Someone is well-informed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMh-vlQwrmU

"Dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest-quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope, and lovingly frosted with glucose."

OK. To de-escalate, and in the interest of trying an educational dialogue, I will attempt to clarify what appears to be an assumption in the posting to which I responded.

You mention "taqiyya" as a point of doctrine, or an approved mode for action, by those who profess a "witnessing" of Islam ("tashud").

This is in most was incorrect. Certainly, it is misleading, as a generalization. Al-Taqiyya is usually translated as "dissimulation". There are numerous arguments about the permissibility of this specific shading of deceit or "lying" in the history of Islamic discourse. The most common, and widely known usage was for Shi'ite partisans of 'Ali and his descendants, immediately in the time of their political schism. This was during the lifetimes of the original 3 Imams. The purpose thereof was defensive - used to deflect persecution or compulsion by "Sunni" adherents.

It is important to note this: In the first few centuries, Shi'a were a political distinction for legitimate leadership of the 'Ummah or community. Doctrinally there was not a separate school of theology or jurisprudence. Thusly, the term "Sunni" as a contrasting group is often a more modern anachronism when applied to the period - up to about the time of Jaffar Al-Siddiq, or so... "Shi'a" of that time - and indeed probably today - consider themselves to be following in the "Sunnah" of the prophet.

All of this aside, dissimulation is a means to defensively avoid harm and persecution, without giving up or rejecting articles of belief. This is true of Shi'a or of Sunni jurisprudence. There is no corresponding school of thinking that has authorized Al-Taqiyya for means of "deception" versus "dissimulation" in pursuing acts of war or other hostility.

There is in fact another term "Al-Makr" for "deception" that relates to concealment of intention. There are a number of debates about the use of this term in the Q'ran, as applied to God. Most of that discussion is quasi-theological for political ends and beyond the scope of discussion here. Let us only say that the message of the book is roughly "Those who try to trick God, have in the end only tricked themselves - for God is master over all things, including their trickery." Parse as you will.

Let us conclude that Al-Makr, as a doctrine to promote the faith, is haram.

To suggest that the existence of Al-Taqiyya provides a doctrinal basis under which one may make generalized assumptions about the threatening character of any Muslim believer is ignorant or provocative, at the least.

I'm SUING the manufacturers of BOX CUTTERS for the complicit CONSPIRACY they participated in on 9/11/2001!

-- Mayor 9u11iani.

I'm not interested in excluding people from programming. However, there seems to be an underlying assumption from many of the coding-for-all types that programming "should" be much easier than it currently is. I'm putting "should" in quotes here because when many people see that word, they start thinking in ideological or moral terms. That's not my intended meaning. I'm talking about the logistics of programming: specifically, the idea that we have unnecessarily heaped huge amounts of complexity on top of something that is actually quite simple.

In order to open up programming to the masses, it must necessarily be simple and easily-grasped at its core. This is not because most people are stupid, but because most people cannot afford to spend a great deal of time and energy learning the concepts behind it. As currently understood, programming requires a large investment of these things, and most programmers today, by far, are people who have made that investment.

Can that time investment be reduced? To some degree, it probably can. But there are limits to how far something can be reduced, and I'm not convinced that programming can be reduced to a degree that would bring it to the masses. My reasoning for this is that I'm not convinced that the core concepts are as simple and easily-grasped as they're often made out to be. They seem simple to me nowadays -almost second nature, in fact- but I've been programming for years, I studied for years before that, and things didn't really start to click until I was a few years into my studies. Even nowadays, I still get moments where something suddenly clicks and my skills take a noticeable leap forward. This is not a hallmark of a simple field.

I believe that most of the people who set out to "simplify programming" are not too different from me. They might have learned certain concepts at different rates, but the things that seem simple to them now did not seem so simple when they first began. This is, I propose, because they aren't simple.

I am not "elite." All I did was allocate my time a little differently, and in ways that not everyone realistically can. I don't begrudge them this, because a lot of them allocated their time in ways that I couldn't, especially not after I made my choice. I respect and appreciate the skills they have that I don't, and I don't think I'm out of line in asking for the reverse. What makes this state of affairs unacceptable?

Ewe must bee knew hear.

Meta rules for Slashdot engagement.

Next stage is the Butlerian Jihad and abolition of compute machiney - "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind".

Then your super-trained, Autistic elite can take their proper role, as Mentats.

And there were "Commernists hiding under every beadstead" in the 50's.

Your neo-Macarthyism is based in pure irrational hate/bias. As such, you will always find an unassailable, self-justification for insisting on your views.

NO ONE's brain defaults to QWERTY!

It's interstellar Unicorn vomit - ejected our way from the taping of "Mythological Beasts Gone Wild" during spring break, beyond Arcturus.

Aye. 'Tis the "Runcible" our lad is thinkin' of, Captain.

ERMERGERD! It's FULL of STARZ!

s/many more/infinitesimally less/

The number of crashes that happen with both parties following the law is practically none. Pretty much every crash is due to multiple factors, but a healthy majority of fatal crashes are caused by the big three: speeding, failing to yield and running red lights. The rest are caused by a variety of causes. Starting with what you might suspect, cell phone usage and drunk driving, and ending with random low probability stuff like heart attacks and vehicle defects.

If we just tamed the big three the US would save 15,000+ lives each year and prevent another 1,000,000 casualties.