The Pirate Bay definitely deserves praise for staying up, despite being famous and constantly attacked by the media mafia. They bring hope that one day we may live in a world where sharing of knowledge, art and data is encouraged rather that prosecuted, and that some of today's files will survive until then, as well.

It will require a lot of work until we get there in the social realm (fighting the abusive law). It may help if technical solutions exist (decentralization, anonymity, security) that allow everyone to ignore the nonsensical law, to make the case even more obvious and to get by with our files in the meanwhile.

They should put this in Sheldon's script! It is pure beauty!

A brief summary of the winners is here.

Yes. More people should read "Elements of Style" and "On Writing Well".

True. Finding interesting destinations and developing new propulsion methods are mutually complementary tasks. Both are important and can be done in parallel by people with different talents and interests.

No matter whether it is Google or Amazon who gets this technology running first, and whether it is banned in America for a while, but this is our sci-fi future happening now, and it is amazingly cool to watch.

In related news:

Africa, unite!

That's why Facebook, for example, needs a more explicit and prominent "dislike" / vote down button, so that people would not feed the trolls in comments, thus increasing their EdgeRank.

With the word "fizzbuzz".

The problem discussed was not the bad code in general. My only point was that you cannot easily avoid the language features you don't understand or like by "just using your subset of language" in many real-life projects.

That's a funny question. In order to make real-time decisions in a life-critical task like driving, you have to understand the requirements (written traffic rules, conventions and real-world limitations), stay aware of the current road situation and weather conditions, guess the intentions of the other traffic participants, and keep your concentration for long periods of time. Most people with their meatputers are not capable of this (see traffic incidents and deaths statistics). Given that they have no hope, how is an AI supposed to do anything?

I agree, there's always new things to learn; in some languages more than in others. Some people find it exciting, others find it annoying. I currently don't use C++ daily, so I am not frustrated with it. In fact, I like many of the new features. But I can understand why some people complain.

Just to make it clear, I was not judging the design of C++. I only made a counter-point to the "use your own subset" argument. I agree that coding standards reduce this problem, but they also cannot solve it completely.

Agreed, I was also considering this when I was asking this question. Perhaps I should have elaborated further.

The advances in software engineering tools so far made programming more efficient and more accessible, so more people can do it now, and some people can achieve much more in small teams. But still, it is a skill that qualifies as a profession, and people who do it part-time also need a lot of learning.

The point of my question is, will it get to a degree when instructing the computers even for custom, unique tasks will no longer be a complex skill? Will we see a decline in the number of people specifically hired as programmers?

I understand we will not literally hire some Bender-like robot, or maybe even get any actual code. More likely, it's just that the generic software will become more interactive and functional. But still, it will displace some human labor. That's what I'm talking about, and I'm curious about other people's opinion when that turning point may come in this industry.