The only reason why they're irrelevant is because most people think this way. Now yes, this is the stable point of the political system, but it doesn't mean that it has to be that way every election cycle. It's entirely possible to accumulate enough third party votes to upset the process, especially when one of the mainstream parties fucks up big time.

You don't have to. The same feature is slated for ES6, and, in fact, you can already use it it Node. The code snippets should be pretty much self explanatory.

If you compare what it takes to write async code in node.js to, say, ASP.NET MVC (thanks to async/await syntactic sugar in C#!), it's definitely not in favor of JS.

The other problem is that community itself seems to have a very low standard for libraries. When you look at some of the code from npm packages, it's really every bit as bad as the classic PHP horrors. And yet they're saying that it's a good thing, somehow, because it "does the job" etc.

Only for the lack of syntactic sugar for continuations, which is coming to ES6 (indeed, it's already in node.js beta, if you run your code with --harmony).

You're wrong. While it's true that "everything is an object" in Ruby, a lot of it is implicit. E.g. you can define "global" functions - they just end up as methods of Object. And because Object is a base class of any other class, you can call those methods directly in any piece of code. So it's OO, but you can completely ignore it if you want.

"Everything is an object" in Python, too, by the way. Global functions there become methods on the module object for the module in which they are declared.

All in all, this just means that the type system is simplified (no separation into primitives and objects etc).

TIOBE is not a particularly good metric, IMO. PyPL (which counts search results for "X tutorial") is a better indicator of which language is popular to learn today (which, quite obviously, translates to its popularity in short term).

His point is that certain tools attract bad programmers, because of the peculiarities of the culture that is formed around those tools. It doesn't mean that the tool itself is bad.

Oh, one other thing that's different in C++: the relative order of fields in a struct/class in different visibility blocks is unspecified. So, for example, in this one the fields must be ordered:

class foo {
public:
  int x;
  int y;
  int z;
};

Whereas in this one, x and y must be ordered exactly as specified, but z may precede or follow them:

class foo {
public:
  int x;
  int y;
public:
  int z;
};

No, it is not. ISO/IEC 9899:1999, 6.7.2.1 "Structure and union specifiers", paragraph 13:

"Within a structure object, the non-bit-field members and the units in which bit-fields reside have addresses that increase in the order in which they are declared. A pointer to a structure object, suitably converted, points to its initial member (or if that member is a bit-field, then to the unit in which it resides), and vice versa. There may be unnamed padding within a structure object, but not at its beginning."

The C++ standard has a similar provision. What's unspecified is whether there is any padding between the fields.

Since they aren't upgradable. The thing is video cards get obsolete quicker than the rest of a system. This looks like it may be starting to change, but so far, they are the component that benefits from the most frequent updates. You want to buy less video card more often for optimal performance. This is true for gaming, 3D visualization, CUDA, whatever.

Well here you've two high end cards, which would imply high end tasks... and no way to replace them when the time comes. That is not a good situation. I mean I suppose you can replace the whole system, but that is rather wasteful. It is also predicated on a new replacement being available and Apple has shown a lack of interest in keeping the Mac Pro line up to date.

To me, this looks more like a shiny toy that people want to show off. "Oh look, I have the most powerful system EVAR! It is amazing!" rather than any consideration of usefulness for a workset, which is what a workstation should be.

Also what the people who are playing the price comparison minuta game miss is that yes, it isn't a bad price provided you need precisely what it is providing, but as the parent pointed out that is rare. The idea with an expensive workstation should be you get the components you need, not the ones you don't. Two GPUs might be great for videogames, they are useless for 3D EM simulation. Conversely 64GB is more than you can use for any game, but is entry level for 3D EM work, you could use 256GB or more for many simulations.

When you are spending multi-thousands on a workstation, it really should be custom to order. The money should go where it is useful to your application set. Trying to have an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach and then saying everyone should meet that is silly.

You don't need NumLock to be on to use Alt+numpad combos.

The problem with making such exceptions is that it ignores the other victims whose cases are also "relatively recent", who have living relatives etc, but who are not important to merit such attention. I can see how it would be a very bitter pill to taste from such a perspective.

GP is right; if we want to symbolically declare that we're righting the old wrongs against LGBT, the Queen should just sign a blanket pardon for everyone convicted under that law. They don't need to compile an exact list for that.

Most importantly, it signals that you will only get a posthumous pardon for a crime that didn't ever make sense only when you're a prominent person, and preferably a non-controversial one at that (where's the pardon for Oscar Wilde?).

Really, a pardon sends an altogether wrong message. Imagine if, say, Germany would "pardon" the executed White Rose members - would that be well received?

First of all, 99% effective birth control (which we have in abundance) means that the likelihood of producing offspring is extremely unlikely to begin with. And then there are morning pills and abortions. And there is, in fact, such a thing as 100% effective birth control, if desired. And then there are same-sex incestuous relationships which can never result in children.

Too easy to replace the service - doing that would obliterate the user base in days.