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On the note of census units, the only reason we all know our zipcode is because we have to know it. If census units were used as frequently as zip’s I imagine they would quickly become more widely known as well.


If you’re spending the time applying and submitting something then you might as well spend the extra 30 minutes or so to do it right, no?


Any time someone says ‘should only take a few hours’ they’re far underestimating the time it actually takes.


It's never been 30 minutes for me. Even leetcode timed exams tended to be 60-90 minutes.

recently I spent a good 10 hours making a crossword solver. Hiring freeze a few days after I turned it in. I completely get GP's mentality.


Not if you’re applying to hundreds, or thousands of jobs. Unless you know someone, it’s a quantity game.


I’ve screened a lot of resumes and given a lot of interviews over the years, and it’s usually obvious when people are trying the scattershot approach, they just don’t match. I feel like treating it like a quantity game is unlikely to improve your odds, and tbh spamming out hundreds or thousands of applications sounds like a miserable way to spend time. You could spend that time meeting and talking to people. I’ve never applied to more than 2 jobs at once, jobs that I actually want, and never had trouble getting at least one of them (and it still takes time and effort and some coding and interviews).


It wouldn’t be obvious they’re using a scattershot approach when they’re a good match, though. I don’t see the downside.


Maybe not at the resume screening phase, but it’s usually still obvious once the interviews start when people aren’t interested in your specific company. Some people get lucky, sure, but the downside is that you have to get lucky, it’s wasting valuable time on low probability events. If you’re familiar with the statistical process of importance sampling, in my experience on both sides of the interview table, it’s effective and worthwhile to spend more time curating higher quality samples than to scatter and hope.


>but it’s usually still obvious once the interviews start when people aren’t interested in your specific company.

Can you really blame them? If you're not a houshold name, why would you expect someone to spend hours researching your specific company?

On the other hand, it can come off as creepy if your a small company and suddenly someone nerds out about how your CEO said this one thing at a talk years ago and knows your lead has cancer based on his personal blog. I'd rather just treat it as a transaction of my skills and services for money. We are not a family (multiple layoffs have taught me so)

> it’s effective and worthwhile to spend more time curating higher quality samples than to scatter and hope.

Not in this market. Too many ghost jobs, too many people ghosting after multiple rounds. Too many hiring freezes when you spend a month talking with a company. If you want respect from candidates, don't disrespect them.


Naw I don’t blame them. I’m not suggesting anyone spend hours researching each company. And I don’t expect candidates to do anything, I’m saying the candidates who do are the ones that tend to land the job, but it’s entirely the candidate’s choice. All it takes is minutes, really.

You sound like you’ve been burned. That sucks and I’m sorry, I sympathize. I’m hearing that the job market is very tough right now. A big part of that is because it’s extremely competitive. Taking it personally and assuming it’s disrespect isn’t going to help get the job though (even if there was disrespect… but that’s not the only explanation, so it’s a dangerous assumption).


>I’m saying the candidates who do are the ones that tend to land the job, but it’s entirely the candidate’s choice. All it takes is minutes, really.

Well, everyone has different experiences. I never felt like knowing about a company put me ahead in my early days. I guess I have a dump stat in Charisma (not surprised).

Like you said, the market is competitive. No one's going to take the nice guy over the one who blitz's an interview unless that nice guy has connections. Those few minutes of thousands of applications adds up to days of research. I just lack that time and energy these days.

>You sound like you’ve been burned. That sucks and I’m sorry, I sympathize.

several times, yes. It's honestly worse than my first job search out of college 10 years ago.

>Taking it personally and assuming it’s disrespect isn’t going to help get the job though

I only ask for basic decency. Keep a candidate in the loop, don't drag the process on for the sake of it, any take home should warrant a response (even if it's a template rejection letter). i.e. respect people's time.

I haven't been burned in a lot of my interviews, I'm not talking about bummers like the several times I was interviewing before a hiring freeze. I don't even treat non-responses as an interview process. But several of them just end with absolutely no communication nor closure after speaking for weeks with recruiters and hiring managers.

I don't know what to call that in a day and age where AI is supposedly increasing efficiency, other than disrespect. This has never happened before 2023, which makes the times all the more weirder.


My experience is that I've applied to companies where I was a perfect fit, but did not get an interview, and then I've applied to companies where I had not used any of the tech stack and still got an interview... There's a lot of wierd reason, one common is that they want to hire a specific person, maybe even in the company already, but they still need to post a job ad due to company policy. Or one where I got an interview even though I had no experience in their tech stack they explained they need to make at least 5 interviews before they hire and they had already found their guy so they interviewed other non qualified so that their candidate/friend would stand out as the most qualified... So never take hiring personally. It's just random. Do enough work to get an interview, many employers are very good at judging if you will fit in or not, so just leave it for them to figure that out, and be yourself. And don't take it personally when you get rejected. There's still a shortage of experienced software engineers, and lots of jobs to apply to Also if you get a bad feeling, just back out. It's when you've started turning down offers you have become good enough at searching/interviewing, and that's when you will find something great. Try to have at least 3 offers before you accept one.


You don’t understand reality. If all companies have 1000 candidates your only approach is scattershot.

The only time the bespoke approach works is if you have like 30 candidates only. But then there are still issues here because the candidate is still one in thirty so if he does a bespoke approach 30 times it takes an inordinate amount of time.


That’s not reality. Not all companies have 1000 candidates. Not all companies have even 30 candidates.


This is the reality nowadays. There's an abundance of candidates thanks to bootcamps.


Got any evidence to share? It’s simply not true that “all” companies get a thousand applicants, whether you mean per job or total. Startups aren’t inundated with applicants. Neither are schools or hospitals or most web design shops or hundreds of other non-tech places that employ programmers. Some of the biggest tech names do get a lot of applicants, sometimes, for certain jobs, but I suspect you’re probably ignoring the majority of non-FAANG type businesses. Kids are definitely disproportionately aiming for the jobs that they’ve heard stories about paying really well, like AI and Apple, Facebook, Nvidia, etc. Those jobs can be super competitive, and they generally just don’t hire from bootcamps. Spamming entry level bootcamp resumes at big tech companies isn’t going to improve anyone’s odds much or at all, but whatever you don’t have to take my word for it.


Lol yes because preventing the murder of unborn children and being allowed to own guns are "wacky right wing laws".


Speaking as a non-American, to the rest of the world those are indeed wacky right-wing laws. You have to have been brought up in a political monoculture not to see that.


> Speaking as a non-American

Then why do most European countries have more restrictions on late term abortion than the US?


Because they’ve allowed themselves to be infected by religion too.


Or maybe they're just humane and don't believe in taking away an unborn humans opportunity at life?


Easier to believe in Europe where socialized healthcare is the norm. But, no.


You being a "non-American" doesn't give you the right to speak for the rest of the world.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law#:~:text=Wade%E2....


If you look at that map you'll see that abortion is legal for the majority of people on planet earth.


What that map actually shows is that Texas has more liberal abortion laws than the majority of the world.


No, Texas bans abortions from 6 weeks onwards (except when the mother's life is in danger). That's decidedly not more liberal than the majority of the world.


I'm sorry but the map disagrees


How absurd. How is Texas anti-human for non-whites? For the poor? For women? The only thing that could be argued is "anti women" would be the abortion bill. But a lot of people don't view that as a woman's rights issue. The "my body my choice" argument is about the same as if a single father advocated to kill his infant and claimed "my life my choice". The 9 months of pregnancy are by no means more of an invasion of autonomy than the following 18 years of care.


For non-whites? Austin is the only fast-growing major city that has lost Black population (https://www.kut.org/austin/2014-05-16/austins-the-only-fast-...).

For the poor? See https://itep.org/whopays/ -- we have the second most inequitable tax system in the nation, where the poor pay the highest effective rate. We also have no expanded Medicaid, so the rate of uninsured is twice the national average. The State of Texas blocked Austin's sick leave ordinance (https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/05/texas-supreme-court-...). All this affects women and minorities disproportionately -- we're above the national average for maternal mortality, and non-white women are at disproportionate risk above that.


Losing black people doesn't mean Austin is "anti black". SF also lost minorities when the tech scene blew up.

Texas doesn't even have state income tax.

The state isn't and shouldn't be responsible for ensuring everyone has medical insurance. That's an individual responsability.

Blocking the sick leave ordinance just put us in line with the majority of the country. Not exactly a radical move.

Edit:

Also citations not from a .org would be great. I don't need a write up to wade through. Your data should be able to speak for itself if it's legitimate.


Grew up in Texas after 9/11. You can add anyone brown or foreign in general to that list.


Oh man... The wall of text we'd need to discuss this.

Anti abortion laws impact one segment (and the sub segments within, obviously) of society: women. Before you start talking about men's rights and whatnot, please consider not doing that. Nothing grows inside you. Anyway, these laws ONLY IMPACT WOMEN. The US has a ridiculously high Maternal Mortality rate for a "developed" nation and it's worse for non-whites:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2020...

For many, abortion is the safe option but making it illegal means it's harder for the poor (which are disproportionately non-white) means they will either have to have back room abortions (remember that talking point in the 80s?) or have babies, which will increase the mortality rate for non-whites even further.

Know what we love? Forcing women to have babies. Know what we don't love? Their kids. Our social support structure in this state is abysmal. So now we're forcing people to have kids that we won't help them with, driving further into poverty, so we can talk about how minorities are The Problem.

But wait! These kids are US citizens, surely they can grow up and vote for change! Not so. We are big fans of gerrymandering. It's a Texas art form and the lines are constantly shifting in obvious ways that basically make voting more of a spectacle than a real thing. We draw lines through minority neighborhoods to split their votes with surrounding neighborhoods that are rich white folks.

And this is all just stuff I can type out on my phone because it's such a common discussion point that I don't have research it any more. We could for hours about laws that are on the books already and those that have been added recently and those that are coming up but if you read this far, I'm already surprised. Texas is tailor made for white republican men and those that that orbit them. Our state laws are giant piles of hypocritical BS. We use one argument to support a thing and the opposite to support another and they're bought and paid for by gun and Christian lobbying.


We're not forcing anyone to have kids. 99% of would be abortions are preventable by just practicing safe sex. Yes I know there's the 1%, but let's talk about the overwhelming majority here.

If you can't afford children, be a responsible adult and don't have them.

I wasn't talking about men's rights, but a humans right to life. How do you justify a mother opting to kill her unborn child while still condemning the killing of a born child? Again, 9 months of gestation is absolutely not more an invasion of autonomy than the following 18 years of care. To believe that its okay to kill a fetus 3 months into pregnancy but not okay to kill a newborn is pure mental gymnastics. In most abortions the aborted fetus would have developed into a healthy, functioning human being had you not prevented it. That's murder. You're taking away a humans opportunity for life.


Texas law has no exceptions for rape or incest. In these circumstances, you are literally forcing someone to have a child after they've been violated. Abbott's argument is "Rape is a crime. And Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets."

What have they been doing up to this point? Texas outpaces the nation in rape and has been trending upward.

Know what else is illegal? Gun possession by violent criminals. Didn't Abbott also claim that if we made it harder for 18 year old white boys to get AR-15s then only the criminals would have guns? Why not apply the same logic in two places? (I own guns, I like shooting, I'm just no a fan of being full of shit and I believe in common sense fun laws, like most gun owners.)

I know that last bit was a different topic but it illustrates some of the absolute mess that exists in TX politics. They can't even avoid using contradictory arguments in public statements. This is a bad state run by bad people who will say and do absolutely anything to defend the status quo, even if it means saying two opposing things in almost the same breath.


So you focused on a fraction of a percent of abortion cases rather than the overwhelming majority that happen because the mother and/or father couldn't be bothered to have safe sex. I explicitly said in my comment lets talk about the majority. Marijuana causes some fraction of a percent of the population to go into a temporary psychosis, that doesn't mean it should be illegal.

Why do you single out 18 year old white boys specifically? Was there a law that restricted 18 year old white men from purchasing guns that got shot down? If so, good. That's sexist and racist.


Ah. So because it's on a small portion (cite your sources) that we harm irreparably, then it's ok. Cool beans. What was I thinking. Harming the most vulnerable to protect the majority is stupid math. You're also make an assertion about the majority without providing any data, so it's not fact but feeling.

Re: the white boy problem

Because as a an adult white male, I am allowed to call out my own. The perpetrators of most school shootings have been young, white, men. My wife isn't allowed to say it because she'll be shouted down by "not all men" and minorities can't say it because we'll call them racist and point out the one or two times a minority did it. Not enough white men are pointing at the common denominator (aside from "gun") and it's our responsibility to do so.


Black men are also responsible for the majority of firearm murders ala gang violence, the total number of which make the number killed in school shootings look miniscule by comparison, but I don't see you calling them out. I bet you'll say it's a systemic issue. No chance the white school shooters are dealing with any systemic issues themselves? Perhaps people like you who seem to have an unreasonable disdain for young white men?

Just because you've internalized self-hatred and white-guilt doesn't give your the right to project that on the rest of the population.


I'm just happy to know you're concerned for their safety. We should do something about that too. Know what might work? Gun control.

Know what might really help? Ending cycles of poverty. Know a way we could do that? By not forcing them into poverty. Birth control is not free (it was but you killed Planned Parenthood, remember that?). So maybe everyone should stop having sex. That's realistic, right? Oh wait...

So you're concerned about gang violence, which is generally an issue for the most impoverished, who likely don't have healthcare and may not have the money for other birth control devices and you've forced the most well know women's health organization out of business, who used to provide these things for free and you want to force them to have babies, knowing they don't have money, creating more poverty and more desperation and higher likelihoods of violence and then... Shit. Did it come right back around?

Math is hard. Let's go shopping.

ps- I don't have internalized guilt. I haven't massacred one single school. I'm just not blind to the fact that almost all the people who have look like me and I'm smart enough to know that the only people who anyone will listen to (not everyone but most) are the ones who look like me because the only response you can muster is that I just feel guilty, which is ridiculous, I feel angry and sad.


Wanna cite some sources? I cited mine. You're making some pretty big leaps there.


https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/04/health/planned-parenthood-by-...

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/minority-women-affected-...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-about-trauma...

I can't find a "WIC doesn't cover birth control article" but I can't one that says it does. I can also find the FAQ from PP that says they'll give you free birth control but if you're in a red state, they won't exist.

Not only is there work in this area, it's a not a leap at all. A minor application of critical thinking and logic makes cause and effect pretty simple. This has always been about forcing personal feelings onto others. We make a giant show of being anti-choice and then talk down to the poor and point out the issues in poverty stricken areas to make ourselves feel better, ignoring the clear evidence that this is a self fulfilling issue.

This was fun but I'm going to go back to getting the hell out of here, literally. I have packing to do.


Yes I personally feel bad when children are murdered. You're right. How dare I push those feelings on others.


For statistics on abortions caused by rape, https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/pubs/psr...

Here, approximately 0.5% to 1% of abortions are because of rape and/or incest. Looks like my original estimate was right :)

The most vulnerable are not the rape victims, but the unborn infants, and they're being harmed in great number.


Discussions involve reading and considering and responding to people, not whatever it is you're doing


Would you like to add anything constructive to this discussion or just insult me since you disagree with my politics?


If you're not going to read the reply or respond to the points, why should they?


Bless your heart.



Sure, but some things don’t warrant all that many words. Bless your heart: I hope you have many life experiences that help you enrich your perspective and add nuance to your worldview.


It's incredible that when you disagree with someone, your assumption is that they lack life experience and have a naive worldview. Because surely if they were wiser, they'd agree with you, right?

If you truly have a good response to the things I mentioned, I'd like to hear them. Your current behaviour truly is incredibly condescending.


If you insist.

>99% of would be abortions are preventable by just practicing safe sex.

Non-substantial and uncited statistic. 99% of pregnancy is prevented by safe sex.

>Yes I know there's the 1%, but let's talk about the overwhelming majority here.

Unsubstantiated ratio. Assumption that safe-sex is universally possible. It’s a privilege that not all get to enjoy, and abortion is the edge-case of human behavior that addresses those situations.

>If you can't afford children, be a responsible adult and don't have them.

Assumption of full reproductive autonomy.

>Again, 9 months of gestation is absolutely not more an invasion of autonomy than the following 18 years of care.

Moral hazard.

>In most abortions the aborted fetus would have developed into a healthy, functioning human being had you not prevented it. That's murder. You're taking away a humans opportunity for life.

In law we call this “but-for” analysis. Essentially, “but for” someone aborting a fetus, the fetus “would have developed into a healthy, functioning human being.”

Everything else up to this point was fine but the last point is where the “bless your heart” materialized in my soul. Would that we could guarantee the health and functioning of humans, simply by not aborting them.

They say “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans,” but in your case it’s “If you want to make God laugh, tell him his plans.”


Okay my exact percentages are probably wrong, the point being the vast majority of abortions could be prevented by safe sex.

Safe sex is absolutely universally possible. Free condoms are given out all over the place, and in places where they aren't it's probably better to practice abstinence until you're ready than kill unborn children so you can get a quick nut.

In cases except rape, which are a small minority of abortions, there is reproductive autonomy.

Elaborate on "moral hazard".

I explicitly said most. Not all. Most. Most abortions, like most births, would have resulted in a healthy adult human. You're responding to a misreading of what I said.


Provide evidence to support literally anything you're claiming.


0.5% - 1% of abortions are because of rape or incest: https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/pubs/psr...

Free condoms: https://www.goodrx.com/health-topic/sexual-health/free-condo...

Birth defects affect only 1 in 33 babies, meaning the majority would grow up healthy: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/infographic.html


A short, quick, deconstruction of BS arguments. I applaud your effort and efficiency.


Thank you!


My dudebro, you are the living answer to your own questions.

You couldn’t pay me or my wife enough money to move back to Austin, let alone anywhere else in Texas, and we called it home for longer than anywhere else we’ve been since. Enjoy the hellhole.


On top of restricting women’s healthcare, there is also the lack of parental and sick leave laws, and extended disability leave for women who give birth. Probably a lack of adequate breastfeeding laws too. And of course, non existent min hourly and salaried wage laws.

I would never subject my wife/daughter to that kind of society, as long as I have the means not to.


My wife is also a physician. The level of care provided to low-income patients is barely existent compared to a state like Massachusetts, both some of the places she has practiced. Have you seen the state of Medicaid in Texas?

Go expose yourself to it and you’ll see how Texas is anti-poor.


Yup. Not that I think that guy is gonna care...

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/23/texas-abortion-law-d...


Alternatively, the decreased risk may incentivize larger or more frequent investments and simultaneously draw in newer investors and make it easier for them to take the plunge.

It does allow the rich to get richer if the company does well, but it also facilitates startup funding and could very well be the difference between a startup getting the funding it needs to be successful or it getting denied due to risk factors.


> "So investors can put money into many more long shot companies."


Right but you phrase it like some horrible thing when it's a net positive for the investors, the business owners/folders, and the broader economy. Just because "the rich get richer" doesn't mean it's inherently bad and that others don't also get richer. It's not a 0 sum game.


Nice, thanks for the links!


"should not have their critical needs outweighed for the mere convenience of the majority"

I *strongly* disagree here. A small subsection of the population should not be able to impose their self-percieved "needs" on the remaining 99%. You're the individuals who care about this, it's your responsibility to put in the necessary foot work.

It's incredibly arrogant and presumptuous to try and argue that any overwhelming minorities desires should be seen as needs and imposed upon everyone else and drawing a comparison to accessibility is disingenuous at best. You aren't literally unable to use an application because they don't spell out every bit of minutia regarding their telemetry, nor are you born with physical/mental disadvantages that somehow necessitate your privacy policy desires.

No one is preventing you from monitoring your own network activity, sandboxing your machine, using a VPN, or a multitude of other steps you can take to monitor and protect your privacy.


Blaming the victim, eh… Any other profound ideas you'd like enlighten us with?


I'm not blaming the victim because they aren't victims. They voluntarily choose to use software and are upset when it doesn't live up to their arbitrary standards, standards they themselves are doing nothing to reach when it's perfectly within their abilities to do so.

If you complained about how much you hate trackpads but refused to buy a USB mouse I wouldn't say that mice should be mandatory accessories bundled with every laptop sale, I'd say you should buy a mouse yourself or stop complaining about it.


Now imagine that Trackpad came in a Mouse box, only the fine print alluding to what was truly inside.

When confronted, they manufacturer states... but trackpads don't sell as well! There are perfectly good alternatives if you just read and truly care!


What an absurd statement. Next you'll say private property it "immoral".

Open source software is wonderful and I love when companies create and support FOSS. That said, to say it's immoral not to give away the work you produced/paid to produce is ridiculous. You're not taking anyone freedom away by providing proprietary software. As I believe another commenter replied, they're free to not use it or develop the software on their own.

If it's too difficult for them to replicate or for a competing FOSS product to exist, then it probably is complex enough to warrant payment.


> What an absurd statement. Next you'll say private property it "immoral".

No, absolutely not. Private property is a precursor to free software. I own a computing machine, therefore I have a natural right to control what my computing machine will compute.

> That said, to say it's immoral not to give away the work you produced/paid to produce is ridiculous.

You don't have to give anything away. Free Software means you can share your program with whoever you want, including nobody.

> You're not taking anyone freedom away by providing proprietary software.

That would be true, if proprietary software meant "no source code available" (that's usually called Freeware). But in reality, there are laws like DCMA that actually do restrict your freedom, in a literal sense.


What makes software different from any other labor, intellectual property, or physical property? Should a musician not be able to charge for their music? An artist for their art? An architect for their designs? A mason for laying the bricks?

You do own your computing machine, which means you have the right not to use proprietary software. That doesn't mean that proprietary software itself isn't moral if the user chooses to run it. You seem to believe that any software which isn't free is also abusive, when that's clearly not the case. Many software companies that develop proprietary software are profitable and are so without abusing their users.

DCMA only "restricts your freedom" so far as someone else intellectual property is concerned. If that software had never been created there wouldn't be the "freedoms" surrounding it to restrict. It's also usually illegal to buy a painting and then sell prints of that painting so your freedom is likewise "restricted". While I agree that some parts of DCMA aren't ideal, the broad argument of proprietary software "restricting your freedom" because of it is fallacious.


> What makes software different from any other labor, intellectual property, or physical property?

Nothing, and that's the whole point! If I buy a house, I can repaint it, tear down a wall or do whatever I please (as long as I stay within the boundaries of the law).

If I buy a painting I can move it, hang it upside down, improve the mysterious smile by adding a moustache with a magic marker or make whatever changes to it that I see fit.

If I buy a record, I can sample it, mix it however I please, listen to it backwards so I can listen to the subliminal ALL HAIL SATAN message it hides.

However, if I buy a piece of proprietary software I can do... nothing, except tick or untick some boxes in the settings menu that the developer bothered to put there.


That's fair for software that's a one time purchase. But most modern software is subscription based, and is more akin to renting an apartment where you're more restricted in what you can modify.

Legally, I agree that we should be able to modify whatever software we purchase so long as we don't redistribute it. I don't believe, however, that the engineers should be required to hand over the source code for us to do it.

Car mods are usually legal, but no one is demanding schematics from the manufacturer to help them go about it.


> That doesn't mean that proprietary software itself isn't moral if the user chooses to run it.

No, the fact that proprietary software gives developers unjust power over its users makes it immoral.


But it doesn't. The user isn't forced to cede that power to the developer(s). I don't know how you can possibly quantify it as "unjust".


The user (of the proprietary software) is forced to execute on his machine whatever computation that software tells him to. He has no way of knowing what that computation does or modify it. In this case, developer holds unjust power over the user because the developer can make the software do whatever he wants, and even change the behavior of the program by auto-updating it over the network - and the user is completely powerless against the developer.

Yes, he can choose not to be a user (of the proprietary software). That does not make proprietary software any less immoral. Being able to refuse to be a part of a pyramid scheme doesn't make pyramid schemes any less immoral.


Your saying that this being a possibility means all proprietary software is immoral is like saying that since some businesses are pyramid schemes, all businesses are immoral.

Spyware is immoral, I agree. That doesn't make all proprietary software immoral and collecting relevant usage data doesn't make it Spyware.


> Your saying that this being a possibility means all proprietary software is immoral is like saying that since some businesses are pyramid schemes, all businesses are immoral.

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that proprietary software is immoral because it takes away an important human freedom - the freedom to control our own computation. You're said "ok but what if someone agrees to use proprietary software?" then I said "that does not make proprietary software any less bad".


If a user can choose not to use propriatary software, do the developers of propriatary software still have unjust power over its users?


Proprietary software gives unjust power to developers over their users.

If a user chooses not to use proprietary software, then they're not a user (of proprietary software).

The fact that each person can opt out of something harmful doesn't make the harmful thing any less harmful.


> Private property is a precursor to free software. I own a computing machine, therefore I have a natural right to control what my computing machine will compute.

A couple things:

1. You don't need ownership to have rights related to privacy or control. You don't have to be a homeowner to have a right against people invading your home. The hackers who started the free software movement were not primarily computing on devices they personally owned.

2. Personal ownership of computing devices is not necessarily what the term 'private property' refers to. Personal ownership of computing devices is very much possible without private _property_: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_v...


> You don't have to be a homeowner to have a right against people invading your home.

"Your home", as in: a home you have ownership rights to. You may only be renting those rights for a limited time, but your right not to have your home invaded is still grounded in the rights of ownership you hold in the home.

There are no "rights related to privacy or control" without ownership.

> Personal ownership of computing devices is not necessarily what the term 'private property' refers to.

"In some economic systems, such as capitalism, private and personal property are considered to be exactly equivalent." — Your Wikipedia link

So in the systems which matter there is no difference. Only broken economic systems such as socialism, Marxism, and left-anarchism attempt to draw a distinction between personal and private property. Personal property is just that part of private property that those in power (whether a lone dictator or an egalitarian collective) doesn't consider useful or significant enough to be worth taking for itself.


I question the bias of your sample. Almost every one I've known who possesses any self-taught coding knowledge has gotten there specifically because they don't buy the "wage slavery" narrative and wanted a valuable skill. I'm from a very low income community and family so I imagine that if the type of person you're claiming exists were so predominant I'd have run into at least a few of them.


They didn't say they wanted to learn new things, they wanted to learn a new language. I can want to learn how to drive a race car in addition to my Toyota Corrola without wanting to lear how to operate a crane (though that would be pretty interesting honestly).


Where is the joy of learning a new language if not for learning new concepts? It just does not make sense to me. Learning a new standard library and build tools and all that stuff? Is that much fun?

People want to learn a new language for reasons: perhaps they want to learn new concepts, perhaps they want a language that's faster, perhaps they want a more mature ecosystem, perhaps they want to increase their employability. There aren't people who "want to learn a new language" as their ultimate end goal.


Maybe go is faster than any other language they've used? I'm not contending the fact that they have a reason for wanting to learn go as that new language. Just that your claiming they clearly weren't interested in learning since they didn't choose some esoteric language is fallacious.


> Maybe go is faster than any other language they've used?

Quite possibly! That would be consistent with my point that they chose Go for practical reasons, rather than to learn for the sake of learning, as KaiserPro was suggesting.

If you want to learn for the sake of learning, you'll learn a different paradigm, rather than rehash the same thing with a slightly different flavour. Also probably your productivity will tank.


Can it not be both? Someone can want to learn for the sake of learning, and then filter further using practicalities. I'd love to learn every programming language out there, but it wouldn't be possible, we only have a limited amount of time in this life, so I'll instead learn the ones that are the most practical to learn. Java, however practical, may not be interesting to me so I may not learn it. Piet is super interesting, but not all that practical so I'll probably never learn it.

It doesn't have to be a single variable equation. I can learn something both to learn it and for practical reasons.


Yes it can very much be both! Or even more reasons, as you say.

The original comment I was replying to said their reason was "I just wanted to learn a new language", which is what I disagreed with.


Fair enough!


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