I work at a Certain Silicon Valley Tech Company and we recently had an employee fired for trolling.

Essentially, she claimed the right to park in handicap lots (despite not having children for "200 years"), wanted to bring her dogs to work (other people bring their "disgusting kids"), and complained she was severely overworked. Everyone on the thread posted pics of "facepalm" and inviting her to maybe not use the company-wide email list for such things, but she kept on trolling. The next week, someone commented on the thread to note she "no longer works here". Ouch.

Etiquette is as important for most jobs and human interaction as skill set.

I still program in C++ but I have to use Qt as an SDK initially for UI and now just because it makes the language much more concise. Whether it's qSort(anySTLcontainer), QString (which supports unicode, regex, etc), or foreach(int& item, myVector) being legal -- and this is all pre C++11 and still works today (in addition to being just as portable). Having a perl-like circular list which supports O(1) prepends, appends, etc. is really nice too. And don't even get me started on why boost::signals are inferior and lead almost inevitably to instability;) Like any other language however, it's only as good as the people who use it so it's no guarantee of readable code.

I really do need to check out Python some more. I'm fluent in Perl and it's served me well over the years, but I've heard nothing but good about Python.

I don't think so. The simple "for" loop with auto is easily understood by someone with a passing familiarity with any programming language.

I've been programming (mainly in C++, mainly scientific applications) for ~10 years and I had to look up std::iota -- it's a neat construct but it's really obscure and the question is, does it make code more readable? My answer would be no. For the same character count, it's a wash.

That's my main issue with language philosophy really. They're expanding the language quite a bit while some constructs have negligible value -- and entirely avoiding constructs that fit 99% of use cases. Would it have really killed them to not force one to use iterators, for example? Who doesn't sort a whole list (std::sort(myVec) ought to work...we can both agree what that ought to do right? The language tools to do it are there. Is there any other language that is that uselessly pedantic?)?

...but funny thing, here's what your program prints:
0 0 0 0 0 0...etc.

It should read for (auto& x : myVec) x = i++;

The C example I typed without even thinking -- I'm guessing you could too. You've revised the C++ example once already, which happened to be wrong. I spotted your error immediately -- but then again, I have years of experience.

My main criticism of C++ is that it's overly verbose. There are many issues resulting from it (difficult to write, overuse of old school pointers, etc). Let's take the simple for loop (I'm using { in place of "less than" since /. code is retarded):

// C
int myVec[100];
for (int i=0; i { 100; i++) myVec[i]=i;

//Now, let's look at C++ (not 11):
std::vector{int} myVec(100);
for (std::vector{ int }::const_iterator i=myVec.begin(); i != myVec.end(); i++)
{ myVec[i]=i; } // When did you decide this ^^ was a good idea and how drunk were you?

With C++11, it's slightly better:
for (auto i=myVec.begin(); i != myVec.end(); i++) myVec[i]=i;
 
...but it's amazing that C style (1970's) syntax is both the more concise and readable -- but still loses to C:
for (int i=0; i { myVec.size(); i++) myVec[i]=i;

Aside from the addition of auto, do you ever plan on admitting and addressing the language's problems with verbosity -- which hurts readability, learning curve, etc. -- or just keep introducing increasingly arcane features?

Terrible summary and title.

From TFA:
Our model predicts that the transition to larger despotic groups will then occur when: (i) surplus resources lead to demographic expansion of groups, removing the viability of an acephalous niche in the same area and so locking individuals into hierarchy; (ii) high dispersal costs limit followers' ability to escape a despot. Empirical evidence suggests that these conditions were probably met, for the first time, during the subsistence intensification of the Neolithic.

So availability of resources to a minority and the inability to escape cause large despotisms, much like CO2 and Greenhouse gases cause global warming. Climate science should be renamed "The Benefits of Global Warming". Or after a man's parachute fails to open he "realizes the benefits of gravity in assisting his painless disassembly".

I know it would be odd to ask for editors to, uh, you know, edit.

Oh, OK, the companies are EVIL, but they're also really stupid, right?

Sir, I point you to "business moguls" the George W. Bush the Misunderestimated, Donald "Nobody knows why there are 13 strips on the American Flag" Trump, or maybe Robert "Bodycount is a great metric" McNamara.

There's a certain irony in the air of superiority that's lost on many.

Single white Christian males were enslaved for half of our country's history.
A single white Christian male (who was unarmed and had his hands up) was shot to death by a black police man last week.
The incarceration rate of single white Christian males was over 6 times higher than that of black males, mostly for drug offenses, despite no difference in percentage of drug use. (source)

I continue to be stunned at the entire level of ignorance of oppression displayed in the community. Yes, I'm a black male. At the same time, when I get gas in certain "sundown towns" with my white girlfriend, I see racial disgust.

Anyone who thinks "white culture" is to blame, ought to spend some time in Mississippi, Alabama, or west Texas (Jackson, where a single white Christian male was dragged behind a truck for being white). Or Vidor where less than 0.07 % is white Christian male.

When we see glaring racial disparities, it's best to pretend the problem doesn't exist. The Jim Crow laws, which disenfranchised white people in the south, never mentioned race -- just a fair literacy requirements and a token tax to pay for elections. Why were single white Christian males so offended?

They earn at the top of federal pay scale, with the highest taking home $148,000 a year.

That's not even the salary of a manager at Google (and don't even talk about benefits -- free food is amazing) -- and this is the highest of salaries. For a lawyer (law school is will run you over $100K by itself). Can you imagine why they may not have the best and brightest? With the new patent office opening in San Jose, why would anyone actually want to work for the USPO who has any amount of talent?

I can name some more: Halliburton, Shell, and Pixar.* One application I worked on made over $1 million a week last I heard.

For anyone doing serious 3D scientific computing on Linux, Qt is the de facto standard. Motif is simply awful and Gnome doesn't solve portability.

(*I wrote code that shipped for 2/3 the three companies.)

Whedon's quality issue with Avengers is the same one we find with Scott's "Prometheus", Aronofsky's "Noah", or Lucas's "Anal Excretions with Jar Jar Binx".

Too many SFX. I enjoy tech demos as much as the next person, but part of the charm of Firefly was that a low budget forced the team to focus on story, personality, and acting to do what they were trying to do with their special effects. It also forces the creative folk to manage a larger team -- which takes time away from the developing the "soul" of the project.

Hamas and Israel both don't recognize their mutual rights to exist at the moment -- Hamas uses rockets and Israel uses bombs to demonstrate this.

At least Hamas is honest about its intentions.

Based on my discussions in the past, I'm guessing the mostly male audience here will say something like "not here" or "I've never seen that". I am reminded of a (financially struggling) friend of mine who posted on her blog talking about the myth of white priviledge and her other (entirely white) friends saying "Right on!". In casting herself as a vicitm, she tried to say that the experiences of minorities were not unique.

No one here, unless you've been a woman, knows what it's like to work in an overwhelmingly male (and foul-mouthed;)) culture. And yes, it's possible to overcome that treatment -- but that doesn't it right.

I don't think at this point that they really have any valid position in the hardware business.

82 million xBox 360 owners can't be wrong right?

So, you are trying to explain the entire disparity with mistreatment by males. I don't buy it...

I follow the data. In numerous other countries, this is not the case. Again, if you have better data, please share (as I did in GP). Otherwise -- buying into the idea of female inferiority with no data to support your assertion -- is precisely the kind of prejudice I'm talking about and you are the perfect example.