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I think OP means the existing open source ecosystem, things like the Python requests library.

There’s a real risk that AI kills contributions to traditional open source projects, and we all move to custom libraries written by our own AI.


Why is a try/catch wrapper clutter but a switch case is not?


I had assumed that there would already be a switch/case because I was going with the example in the code of there being three pseudotypes (bid, ask, and reserved). So it seemed natural to me to use a switch statement to have it execute the code specific to them, and that doing so would be less cluttered than not having the reserved option and instead doing a switch/case (or if/else-if) for bid/ask and a separate try/catch wrapper in case it was a null object.

Edit: to be clear, I agree that the distinction is not nearly as sharp if it's just a case of "is the object valid or not"


Manageable during peacetime.

In a war with another major power resources would be stretched thin and depriving bases of food would reduce combat effectiveness.


Sure but that won't happen in Guam or Hawaii. Guam would be evacuated first.

Also these same things apply to any other major power (perhaps more so) who would also see their resources stretched then and their bases deprived of food to reduce combat effectiveness.


You absolutely can deny long term productivity gains.

Pre AI it took 100 engineers 5 years to get into a legacy code situation. Once you’re in a legacy code situation it’s very hard to add new features and your code is full of bugs. Fortunately most old companies with legacy code are making loads of money so they can pay the increased development costs to add features to their legacy code.

Now with AI five engineers can build a legacy codebase in six months.


Amateur numbers. I can build a legacy codebase in an afternoon


Why five? What do the other four do?


They go to meetings.


They get away with drip feeding because there’s no competition, because it’s really hard to get permission.

A simpler planning system would allow smaller developers to operate and they would buy, build and sell as fast as they can.

The reason big developers drip feed is that they have 100 identical houses in the pipeline so they don’t want the price to drop at all, because it affects the price of the houses in the pipeline.

The small developer sells quickly so that the cash is available for their next project.


> The reason big developers drip feed is that they have 100 identical houses in the pipeline

So they'd expedite things to avoid risk surely? Doesn't make sense


If you dump 100 new houses onto a small town you will cause a crash.

My town has a population of 15000 people, ~250 houses are sold per year and there is a development with permission to build ~400 new homes.


> If you dump 100 new houses onto a small town you will cause a crash.

This has never happened once... There are plenty of developments built bigger than that that do t cause a crash


That’s because big developers drip feed the houses onto the market…


Why would you begin building if prices are falling? Why would you see that it requires drip feeding because you're so close to losing money, and go ahead with the £100m+ project?

Besides that, they sell plots before they're even built so why are they drip feeding in those cases? You'd be racing to get it built before materials cost rise even more


Small developers struggle to get hold of land though. You have to be in the know to get hold of building land


Agreed, Thats why the planning system needs to change.


Coming up with good French grammar quizzes. GPT5.6 is noticeably better.

Older models usually pitch the difficulty too hard/easy and rely on me remembering the gender of words.

I’ve not noticed a big programming improvement with the newer models.


There are lots of white South Africans. I believe musk is one. Starlink is majority owned by a South African.

The law isn’t about foreign/doneatic. It’s about black/white.

Increasingly this state authorised racism is now extending to black people. The violent ethnic cleansing against black Milawians by black South Africans is terrifying.


> The violent ethnic cleansing against black Milawians by black South Africans is terrifying.

You will be shocked to discover that most ethic cleansings were among people who looked similar. And that include nazism in Europe which did not divided world into black and white either. It includes arab world and hostilities there too.

Like, for christ sake, you could have used the names of those ethnic groups.


Agreed

Just like the violent ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Jordanians by white Israelis is terrifying


Agreed. All racism is wrong. Would you like to take back your “And rightfully so” comment, where you support explicitly racist laws?


Why don't you guys ever acknowledge that the law is an attempt to correct the racism of the apartheid government by distributing economic opportunities to those who never had them?


Economic opportunity isnt zero sum. The 'opportunity' the ANC is 'redistributing' is neglect and mismanagement of infrastructure. Kneecapping starlink doesn't do anything for blacks.


Economic opportunity for black south africans is close to zero sum when all the profit goes to a foreign entity and white south africans.

Separately, kneecapping starlink does a lot for our country by preventing a man who hates us from abusing our laws and spying on our citizens.


I might suggest a basic course in economics. The fact someone else gets all the profit of the price paid for a service doesn't mean you dont also gain from what you received.

This is the problem of looking at intent in law. Plenty of racist law had the intent to improve the country. But is in fact often economically illiterate for helping the populace.


Again, I never said it was zero sum, but thanks for being condescending. I said it was close to zero sum. Black south africans may get some jobs, maybe some internet, but the profit entirely goes to foreign entities and white south africans (in a theoretical model).

The law's intent was never to be racist, and while outcomes vary, the effect does not actually harm white south africans on average. So both the intent and the effect is non-racist.


OK so it might be positive sum for blacks if South Africans buy internet from South African Musk (even if Musk vacuums the price as profit) but we can't have that because Musk 'hates' them in your estimation and you've decided individual black people can't decide what that they think about that for themselves even if they might be better off?

But the law criticized had nothing to do with hate or spying, so really you've done something sly and shifted the posts once we called bullshit as an out for a clearly illiterate policy.


Black people decide every few years by voting for representatives who uphold these policies. There has never been a motion supported by the majority of black south africans to get rid of B-BBEE, only foreign people like you seem to have a problem with it and that is because you don't understand what it is trying to do and you (probably) hate the idea of reparations for apartheid. Or at the very least you support aggressive pro-market policies that south africans do not want.

Additionally, the owner of Starlink hates South Africa (I never said black south africans, but you know), because he has spread lies about genocide occurring here.


1) Majority of blacks and SA have been polled as not supporting (or reforming against racist elements of) current bbbee, including citing it being used instead as a vehicle of corruption.

2) You are rebutting a straw man. I said individual blacks deciding on starlink for themselves, not supposed collective decision of some against others via (corrupt) "representatives", precisely because I knew you'd try such deception of arguing a representative means an individual black person who wants internet must agree with it.

3) Representatives != public opinion. Most people can't be single issue voters. See also, medical marijuana was illegal in US during long periods of supermajorities disagreeing with their reps on the issue.

4) "only foreign people like you seem to have a problem with it." LMAO, LMFAO even, there are other SA posters (and Musk) here with a problem with the circumstances, its not a foreigner conspiracy. You can't fool us this easily coming in telling us youre the South African here and you'll tell us its only foreigners when it's South Africans who disagreed with the situation from which many of us first found out about this.

5) "because he has spread lies about genocide occurring here." Curious to see what specifically this refers to. I did see him advocating against promoting genocide through songs calling for the genocidal act of killing of the Boer, which has been chanted in some stadiums and political rallies.


You can easily look up the lies he has made about white genocide, which even white south africans have debunked.

You accuse me of deception for arguing that, in a democracy, the law must be written by averages and not by a few individuals who want starlink. Ok.

I'm only addressing those points because you're showing some signals of bad faith conversation and general meanness so I don't want to respond to anything until I know you are good faith.


Lies and evasion. I see why you truly feel the ANC is your representative. Good luck to you.


Good programmers write code that’s so simple and obvious it looks like anyone could have written it.

Bad programmers make the simplest things really complicated.


Great programmers write code that makes you wonder why everyone doesn't do it like that.


Installing AC feels like admitting defeat. 30 years ago we thought we could stop this thing. Our world leaders came together, listened to scientists and agreed targets.

Sadly we failed. Now I’m going to have to buy AC and make an even bigger contribution to global warming.


It may cause a heat island effect locally, but as long as the EU keeps fighting for abundant clean energy, everyone can have AC guilt-free.


> Most people should have learned at a young age that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I’m fairly sure that there are no lions in my house. Lions are quite large and I’m capable of detecting lion sized objects with my eyes.

To demonstrate that something is not present you first define the object, then come up with a test that will reliably detect the object. If the test comes back negative then the object is not there.

In a strict philosophical sense I cannot prove that there are no lions in my house, the external world might not exist! A hypothesis that no one has thought of might be correct and that hypothesis could show that there are invisible lions in my house!

However I intend to act with the certainty that there are no lions in my house. Because I have no evidence of lions in my house.

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.


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