Here's what your future will look like if we are to have a shot at preventing devastating climate change

The West Antarctic Ice Shelf has already begun its collapse, guaranteeing us 10-12ft of sea level rise over the next 50-200 years (only the timeframe, not the result, remains in question). We have officially lost our "shot at preventing devastating climate change".

We do, however, still have a shot at preventing the necessary abandonment of every major coastal city on the planet, by avoiding another 200ft of sea level rise that would result from the rest of Antarctica melting.

At this point, we need to stop asking how we can go green, and start planning for our new seaside vacation homes in Arizona.

I've worked for a company that made the machines that makes the burgers for McD. The reason burger flipping is so 'easy' (even though it still requires training to do it consistently and correct) is because some really smart engineers made it possible for them to do so.

The same is true with programming. It's really easy for a burger flipper to make a website (go to a hosting company and select the "Wordpress" option, 5 clicks and $15/mo later you have a really nice looking website). If you want to make adjustments to the size of the burger, you're back to the engineer.

How about instead of giving you a hammer, I give you a toolbox. That's what all of these 'tools' are, they're toolboxes. And unless you got training in the specific tools to use, you will probably and eventually get the job done... poorly. A craftsman will know which tools to use and when to use them.

There is no difference in programming. Everyone can program these days. There are plenty of languages that are easily understood. However when you can buy a toolbox at Home Depot for $300, everyone becomes a craftsman in their own mind.

I wonder if the writer has ever seen the monstrosities programmed in BASIC/VB, COBOL or HyperCard by the resident business manager. People in general have no clue about programming or mathematics. People in general, don't go for higher education. People in general have an IQ of about 100. People in general can't work with a computer when the outline of things changes or the buttons move around. And you want those people to program a math equation that requires 2 years of college math... and they need to place the buttons themselves?

Hell, take things "programmed" in Excel for that matter. I've seen people use 3 columns to do things which could've been written in 1 operation especially when it comes to adding percentages to a value (they'll calculate 4%, then add it's outcome to the source value to get a +4% and then hide the other 2 columns instead of just doing 104%). That will take them 2 hours to complete.

The Web is fine. Plenty of people understand HTML, even without much education. People UNDERSTAND that things within a document need to be described at some point. Plenty of people can even understand basic JavaScript, even without much education.

The reason the web and most of programming in general is so kludgy and broken in many places is because we've let those people that understand HTML and basic JavaScript make websites and entire applications. We have told business managers that they can describe their business in a common and easily understood language and the business manager did describe their business but then they've gotten in way over their head where they themselves can't even understand what they've done. And then those business managers moved on and started claiming they had programming experience and then they went to another company to make ever bigger monstrosities. And REAL programmers get a bad name because programming these days is so easy, anyone can do it.

"The web is just an enormous stack of kluges upon hacks upon misbegotten designs. This Archaeology of Errors is no place for the application programmers of old: it takes a skilled programmer with years of experience just to build simple applications on todayâ(TM)s web. What a waste. Twenty years of expediency has led the web into a technical debt crisis."

I know, right? We had it so much easier back when we could just write our own interrupt handler (and pray we didn't step on DRAM refresh or vice-versa) to pull bytes directly off the 8250 - And once we had those bytes, mwa-hahaha! We could write our own TCP stack and get the actual data the sender intended, and then do... something... with it that fit on a 40x25 monochrome text screen (yeah, I started late in the game, those bastards working with punchcards spoiled all the really easy stuff for me!).

And now look where we've gone: Anyone using just about any major platform today can fire up a text editor and write a complete moderately sophisticated web app in under an hour. Those poor, poor bastards. I don't know how I can sleep at night, knowing what my brethren have done to the poor wannabe-coders of today. Say, do I hear violins?

Look up the term autism and understand why the author used that term.

Because it has become a meaningless buzzword used to describe every introverted snowflake on the planet?

The GP responded more-or-less appropriately to the TFA's nonsense. You have simply said "nuh-uh!". Substantiate, please.

Normal humans are effectively excluded from developing software.

I've said that for years. You, however, seem to hold that against those with the rare gift and dedication to code. Kinda missing the point, dude.


a vocation requiring rare talents, grueling training, and total dedication. The way things are today if you want to be a programmer you had best be someone like me on the autism spectrum who has spent their entire life mastering vast realms of arcane knowledge â" and enjoys it

Yes, yes, yes, kinda, yes, and yes. Again - Your point? You've described exactly why normal humans will never succeed as devs, and to a degree, why many devs tend to look down on those who can't even figure out Excel.

And you call that "injustice"? I have a rare combination of qualities that let me do seemingly amazing things with computers, and in return, I make a decent (but by no means incredible) salary. You want injustice? Some of those same morons who can't even figure out Excel (much less writing their own override CSS) make millions of dollars per year telling me they want my latest app to use a differerent font color. Another group of those morons make millions of dollars per year because they can whack a ball with a stick better than I can. Yet another group of morons make millions of dollars per year doing absolutely nothing because Granddad worked a town of white trash (sometimes literally) to death.

And yet you would call me out for busting my ass to turn my one natural skill into a modestly decent living?

Go fuck yourself, Mr. Edwards. Hard.

It is irrational to think that a light bulb should be so horribly unreliable

Agreed.

I started buying CFLs 12 years ago. I have had four fail in that time, out of 40, spread over two different physical houses. 90% lasting over a decade? I'll take those numbers over replacing every single one every 3-6 months!

That said... "It is irrational to think that a light bulb should be so horribly unreliable" that they last two months when everyone else has them lasting for several years. Someone in this discussion has stated an irrational conclusion. Me, I still have 36 out of 40 CFLs working more than a decade later, so I don't think I have the logic problem...

BTW, all those "sensitive" electronics you describe? Each and every one of them have beefy power supplies designed to deal with brief poor power conditions, whether they simply turn off or buffer a few seconds of suitable power to make it through momentary rough patches. A 3-for-$10 CFL has no giant filter caps hidden in some nearby pocket universe to help it magically weather a brownout that would cook all those devices you describe if they didn't possess exactly such safeguards.

Insurance only works because of uncertainty. The very concept of getting people to buy insurance depends on aggregating risk over a sufficiently large population.

When the insurance companies can actually offer people rates that come within a small margin of actual payouts (plus a hefty bit extra for the insurance company's cut) - Why would any sane person still pay for insurance? Put the same money in the bank and cut out the middle-man.

You do realize that if they are tracking you when you make a mistake and are in an accident they will hang you out to dry, wont pay your claim, and will be sitting at the other table in the court room if they can make a credible case that you breeched the terms of your insurance contract.

Did the posting to which you're responding mention systemd? Hint: the answer is "no"; it only mentions Mordor, and questions whether "from Mordor" is a bad thing or if it was the victim of a propaganda campaign (see the book to which the page I linked refers).

(Feel free to moderate that posting down as "Offtopic", instead.)

And at Martian gravity? Or at a pressure that compensates for the difference in gravity?

Mars has lower gravity than the Earth. If it works at Mars pressure and Earth Gravity, it will work better actually on Mars.

That said, I''d say the GP's assertion requires a cite - As far as I know, virtually no "Aero"dynamics-based means of propulsion or lift works on Mars. Any viable copter on Mars would require blades the size of a football field, which leads to a not inconsiderable problem of how you mount more than one of them to a probe the size of a small car.