Have you ever actually tried using Numpy in C?

Never saw the movie; I'll have to see it!

I just remember having my mind blown by the novel :)

You can tell how serious someone is about performance based on whether or not they bring out a profiler. If they don't use a profiler, they aren't serious about performance (or maybe they're just clueless).

What do you want to program?

Modern C++ didn't get rid of the gotchas, it just added more of them. It's fine if you're working by yourself, but you can't prescribe what features other people will use (including the writers of libraries you want to use). But old C++ was fine when working by yourself too.

You can add types to your variables in Python. You can use typescript with Javascript.

You can also introspect your types in Ruby, so his point is moot.

There is also the question of why you would add type checking to a dynamic language: if you don't want a dynamic language, why did you choose one? But the reality is most of us don't choose languages anymore, we choose libraries and have to accept whatever language they are attached to.

The author is claiming that Python is readable.

A lot of lawyers prefer checks because a signed check is proof of intention. Not only is it signed, it often has a "reason" memo written.

This can also work in behalf of the person writing the check (in court). For example, if you pay your rent by check, the landlord shows the intent to accept it when they deposit the check. Whereas if you pay with direct deposit, the landlord can claim they had no intention to accept the money.

A lot of times you can have the bank write the check and mail it for you free. Usually it's in the "bill pay" section of the UI.

It comes with nice, official (intimidating) printing. That's what I do on the rare times I need to write a check.

FTA:
"and the company resolved to migrate its backend to Scala, a more robust language."

If they were serious about performance they'd have skipped all languages except those that run bare metal. Modern C++ is a seriously powerful and fast - albeit perhaps too complicated - language without all the gotchas of older C++ and plain C.

Similarly, don't pay for a single full body scan to clutch your pearls over.

Pay for several, taken several years apart. Then at least you can tell if the weird spot is still there, has always been there, or winked out of existence.

TLDR: learn how detection theory can work for you!

A real scramble suit. If we're going to be filmed at all times ...

At least she didn't set him on fire I guess ...

I think that's just a symptom of the user base growing smaller. Decades ago articles had far more comments. There were always troll posts but there was a lot more discussion to make those seem more inconsequential. Even if posters disagreed politically (I'm sure 2000 election threads are just as bad as any of the recent ones) there was a shared for in Microsoft that everyone could unite behind. Since then open source has won in a lot of ways. It generally rules servers and mobile phones. Even if the Year of the Linux Desktop never really arrived, every year makes it less and less relevant. Without that, the user base will find something else to squabble over.

There's also the vicious cycle that's created where this sort of behavior drives away others and leaves a larger proportion of users that engage in that behavior. It's not so much different from a neighborhood that doesn't solve its crime problems or other issues facing it. The good people slowly leave for greener pastures, but the problem causers stick around or grow worse. If it goes on for long enough you get the dilapidated ghetto or gutted trailer park that no one wants to come to and who the bitter denizens are often resentful to have visit. It's somewhat worse with internet communities because one person can use bots or sock puppet accounts to have an oversized impact.

There's also a tendency for any internet community to become a hive mind. Slashdot, for example, was never going to become a forum where Microsoft was well regarded. Anyone who really liked Microsoft quit posting here shortly after joining to find something else other community that was more open. Any community that slants towards anything will tend to continue heading in that direction as it slowly drives away whatever outgroup is has identified. This can happen along political lines as well, with Reddit and Something Awful before it being examples of this. Slashdot seems more immune to this to some degree. It's not really designed to be as much of a social media site as most other internet communities and was built at a time when no one cared about trying to generate engagement so much as fostering discussion. I don't think that prevents the problem, but it does slow it down considerably.

The user base here is likely much, much older than the average internet community. I don't think previous generations were any better than the current or upcoming generations, but they are all different in their own ways. A lot of us grew up before the smartphones, the internet, or perhaps even ubiquitous personal computing. I think that does have some impact on how we engage with others socially. However it also means that we're a lot closer to the grave than other communities. I've often wondered about some posters who have disappeared over the years. Even people I might normally have disagreed with vehemently on some topics often had insightful or interesting things to say about other topics. Over the years many have dropped off and while it's always possible that they got fed up and got the hell out of town as it were, I think the more simple explanation is that they got old and died. The internet hasn't been around long enough yet for most communities to go through this process where the people who started it all pass away. Slashdot is old enough where that's starting to happen. Anyone who was in their mid-20s when the site was started will be approaching 60 by the end of the decade. A lot of the early users were older than that.

TLDR: Slashdot is dying. Netcraft confirms it!

Most people who have (not so) fond memories of the BSoD predate that era and experienced it on a daily basis. The problem was drastically reduced going from Windows 95 to 98 to 2000/XP, to the extent that it's impossible for hardware to be the primary culprit. Windows dominated the landscape, but they weren't the only OS around and nothing else was that unstable despite using the hardware of that era. Before NT, Windows was an absolute mess. I think the only reason most people put up with it was that they didn't know anything better was possible and since Windows was so widespread it was a misery everyone shared