistle on low-fat at least a decade ago.

I think the problem is much deeper. The institutions of science are themselves corrupted when political outcomes hinge on their conclusions, and when the direction of scientific research is consequently influenced by past findings.

This doesn't imply, of course, that policies should *not* be guided by science.

"Your diet is known to cause complications"

Known by whom? By the same medical scientists who failed to falsify their own bullshit (partly due to the corrupting influence of the regulatory state coupling to both science and corporate interests) about low fat diets being the way to loose weight for several decades?

I seem to recall finding the exact opposite when I was experimenting with ketogenic diets and did my homework to make sure I had a reasonable understanding of the potential pros/cons.

If I wasn't just plain addicted to carbs., I'd probably eat a borderline ketogenic diet all the time.

If you have some solid references which indicate that there is a serious risk of complications from keto diets, for people with reasonable health, please do help us educate ourselves by providing the links.

E.g., I will defend the RIGHTS of religious people to have their beliefs.

OTOH I personally consider religious people to be collectively deluded.

Do you COMPREHEND the difference?!?!

It doesn't matter what the idiot "nazis" have as viewpoints. If they are not committing any crimes, then their right to free speech must be defended.

"Congress came together to sanction Russia"

Is that supposed to be a good thing?!?!

"There is little to no scientific basis for the argument that being female genetically predisposes you to liking certain things more than others..."

Quit Fucking Lying!

http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond

1. Tree view in a sidebar; can open/close with a hotkey.

2. Human readable data format; if one syncs data btw. different machines, the bookmark file should be able to be synced to/from and when you open the browser, it just works without having to import/export.

3. Able to navigate the tree as well when saving new bookmarks.

4. Remember the last save-to folder.

5. A special folder for bookmarks (and folders) to appear on the (horiz.) bookmark toolbar.

6. Any other special function folders such as "recently visited," "favorites," or what have you should be able to be collapsed and not get in your face if you don't want to use them.

All of the above can (almost) be done in Firefox. Here's some ideas to make it better:

A. Make it possible to break up the description text into multiple fields; then make a column header thingy like in a file manager, so you can click the headers to automatically sort the view of the bookmarks by field, up or down. The column headers and sorting system must obey the tree hierarchy! Ie., if you can have folder "Ugh" sorted by the first field, and folder "OhNo" sorted by the second. You should also be able to move the fields on the column header bar on a folder by folder basis. This should just affect the mapping of stored fields to displayed field order. The actual fields encoded into the file remain as defined by the user.

The point of this might be: I tag some music video bookmarks with a "grade". I may want to sort them by grade today, to see my favorite ones. However, I also tag them with another thing: symbols *, #, or $ to indicate if I downloaded them already, as both .mp4&.mp3, just .mp3, or just .mp4 respectively. Tomorrow I may want to sort them by that field. See where I'm going with this? Not being able to sort by fields causes headaches, often resulting in time wasted hand editing the damn things again to try to work around the browser's limitations, to no avail.

Also, indiv. bookmarks could have a little '+' to expand/collapse the view of additional, detailed description text. This should be able to be collapsed with a hotkey and/or menu entry.

A good selection of menu options to expand/collapse all, selected folders, sub-descriptions, etc. would be killer.

B. For Pete's sake, make it possible to edit a bookmark description by simply pressing or something, instead of having to right click, "Properties". Most functionality should be reachable by using arrow keys, function keys, hotkeys, etc.

C. Be able to select groups of folders or indiv. bookmarks (as in a file manager) and selectively save just the selected ones to a file with a new name. (Some approximation to file manager style bookmark management is in Firefox, using the "Library" window. It has some very awkward and counter-intuitive behavior, however. If an additional window is needed for re-organizational tasks, then it should operate much like a file manager.

D. Don't take away the bookmark from one folder if I re-bookmark it to another!

E. The Search capabilities of Firefox for bookmarks are crappy. It throws away the tree view when a search is done. WTF? I want to know where in the tree the target is, not a list of 1000 hits with organizational context lost.

F. Finally - Some sort of SYMLINKS! E.g. I have a Shopping/Amazon/Tools and also a Mechanical/Tools. Hmm. This leads to the problem that hierarchical organization sometimes cannot adequately express the organizational relationships needed. Symlinks could greatly help this.

Some of this might seem bizarre to casual www users. But when you have 10000s of bookmarks as I do, many of which are critical sources of products and information related to real work, limitations in being able to implement sophisticated levels of organization result in more headaches.

It is the same sort of limitations that make it almost impossible for me to use Windows any more, since I simply cannot function without both the simplicity of the Linux filesystem (no unnecessary abstractions) and its sophistication (powerful symlinks).

Just some ideas. Hopefully not totally pointless to have responded to an A.C.

Thanks for the link. I watched a good doc. about Stalin yesterday: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIzApqzlP3Q

Of course, the "social justice" talk was used then as well.

It is completely unobvious to me. I'm an electrical engineer. My thinking process and the Chinese women that I knew who were engineers were not different.

I asked for evidence. "It is obvious" to you is not evidence. You can repeat this idea over and over, but so far it appears to be nothing more than a belief or unsubstantiated assumption, from which all sorts of problematic conclusions are being drawn.