I don't totally agree with this. Prices between airlines and routes can vary dramatically to the same destination so it's not like saving 20$ will usually be the difference between the cheapest option and a more preferred option. Also if you look at situations like Volkswagen, it seems to me that neither governments nor consumers hit them very hard after their massive scandal a few years ago. I see new VWs all over the place.
I love my Volkswagen. In theory I care about emissions test cheating but in practice it wouldn’t affect my decision to buy in the future. It’s the best designed and built car I’ve ever had and so Volkswagen group brands will always be on the top of my list of cars to look at.
A couple of VW execs went to prison and it cost the company 30 billion, that feels like getting hit hard enough by governments. What more do you want?
I bought a fairly beefed up Dell xps 15 a year ago and put Ubuntu on it as I usually do. It's an amazing laptop with the only drawback being shockingly crappy battery life. Not sure if this is the laptop's fault though or Linux power management. I mostly use it docked so it's not a big deal for me. Overall I'm super satisfied.
I'm in a marriage and I struggle with this same question. I sometimes feel like the things my wife cares about are essentially endless. Like if I bend to "her way" and put effort into consistently placing the dirty cup in the dishwasher, next week something new comes up. Then it's the clothes on the floor of my side of the bed or not hanging my jacket or not putting my shoes away perfectly in the closet. At times I get the sensation that it just becomes like waking on eggshells to constantly mitigate somebody's upsetness of irrelevant (to me) things.
I found the article really well written and I think a lot of people will be able to relate to it. Consideration for our partners and compromise is a tricky and interesting domain. I'm realizing more and more that there can be a lot of complexity behind benign everyday situations like a dirty cup beside the sink. Like how can a dirty dish even perturb somebody so much in the first place? Is it related to some trauma or childhood conditioning? Can it be addressed somehow?
Start a notes checklist on your phone of what you could have done to prevent the situation in the first place.
It will grow to probably over 40-50 things over the course of two months. And you will start to realize as you read the list the types of themes that are upsetting and stressful to her.
This has helped but your mileage may vary, it is illuminating though…
Thanks for the clarification...but you qualifying her demands as "ideals" clearly shows you're taking one of them as being perfect and always-right and the other as needing to be re-educated. This is not a solid foundation for a relationship, to take your house metaphor.
A towel should not be left on the floor, anyone can agree, but on less obvious topics none of them can be credited as the unique source of Truth.
> At times I get the sensation that it just becomes like waking on eggshells to constantly mitigate somebody's upsetness of irrelevant (to me) things.
If you are not the one with the issues, then it sounds like your wife may be an Obsessive Compulsive Personality Type - this type of personality has a need for orderliness, neatness, perfectionism and mental and interpersonal control. Basically, their thinking is that they have "figured out" a process for doing something, and if that process is not followed to the dot, it will not result in the desired optimal / perfect result (this causes them anxiety, which makes them feel that they are losing control over their life / relationship, and they become even more obsessed and compulsive to "regain" control).
They are a bit difficult to live with, even if they can be really wonderful, caring and loving human beings. Often some counselling for anxiety (consider cognitive behaviour therapy), and insights into how their unrealistic expectation and actions can be troubling in a relationship can often make them more empathetic to the other person in a relationship, and smooth things over.
(Be wary, as my assumptions about your wife could be quite wrong. Best to consult a therapist).
Yes, I think you're quite right with the OCD type personality. The communication about these various minor things does also tend to increase when she's more stressed/anxious.
I feel like it's generally under control and we mostly have a good balance/compromise established, but I could be totally wrong, just like the article author!
> I sometimes feel like the things my wife cares about are essentially endless.
> Like how can a dirty dish even perturb somebody so much in the first place? Is it related to some trauma or childhood conditioning? Can it be addressed somehow?
Well, yes, sometimes "irrational" things are indicative of a deeper issue, e.g. Dad told me Mom left because I was messy, and if I keep things tidy I can keep people from leaving me and I will be OK.
Perhaps she's going through a rough patch, and this "I need a tidy environment" is how she's able to express it. Maybe she feels ignored/neglected/etc, and this is how she's able to express it. And it could be that you've dictated that things must go your way in other areas of the house/relationship, and here is where she feels comfortable asking that she not need to walk on eggshells, for things to be her way for once.
One thing to remember is that each of us has "irrational" requests when seen from the outside, regardless of how logical and reasonable they seem to us. Having a heart-to-heart where you both sit down with the mindset of "us vs the problem" could determine the root, which is the first step towards finding a true solution.
>Like if I bend to "her way" and put effort into consistently placing the dirty cup in the dishwasher, next week something new comes up. Then it's the clothes on the floor of my side of the bed or not hanging my jacket or not putting my shoes away perfectly in the closet. At times I get the sensation that it just becomes like waking on eggshells to constantly mitigate somebody's upsetness of irrelevant (to me) things.
I don't understand the complaint here. It sounds like your wife is trying to get you, incrementally, to act like a responsible adult. This is what a good partner does.
The more interesting question is why you want to remain living like a slob in a messy environment?
>I don't understand the complaint here. It sounds like your wife is trying to get you, incrementally, to act like a responsible adult
The fundamental conflict is that the person and their wife's goals are not aligned.
If the husband does not want to develop into a "responsible adult" in this respect, their goals are not aligned. A good partner can help the other achieve their goals, but but if there is no alignment on the who one partner wants to be and work towards, this will always be a source of conflict.
>The fundamental conflict is that the person and their wife's goals are not aligned.
It would be that, if all goals were equally good and individual taste was the ultimate criterium (which in some cultures are, not always the best ones).
Otherwise not wanting to "devel into a responsible adult" doesn't sound like an issue of "conflict of goals" (any more than one parent being an absentee parent would merely be a "conflict of goals" as opposed to a problem), but a development issue.
Some people just don't want to develop into an adult or be responsible parents. You can call this a development issue, but at some point it is also a problem of partner selection. If your partner has no interest in resolving their issues to your satisfaction, you are in for a rocky relationship continually dragging them Kicking and Screaming into something they do not want.
At some point, your partners development issue becomes your own partner selection and compatibility problem.
If it's not impacting you, I don't really see the point in passing judgement or criticism. If it does impact you, I think you have to ask why you want to be with who doest share your goals. Forcing change on an unwilling partner is a loosing battle for all involved
>If it's not impacting you, I don't really see the point in passing judgement or criticism.
It affects the behavior of the person, and thus others that had to deal with them - including me, if I'm unlucky enough. Societal criticism of bad personality traits is one of the forces keeping societies functional and habitable.
Fair enough, although I think the term "slob" is a bit extreme here. I would say that I'm just not very into what I would call "organization for the sake of organization". For example:
1. As the author already mentions, why put a cup into the dishwasher if you plan on using it again?
2. Why fold and put away my pants if I wear the same pants everyday for a week?
3. Why hang my jacket if I know I'm leaving again in an hour
4. Why make the bed at all ever? (making the bed is its own topic of insanity IMO)
Etc etc etc
I think I just value and emphasize what I consider efficiency (perhaps laziness?).
(In all seriousness, maybe have a chat with people you trust about general smell/hygeine. Dental shit especially is something so many grown adults get completely wrong. Not everyone notices it, but there's a damn good reason I go out of my way to sit next to black people on the train! :P).
> I think I just value and emphasize what I consider efficiency (perhaps laziness?).
Serisously, though, I think that's what great about having a partner. In the eyes of some random dickhead on the internet, at least, you make a fair point on (1) and (3), but (2) and (4) are maybe things your partner's value system handles better.
You should check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6gu_ABMvzA. You don't need to wash your pants that often. Specially if stay somewhere there is not dust and areas are not dirty.
Yep. Good partners push us to be better, healthier people. It’s absurd how many people in this thread are writing off taking responsibility as mental illness.
I agree with the first point which is definitely a blessing even if we can't see it directly.
To the second point I would argue (and I unfortunately do argue) that "responsibility" can be a vague and subjective term. Like is it a hard-coded responsibility to make your bed every morning? Some would argue yes and use funny arguments like "ask anyone normal" or "all highly intelligent/successful people do it". I would say it's generally a waste of time unless you're bed is so off that you can't comfortably get back into it.
>I would say it's generally a waste of time unless you're bed is so off that you can't comfortably get back into it.
I think the point about making the bed is that it takes all of 30 seconds and makes the entire room look significantly more orderly. One of the highest-ROI cleaning tasks, in terms of time spent vs. tidiness gained.
The actual reason to make ones bed is to let air circulate in the parts of the bed, that potentialy have been sweaty all night, which increases hygiene. At least in my book that is the main reason. Secondary reason might be, that it is nicer to let oneself fall into a nicely made bed at night. Third might be, that it looks more orderly.
> The actual reason to make ones bed is to let air circulate in the parts of the bed
I don't follow - doesn't making a bed involve covering the bottom sheet and mattress cover, which is likely what absorbed the most sweat, with the top sheet and blankets, which would block the airflow to it?
When I need to air out my bed, I push the blanket and top sheet over to the side opposite the side I slept, which makes it look messier, not nicely made.
I assumed the "endless" list was more hyperbole than an actual endless. The concrete examples he gave were all habits he should have grown out of by his late teens.
I’ve read all your comments on this, dre85, and just want to say we are similarly aligned. And I’m recently divorced. Our misalignment of cleanliness was a big part of it, but not all. Hypocrisy was there; for example she trained me to make my bed every day. But she rarely made hers (we did not share the same bed in the last 2-3 years before it ended). That’s just one instance, there were others.
I relate to what you said about an endless list of these things. It’s nearly impossible. And once you think you’ve got them all down, there’s another one to remember.
I would ask you to examine how forgiving she is when you forget to complete one of her tasks. Does she explode? Get out of that relationship. Is she accepting that you’re not perfect? Ok, she’s someone you can work with.
Take a moment and look up Borderline Personality Disorder. "Walking on Eggshells" is a gigantic red flag. I suspect it might change your whole perspective.
for this specific example, I think the shared library is not the correct approach. Queues work for simple fifo behavior, but in this case they also need fairness (and perhaps other logic, like rate limiting per client, different priority for certain clients etc)
For example, "Customer-A is clogging up the work queue and starving other customers out". The solution to this could look something like linux's completely fair scheduler, where every client is allocated some amount of messages per interval of time. This means messages need to be processed in a different order then they are enqueued, and queues are not good at reordering messages.
I would suggest implementing the queue abstraction as a rest or grpc service, backed by a database like postgres, which holds message payloads and everything related to message state (in progress, retry after times, etc). Now we can implement all the necessary scheduling logic within our queue service.
They hinted at the fact that kafka is not actually a queue, and it especially has problems with fairness if you try to use it as a queue for unequally sized "jobs" and/or unequally sized consumers. Kafka is for the exceptional case; actual message queues are for the default/general case.
That makes sense, but it also doesn't really support the article's overall argument about the perils of "standardization without understanding". If what you're saying is true then it could very well be that the approach to standardize the queuing would have worked perfectly well had the senior dev chosen a different technology to underlay his library (ie not Kafka), right?
Yes technically the Kafka matter is a secondary to the author's main point, which is understanding each problem first. So yeah I would not waltz in and say, "Oh, no need for details, obviously you need to standardize on RabbitMQ not Kafka," without a second thought, even though it's likely that's roughly where we're gonna end up.
But even then, I am not going to write a custom library when the drivers for either product are perfectly adequate. Standardization works best when standards are flexible, and trying to force my homemade library on every team is inflexible (usually it's just arrogance).
I hope I'm not the only one who has nostalgia for tables and frames. There was only one way to center content and it always worked. Now there's a hundred and none ever work without a bunch of Googling and troubleshooting.
I started learning web development back in the day of IE6 and table-based layouts. It's actually incredible how many modern designs I see today that are portraying a table, but have recreated the <table> element (and its associated <tr> and <td> elements) in a soup of flex layout divs and such.
With that said, centering is not difficult. The difficulty comes in not realizing that flex layout is essentially the same rows and columns you used before, but with better controls for wrapping elements (tables can't do that easily).
Edit: Some more nostalgia: Cutting out rounded corners and shadows in Photoshop with the slice tool because there was no border-radius or box-shadow at the time :)
The reason I personally prefer using divs with flexbox is responsiveness, and it gives me more control overall. I've always hated tables, even for tables, let alone to structure a whole page.
Tables are special. The width of a cell is determined by the widest cell in the column. The height of a cell is determined by the tallest cell in the row. I have yet to see a convincing replication of the simplicity of the native <table> element with a flex layout. Consider the colspan and rowspan attributes for additional complexity.
You are right that flex offers much more... flexibility. But tables adhere to a certain set of rules that I don't think is easily implemented with flexbox.
"The width of a cell is determined by the widest cell in the column. The height of a cell is determined by the tallest cell in the row"
I've achieved the same with css grid. I genuinely don't think table are needed anymore, unless you're building a page to display data and don't care about responsiveness.
A grid also has a nice property of maximum 1000 rows, which holds back from bad practices of showing tables entirely. Much easier to find data by paging and a special search box rather than searching through the page.
To my knowledge, there is no implementation for rowspan or colspan attributes in a flex grid. Also, to note, I am not advocating for table-based layouts for non-tabular data.
Parent was talking about grid. You seem to be talking about flexbox but calling it “flex grid” instead – you know grid and flexbox are two separate things, right? Grid definitely has the equivalent of rowspan/colspan.
Yes, and there is no equivalent for rowspan/colspan in a grid or flex grid without resorting to CSS modifications in the former and nested containers in the latter.
What are you referring to when you say “flex grid”? There’s no such thing as “flex grid” in CSS. There’s flexbox, and there’s grid. These are two separate things.
I’m not sure what you mean by “resorting to CSS modifications” – surely that’s a given, considering we’re talking about writing CSS?
You don’t need nested containers to do the equivalent of rowspan / colspan with grid. It’s pretty fundamental to the entire feature. You can tell the browser where an element begins and where it ends with grid-column and grid-row. That doesn’t have to be a single grid cell, it can be many – it can span across multiple rows or columns.
My biggest problem with tables is that I can't control in which columns the additional space goes with a table wider than content, e.g. when table has style width:100%
Often this should be the "description" column and not the "number of items" or "price" columns.
I'd really like a "flex-grow" for table columns.
(And I can't use display:grid as it doesn't have running headers/footers for PDF files)
I was having so much fun also with Coffee Cup HTML Editor and its "DHTML" widgets. Slice in Dreamweaver, export, open in Coffee, add useless widgets, re-export, drag and drop the horrendously generated HTML file in random ftp program and voila, you have something that maybe works on a specific version of IE but a lot of fun.
> It's actually incredible how many modern designs I see today that are portraying a table, but have recreated the <table> element (and its associated <tr> and <td> elements) in a soup of flex layout divs and such
To play devil’s advocate, <table> can be frustratingly inadequate even for tabular data, if you want to add some bells and whistles.
Things like resizable/reorderable columns aren’t too tricky, but if you want things like sticky rows or columns things get very messy very quickly.
I’m convinced that the negative qualities of modern web development stem from the built-in controls being largely stuck in 1995.
nothing which has been done since table-based layout has an intuitive and cross-browser way for doing vertical and horizontal centering. that's what i think GP meant.
i do not want to see tables back but i do admit that they did exactly, and intuitively, what you would expect of them.
<div class="box">
<div>this is centered vertically and horizontally</div>
</div>
also, using tables for layout isn't semantically correct. it's like using `map` as a for loop. also, consider folks with disabilities who rely on screen readers.
Centering has been an easily solved problem with both flex and grid for years. If you’re having trouble with conflicting styles, you can revert them with, well, revert. You can even revert all of them with revert: all. But I don’t recommend that. If you’re still having trouble centering things I’d recommend getting familiar with the cascade and removing styles that conflict with what you’re centering.
Definitely! For all the knocks against tables for layout, we're only beginning to approach the simplicity of that approach after many years. (It's even a stretch to call CSS Grid and Flexbox simple.) You could get so far with a few tables and spacer gifs -- if you looked past the semantics.
i know I’ll get downvoted for saying this because there are a lot of front end developers on here who fail to question the sanity of their tools but the current mess with <table> (and most of front end development) is an acute suffering from not invented here syndrome.
Why have a construct purposely for tabulated data when you can reinvent the wheel with a nightmarish array of divs and complex CSS. /s (honestly though, before anyone does mod this post down, pause for a moment and ask yourself this question. If you have a good answer then I’d love to hear it).
The problem is web development went too far down the CSS “all the things” route and instead of using it for styling, developers use it for near enough the entirety of web layout. Which makes no sense when you have data that needs to be structured in specific ways (namely tabulated data). In those scenarios the layout is as much a part of the content as the data itself. Thus CSS there should be used to make the tables attractive rather than using CSS to construct the tables themselves.
I’m not saying <table> doesn’t have its warts but really what should have happened was those warts fixed rather than creating a whole new set of warts and complexity with divs. Again, before anyone votes me down, pause and try to answer this question yourself.
Obviously divs do have their benefits elsewhere in web design; I don’t miss using tables for general purpose layouts. But for tabulated data tables are absolutely the right tool… or at least that should have been the case if sensible people were left to define pragmatic web standards.
I'm not saying there aren't some devs who fit in the box you describe, but semantic HTML is an important part of web dev and many front end devs still ascribe to it. As you said, tags have meanings and we should use the appropriate one for the appropriate thing.
And there are most definitely ways to use even the table tag responsibly (and responsively, although that is harder).
And that is absolutely the standard. Just because people ignore it doesn't mean the standards don't exist. Random blog posts do not change that.
The article we are commenting on was specifically written around 2006 to discourage tables from being used for layout, which was a common approach at the time.
Some people can construct tables from P tags for all I care. It doesn't mean it's common amongst professional developers and it doesn't mean it's correct.
Up until CSS was a viable thing, people built websites in a very different way to our modern approach.
In order to get things to line up, everything was put in a table with invisible borders. If there was a gap, a transparent spacer.gif image was used to plug it.
A lot of people liked this way because it was easy to understand, and they were used to it .. but we were effectively hacking the main semantic purpose of a table element to use it for layout ...
.. also there was no separation between the presentation and content layers.
CSS Zen Gardens signalled a turning point, and was designed to help show the power provided by CSS.
That doesn’t answer the question though. I doubt many developers would be in favour of using tables for layout over divs. however the same doesn’t apply for why one must use divs for tables (ie actual tabulated data) instead of tables.
Bugs me when people use divs to do tabular data display when there’s a perfectly excellent <table> tag. Copy pasting div based tabular data from a web page into a spreadsheet or document is made nightmarish. For layouts, sure, use flex or whatever, but not for data!
I do have this nostalgia remembering my first tr/td spaghetti codes. However, it was never really usable for visually-impaired people, and flex/grid give me proper responsiveness now that 4:3 displays aren't the only way to browse content.
You aware that you can just define a container as display: table-cell and then center stuff in it the old way - at least i remember doing this 10years back or so to solve centering issue I just couldn't get right... (Pardon if above isn't valid css)
I don’t mean to be rude, but if you can’t center content without googling and getting frustrated, you might just need to slow down and take 5 minutes to actually learn how to do it, and let it sink in once and for all. It’s been very straightforward for several years now. The idea that it’s difficult is just an old meme at this point.
I'm a bit disappointed that there's no mention of mini laser cannons strapped to these drones. That would be way cooler, especially at night, and much more environmentally friendly compared to pesticides.
Seems like the laser technology is patented and they are aiming for fixed defenses though, so it won't be in drones anytime soon. Also lasers have more safety concerns than insecticide.
Maybe a spike on one side of the drone, and it flies into the target. Or a spike shoots out one side, along with a counterweight motion, and then retracts.
Edit: on second thought, it’s likely less practical to impale the things than to inject a small dose of poison or electrocute them or something, and it’s probably easier to use a ground-based robot for such precision tasks, with less energy and mass constraints.
Maybe people don't want to watch exclusively Netflix's originals. I personally wish there was a UI feature to just hide all of Netflix's own crap and show me what else they have. Of course that feature will never exist.
