Nah, you're missing the point:

In previous Bioware games they allowed people to have same-sex relationships by default. In this latest Bioware game, they did not allow people to have same-sex relationships by default, and are only bolting it on in a clumsy fashion after the fact.

It's literally regressive in that this newest game by Bioware handles same-sex relationships less well than previous Bioware games. It's a step backwards for Bioware, even if it's a step forward compared to some other game makers.

Imagine the complaints if you took any $franchise and removed $feature that said $franchise was known for. People would rightly call it a step back.

As I said elsewhere, I find relationships in RPGs to be almost always poorly executed and pointless because they're not handled well, but as a gamer I can certainly see how people who come to a publisher expecting that publisher to deliver on something they usually deliver would be bothered when they don't get what they expected.

The "regressive" statement pretty clearly refers to the difference between Mass Effect, where gay relationships were included right away and this later game by the same company where gay relationships were not included right away and are only being bolted on afterwards. It is literally regression in that it is a step (or multiple steps) backward in how Bioware handles diversity of relationships in their games. It's a perfectly valid term to use in a valid complaint from the segment of people who care about how relationships are implemented in RPGs.

Personally I don't care about the relationships in RPGs since 99/100 times they're just poorly executed theater used by sub-par writers as a shortcut to get the player to care about an NPC, but I can understand that people who like Bioware games and who liked the diversity offered in earlier games would be bothered that Bioware did a worse job of implementing diversity of relationships in their latest game.

It's not "whining" any more than it would be "whining" if a maker of any other kind of game where they were known for certain features in their games were to suddenly scale back that feature.

Very cool - you should definitely give it a shot!

I wonder how you're approaching the idea of exceptions with people if they're getting upset when you explain exceptions to them. I've worked in multiple different businesses and environments ranging from extremely corporate to extremely casual and have literally never experienced someone causing me of trying to detail their idea when I ask them to help me figure out potential weak spots in an implementation and how to address them.

Maybe it's just that I make it clear that, if we're pursuing the idea at all it must be a good one, and figuring out failure modes just means we are going to make sure it's as bullet-proof as possible? Seriously, exceptions exist EVERYWHERE in every different type of environment - I mean, I've had people start giving me laundry lists of exceptions and ways they get handled in things ranging from cars (fuel gets cut off in a crash etc) to cooking (you're missing an ingredient, replace it or change plans) to, well, everything.

I'm not saying you're coming off like a jerk to those people who get upset, but it just seems like such an absolutely bizarre experience, since in almost 20 years of professional life in a wide range of environments I've never had that experience. Ether I'm just a ridiculously lucky person, you're an unlucky one, or something else is afoot.

Oh, I absolutely agree that it would be impossible (and not desirable) to have everyone attempt to master every field. I think I took your "should a policeman learn to grow a potato" types of examples as an argument in favor of hyperspecialization. On the other hand, I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone would take "we need to make the basic tools more approachable for the novice" to lead iany way to "we want to make everyone a software engineer" - it seems strange anyone would throw that out since nobody was suggesting that.

And, to be honest, this is kind of a hot button for me - I love programming, I love the feeling I get when I've taken some problem, large or small, and developed a tool to address it. I want to share that feeling and that capability with other people (because of this I volunteer teaching computer skills - including programming - to largely undereducated adults) so it tweaks me when I see people seemingly down on the idea of making it easier for people to get started. I know that it is extremely unlikely any of my students will ever become professional developers, but that isn't really the point - the point is helping them get started when they didn't know how to.

Not that you were down on it - just so many in this story have been, so I got into it with you.

I don't disagree with the idea that the casual scripter doesn't take exceptions into account (or even, unfortunately, many "professional" developers) - they either trust that the user won't screw up on accident or intentionally or they don't think of the cases where something else might go wrong etc.

But, I think it's actually not THAT hard to teach the concept and necessity of handling exceptions. I volunteer teaching adults programming classes, and exceptions and exception handling is integrated into every lesson - in fact, the first lesson ('How to think like a computer") wherein I have my students write a recipe to make an omelette, spends most of the time with them figuring out exceptions, classifying them from fatal to recoverable to annoying but ultimately able to be ignored, etc. My students have always taken to it easily - people get the concept of shit not working right and breaking in weird ways.

On your other point - that people working in less safe domains with limited knowledge - what makes programming so special, when that is true of literally any other technology I can think of? An untrained person with very little experience working on something important in any field can cause very serious problems, and yet society goes on. We have ways of handling the exceptions that come up from people with limited skills breaking things (safety measures, liability, common sense - "No, Bob, I don't care if you read about it on the Interwebs, I'm not going to let you use your ShopVac to perform liposuction on me!" and so on).

I'm not talking about "letting people off the reservation" so that they can do whatever the hell they want to anything anywhere. Just as I wouldn't let my idiot brother work on the electrical wiring in my home or work on my car or my plumbing, I wouldn't let any random yahoo touch any other system that I believed important. Nor would I buy a product or use a solution for anything that I needed to rely on from just anyone cause they kinda sorta have a version that might work sometimes. Personal responsibility comes into play in a huge way.

Sometimes people even find ways to break other people's shit when they didn't get permission - something they did with a technology they barely understood or didn't fully appreciate winds up causing someone else harm. Some years ago the apartment building next door burnt down because one of the residents didn't know to clean the lint filter in his dryer. Should we then complain that the barrier to entry to doing laundry is too low because an idiot can burn down a building in a worst case scenario? I know someone who died from salmonella poisoning they got from having under-cooked chicken at a dinner party. Do we need to require that someone who wishes to turn on their stove only be able to do so after being retina scanned and confirmed to have basic food safety knowledge?

My point here is that people misuse potentially dangerous technology all the time, yet society goes on, and programming is no different. More people having a basic understanding of it - making it easier for people to learn that computers are not just some magic box that shows them porn - is actually a really good thing BECAUSE of the concerns people here are having. First, it will mean that more people will know enough to make a more informed decision when letting someone else make software for them, which will help filter out the idiots. Second, it will mean that society will find ways to adapt to all those bad things that shitty software can do.

Personally, I think the arguments against it reek of the same kind of nerd arrogance that fueled arguments way back when regular people first started getting online - they'll break things because they're stupid, they'll make it worse for us, blah blah blah. And yep a lot of bad shit happened - but we got over it, adapted, and now have more robust systems in place. And, even better - all those people who are just "regular" (read: not CS/Engineering students) folks wound up making the Internet a lot more interesting and useful.

Whats really funny is that y'all are totally arguing for the Cathedral model here on Slashdot, rather than The Bazaar. Think about that.

And, lastly: I love programming. Well, more I love figuring out how to solve a problem or do something neat and making tools to do that. Geeklet that I am, I get mighty chuffed when I make something that is useful and creative. You bet your ass I want to share that with people - that's why I volunteer to teach.

As I said in both my original post and the follow-up to your reply, I am not talking about people joining the profession but rather people developing a simple basic level of understanding of programmatic concepts.

That you cannot get this through your head despite my saying it clearly two times, means you are not worth talking to; either you aren't capable of comprehending what you read or you are intentionally ignoring what I'm saying.

Well, the first problem I see is the thinking in terms of "sides" - that encourages bullshit grandstanding and that whole rah rah we can't ever say we were wrong about anything because then THE OTHER SIDE wins. It makes us all stupider as a result - we can't ask questions without the other side thinking we're trying to trap them or saying that we're ignorant, we can't admit fault because HOLY SHITBALLS we were wrong about one thing and therefore we must be wrong about EVERYTHING EVER and all that nonsense. Fuck that noise, it's stupid, and we can do better - and I expect people to be better than that.

The good news is that if we're smart we can do small changes that will gently push us onto the right track. The bad news is that we have people who are too fucking stupid to understand any of this, and many of those people are in positions of power. Anyway.

We have 2 parts to this: Raising Revenue and Cutting Spending.

Raising revenue is, by and large, pretty easy: Raise taxes a couple of points, more on people who can afford it, less on those who can't afford it, putting more money in the hands of the people who will most likely spend the money they aren't paying in taxes. I'm not talking about soaking the rich or anything of the sort - a few points, that's it. Also raise revenue for social security by removing the income cap, but still keeping a cap on maximum benefit payout. I know, it's not "fair" to the people who make millions of dollars a year but who will only receive benefits as if they made a hundred k a year or so, but somehow I think they'll be just fine. And no, as long as we don't get stupid ("OMG LOL LETS JUST TAKE EVERYTHING THEY HAVE!!!!!") there won't be some massive "Gone Galt" extravaganza - by and large, living in the US is pretty fucking amazing compared to many other places in the world, and even with higher taxes, living in the US and being rich is HUGELY FUCKING AMAZING compared to many other places in the world. You'll still be able to live the lifestyle you want, and even better you can do so with a slightly lowered risk of being executed by a mob of armed peasants with nothing left to lose. It's a win-win!

But for cuts:

I'm hugely in favor of cutting the fuck out of spending on social programs and defense but we have to do it INTELLIGENTLY. Simply saying "hey, welfare, you have 25% less money to spend, figure it out" is fucking retarded because it winds up being done in the most brutal way - reducing services or cutting some people in need off of services. Simply saying "Hey, DOD, you have 25% less to spend, figure it out" is fucking retarded because there are so many vested interests involved that we would wind up with, like, 3 hot-shit pilots flying the most amazingly expensive fighter jets ever, a couple of billion dollar cigarette boats cruising around the gulf, and I don't know what the fuck else. In any case, I used cuts in my initial comment as a shorthand - and I regret that I did. What I mean to say is that we need to be more efficient in how we spend our money - we need to figure out what mission we want to accomplish with whatever we're spending money on and then really REALLY look at whether or not our dollars are actually contributing to that mission.

One problem we have with many cuts is this: Things that are obviously fucking stupid and can be cut with impunity tend to be actually pretty small portions of any budget. But, yeah - cut them anyway, because it all counts. The things that are REALLY expensive, though, aren't so obvious and easy to cut, and come with trade offs.

Another problem is that so many programs are inextricably linked together, where changes in one have an effect on another. Ex: law enforcement and mental health services. Turns out, if you cut mental health service budgets, you wind up with an increase in crime - many people who are seeking health for substance abuse treatment or depression or other, more serious, issues wind up getting turned away and then committing crimes. It turns out that, when these people commit crimes, it's vastly more expensive (in both financial and human suffering) terms to deal with it through the criminal justice system in both the short term and in the long term (incarceration isn't cheap, and once you're in the CJ system you're pretty much fucked). Some estimates say that a dollar spent on mental health services in areas that need them is worth up to 10 dollars down the road for law enforcement and incarceration. We can't really cut the law enforcement budget because then the people who control the budget will be fired for being SOFT ON CRIME, but nobody except "liberal pussies" gives a fuck about mental illness anyway, so let's just keep cutting that and then making more prisons, and make the cycle even worse.

Another problem is that of vested interests who make money off of the inefficiencies in the government spending process. Nobody (usually) is taking THAT much at any one time directly, but they sure as hell want to encourage budgets to be BIG AND BLOATED so that the stuff they take is essentially a rounding error. The whole system as it is basically winds up being a feedback loop where things keep expanding not as a way to grab control or anything, but just because it's designed inherently to be that way. How to fix that? Beats the fuck out of me. Maybe freeze spending increases and then tell the people running the system that they need to provide the exact same level and scope of services going forward, and let them figure out what inefficiencies need fixing or they get kicked out.

Anyway, we don't need to necessarily cut programs directly - we need to make damn sure that what they are doing is worth doing at all, that they are actually doing it, and that they are doing it efficiently. I think, once we were using a more efficient paradigm and once we can figure out ways to reduce corruption in the system, we would have less need for spending on various programs that are hugely expensive and we can then - hopefully - actually reduce spending.

Because that alone won't fix the problem we shouldn't do anything, gotcha.

Tax those who can afford it a bit more. Cut where we can cut without causing undue hardship. Stop spending stupid quantities of money on blowing people up (funny thing - it would have been cheaper to build every family in Iraq and Afghanistan a decent home and some infrastructure than it would have been to bomb the fuck out of them for the last 10 years, and generated more goodwill and stability over there). Spend the bomb budget instead on things that can provide a real ROI rather than a bunch of craters and "whoops, we killed a bunch of kids/wedding party" news stories that just get ignored.

I bet if we

Exactly. We need the people who ran and run Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and the other banks to run the country. After all, they not only managed to make huge profits from their actions, but when the shit hit the fan they also managed to skate away completely unscathed by gaming the system.

Surely you agree - I mean, If success in business is your primary consideration (and obviously it must be since you cited it above all other concerns for a chief executive) you would have to agree.

Or, you know, maybe there's a difference between running a nation and running a business. Maybe the person running a nation should be concerned with more things than just increasing profit.

Naaaaah, that's just crazy.

So congratulations, I guess, in so completely missing my point.

Please explain to me what is bad about more people learning enough about programming to be able to write software - even bad software - to scratch an itch. Because that's what I was talking about, which I made perfectly clear in my post.

Difficulty: do it without being a condescending asshole, if you can.

Uh, basic understanding of any given useful domain is EXTREMELY desirable for people to have.

Nobody is saying random person X should become a software engineer, just that random person X should have an easy entree into picking up some basic understanding of programming.

An IT professional doesn't need to learn enough about hair care to become a professional stylist, but they certainly need to know enough to be able to groom themselves. A police officer may not need to become a professional farmer, but it certainly couldn't hurt for them to learn the basics of plant cultivation.

As for your stupid example of "why not hire a real programer" - how much would a "real programmer" charge to come to my friend's office and write a simple "if...then" case for her Excel spreadsheet so that it color codes values based on how far they are from the median? How much would a real programmer charge to go to my dad's office and write a batch file to automate a few repetitive tasks he needs to go through every time he runs a certain legacy application? How much would a real programmer charge to go to my mom's house and make a couple of changes to a form on an Access database she's forced to use to track contacts she's had with her therapy clients?

The reason people don't "choose a real language and hire a real programmer" is because most people don't need either of those things, but it sure would be useful for them to get some basic skills.

You're suggesting that people should cultivate helplessness and dependence on other people, which seems to me to be a staggeringly shitty idea.

Your argument does not make sense.

You say that in order to become a programmer one needs commitment and interest. How, unless there are readily accessible entrees into programming, will one find that interest in the first place, so that they may become committed to learning?

You also seem to fail to grasp the larger idea here: Not everyone could, should, or would become a software engineer (or even an entry level code monkey, or even a hobbiest), but everyone can, should, and (hopefully) would get at least some basic concepts of programming because it can help them in little ways. Programmatic logic can help in a wide range of fields - it's a very useful thing with which to have at least a basic level of familiarity.

You thinking that it being easier to start learning about programming would lead to more horrible programmers in the field is like a statistician freaking out that more people learning basic arithmetic will somehow lead to more shitty statisticians.

What's wrong with more "really bad" software being written? What's wrong with "everybody and their grandmother" thinking they can make software?

I *want* more people to have simple to use tools. I *want* more people to believe that they can write software. Why?

It exposes more people to software development (and maybe more people get passionate about it and become good). Most people I've run across who are REALLY good at this whole software development thing got their start fucking around with simple, accessible tools and no idea of how complex being a good developer actually is.

It also lets people who don't know anything about computers but do have expertise in another field come up with useful (even if poorly written) tools and create them when they don't have a budget to get a "real" developer involved. In some cases, these "smears" as you would call them have been the first steps to completely changing how an entire field does their work.

The downside you cite - that more shit software is created as a result - is frankly just a case of geek arrogance. Who gives a fuck if there's a ton more shit software out there since by and large you will NEVER have to deal with it?

As to the times you WIL have to deal with it, anyone who is skilled enough at software development to not be a hypocrite to complain about it as you just did will also be skilled enough to handle those situations where they come up.

Boss hires shitty people to work with you and you have to re-write everything they make because they suck, and is completely inflexible because that shitty coder is his gammy gam? Quit and get a new job - surely if you're some amazing software developer you won't have a problem with that since good developers are always in demand.

You have to work with a codebase that is a horrifying mass of spaghetti code? Either make the business case to re-write or replace it or accept that the tool that exists is deemed good enough. If it's untenable, again, if you're any good you can walk and work elsewhere.

Shitty amateur code will pretty much never get used in this day and age in TRULY critical applications. Yes, there are horror stories, but they are, statistically speaking, irrelevant.

Er, I meant to say, it was frustrating when I was younger to be told I could never succeed in math/science heavy fields because I have 2 X chromosomes. I guess I can be bitter that I have issues posting from my iPad.