In particular notice the example at "Interacting Compiler Optimizations Lead to Surprising Results", it's an exact match for GGGP. Tests that are redundant in context is a *very* common result of inlining, compilers these days optimize based on propagating deduced range constraints, which can wind up stripping huge amounts of dead code -- calling a safe function twice in a row, for instance, error checks on any repeated arguments are often wasted, freeing up branch-prediction slots and cache lines and load-store bandwidth for prefetching that's now on a guaranteed path ... and how is an optimizer to tell whether a test being irrelevant signifies a fatal flaw or trust that dead-code-elimination can clean up properly?

So write a dumb little 10-liner to generate potentially-failing option combinations, with any luck it's just one or two of the ones enabled by the next level up from the lowest working `-On`.

That's why professionally-produced documentation comes with change bars or better for printed docs and embedded revision history for binaries.

People don't know what they want until you show it to them, and Microsoft's marketers can't imagine what that could mean beyond anything they show people, people can be made to want.

We do. The legal term for terms like these is "unconscionable".

Substitute gold for bitcoin in your reasoning, it makes exactly as much sense -- yet we've already tried the gold standard and know how it behaves. Reality doesn't honor plausibility and intuitive sense.

The infinite divisiblity prevents damage from losses like this, but flexible value has historically not been enough to solve the real problem.

As the amount of value accounted for by bitcoin transactions grows, the numerical amount of bitcoin available to cover them remains the same. This means that the bitcoin economy cannot expand without making any given amount of bitcoin more valuable -- i.e. they're a recipe for unavoidable deflation. The trouble with this isn't just a matter of perception, the fixed cap is gold-plated incentive for hoarding and worse.

If prices have to drop to make room for new value in the market, nobody wants to be the one that has to cut prices, so nobody does, so there's no money to cover the new economic activity, so the economy stagnates until the pressure becomes great enough that there's a sudden correction. Do some digging If there were a way to make a capped supply workable, by revaluing the markers or any way else, we'd still be on the gold standard. Here's one article laying out this argument against capped supplies — there are many more.

Given the use of such stories, perhaps "honed" would be a better word. If you want your children and leaders to know what's important, and you don't have a written language, you get very, very good at communicating those things in ways the people who need to understand them, can. Think of it as cultural evolution, and if there's one thing everyone can agree the Judaic culture is, it's a survivor.

No way on earth they're going to escalate for this. They'd be international pariahs in two seconds flat. The Chinese government needs to know they've already embarrassed themselves in front of the entire world by letting these bullies have their way for a moment, and if they don't pull the plug on them they're cowards.

Those have to be their options, or the arrogant idiots driving this move will never quit.

They've got a sandbox that works. It's BSD-licensed, it's been public for years, it's drop-dead simple.

That's right. How dare they put people off until they actually knew what had happened?

Don't take it personally, inbred losers that deep-dyed will go after anything that gets them attention.

From a marketer's point of view, Microsoft would be stupid to cut the bloat, at least to do it at any praiseworthy pace.

The empire-builder impulse is to Microsoft products what the Apple fans (however you describe those) are to Apple products: the companies have found their market. Boys are born liking big, impressive, loud and powerful machines, they like challenging (whether or not valuable) intricacy, they like always having a next conquest. Whatever else, Microsoft has been about that for a long, long time. The devotees of the empire-builder impulse love them for it. If they suddenly deliver a machine that doesn't, from that point of view, do anything, it won't be just seen as a slap in the face, that's exactly what it'll be.

Hardest: understanding the actual requirements, fairly often the first part of that is distinguishing clients' (management, other departments, customers, whatever) proposed resolutions to situations they as a rule neglect to describe from the actual situations and the resulting problems that need solving.

Next hardest: naming is the easily-describable part of it, a prerequisite but not the purpose. What it boils down to is making it worthwhile to read the code, to follow the "if you can't teach it, you don't understand it" rule and not waste people's time.

After that, the stuff you can learn by ordinary study.