You're correct of course - you cannot compare CS, a sub-branch of mathematics, with engineering. Engineering may be applied science but that same logic makes CS applied mathematics.

If you're talking about the 'struct' keyword for C objects in memory... then they don't. You're in for a nasty surprise if you think that they do unless you're using compiler extensions.

This basic logic of your is wrong. Pragma packed. If you don't understand why this understanding is important, well, it's not really worth arguing with you.

And as an aside, if you don't have a pretty good knowledge of law, you might consider re-evaluating your priorities. This is something that like it or not, you really should be familiar with. It will affect your life sooner or later. Knowledge of law is EXTREMELY important. Sit in some trials. I really mean this. It shocked me just how differently a trial ran than how I expected it to. Facts are of almost no importance. It was shocking to me. It was while I was waiting to argue a ticket, and the officer said he visually confirmed that the defendant was going 93 MPH, he didn't have a radar gun to confirm. I know for fact that it's impossible to tell the difference between 93 MPH and 83 MPH strictly from visual cues, and the legal penalty between the two is massive, but that fact was completely inconsequential in the court of law, because the officer had been "trained". Never mind that humans are incapable of such a distinction, the fact that it was impossible was unimportant. Knowing that, is really important.

You are too full of yourself. Knock down your arrogance a little (I've successfully represented myself in court a number of times). You can start by determining why sizeof evaluates "struct foo { char a, b };" to have a size of 4 and what you can do to force it to 2.

If that were true python would not have invisible scoping rules that silently lose data. I'd rather have a program crash, but python is designed to silently lose data if you mistype a variable name or if you type it correctly too. The scope in python changes depending on the RHS and the LHS variables - their scopes are not predictable without reading through the program above if you change the sides they are on.

No. It forces the programmer to a coding style that could have been easily performed by an indent program in C. You're placing the cognitive load for coding style on the programmer when you use python. In C the cognitive load can be offloaded to an indent program (which in practice happens more often than you think - my repo commits go through indent).

Now you could argue that it is better for the programmer to use brainpower for coding style rather than making a program do it, but I'm pretty certain that loading the programmer more than necessary is not a good thing.

Anyway, in my experience with python, its developers and its community, python programmers don't read each others code - the code never lasts long enough to be that durable, and is never maintained by anyone other than the original author. I once maintained a codebase that was originally written for 8-bit micro's, ported to two different 16-bit architectures, ported to two different 32-bit architectures with bugfix commits from around 100 developers and enhancement commits from a further 50, and is still now, after 25 years, being maintained and used. The language used braces. Call us back when a python codebase has so many readers and committers over 25 years. All my experience has been that, as projects get larger and more people join, python get's more unwieldy and harder to maintain, much like php.

Of course it's a weakness - in any language with delimiters (such as braces) you can easily run a script to indent it the way you like. With python you don't have the option to do so. This language feature is so difficult that no AI exists which will take your munged up python program (say, all on one line) and restore it to the original. The braces version is so simple that no AI is even needed - see the indent program.

All languages with braces have had that feature from long before python. You can run the code through indent, you idiot.

Python doesn't have this and yet that doesn't seem to have affected its popularity at all.

Only 20? No wonder you like python ;-) FWIW, I've done real work in python too.

Actually parent posters all had points - the whitespace is just one of the ambiguities present in python code. The sloppy handling of the dictionary up the call stack results in scope changing when variable positions on a line change. Just like the whitespace issue, it causes the program top run without apparent problems but silently corrupt data.

Ironically most "programmers" like it. Having the indentation forced upon the programmer does not in any way bring to my mind the word "flexible", so you're probably onto something with your statement being more accurate than you intended.

I hear you ... just a few days ago I posted a reply to a /. poster about my job, my working hours, my time to myself and that I have all of the good things without having to slave away for extra hours nor work with dimwit management or a rapacious company. As an aside, in my first week at a new job in 2007 I patched a bugfix I had written for a bug I had found into a binary file (long story). After that there were no questions about my technical ability (maybe a few about my judgement call :-))

Hell no - the last time you posted it I asked you to find the one for either CS or IT. You coudn't find one then. Saying "Well, if I found one you'd dismiss it" is a cop out.

Find even one post of mine that has insults in it :-) I dare you.

I didn't claim that it doesn't happen. I ask that you post this evidence you keep referring to but can't produce. You stance is the same one chosen by creationists, anti-vaxxers, AGW, etc... It is not up to me to disprove your claim, it is up to you to provide evidence. I keep saying this but you have yet to provide any.

It's very simple actually - when you make a claim, provide the reference. It's not very hard.

There's nothing to refute - it's a study in the fields of biology or something, not CS. I'm not sure why you think it applies to a story about CS and engineering.

Did you find one that applies to CS and engineering?

Which studies? Yuo keep saying that there is evidence, but you refuse to provide any

Okay, let's say we go ahead and segregate based on sex as per your recommendation (and that of countless religions). I proposed that the reason oppressed women are in CS is because they don't get to choose, and your proposal is to emulate them so that we can have parity?

You have not presented any evidence - you write a good story, but it's still only a story with no supporting evidence.

These same tech firms in Silicon Valley who have been pushing an evidence-less diversity agenda? Strange, just when I thought that they were acting logically.