One particular issue we have is how code is refactored. Big blocks of code might be moved into a function or put inside an if statement. The indenting is usually stuffed up in the process. I suppose one advantage in python is that doing that would more than likely break the code entirely. But I don't want to be the guy trying to fix a system on site with vi in a dos window with a hundred million dollars hanging on the outcome of a test in the middle of the night in nigeria with no idea where my blocks start and end.
In python, improperly indented code rarely runs, and personally, I'm perfectly ok with a system that forces you to keep the code indented properly. Your guy using vi in a dos window is going to leave you with code that is going to be a real nuisance for the next guy who comes along if he's ok with totally botched indentation.
More to the point, if you have a hundred million dollars hanging on your test, and your only IDE is vi under dos, you're doing something wrong that has absolutely nothing to do with your choice of programming language. Actually, I'm being unkind, once you learn how to use it, vi is pretty effective. For a real challenge, try programming with just cat, or better still, using nothing but bash IO redirection.
I'm really getting nitpicky now, but my second example only works if the list is a list of strings (the first example is good for a list of basically anything). If you want to print an arbitrary list with a single call to print, and with line breaks between the entries, the correct code would look something like:
print "\n".join(str(item) for item in list)
which may be what Tweenk was aiming for
for item in list: print item
remains the most elegant solution in my mind
Of course, if you just want to print the damned list,
print list
works just fine no matter what the list is made of. The extra code is really just there to insert line breaks.
for item in list:
print "\n".join([str(x) for x in item])
for item in list: print item
works and produces the same output in the python version. I suppose creating a single string saves you a few function calls, but if you're using print statement it's a safe assumption that performance isn't your top priority, and the more legible version is preferred.
Alternatively
print "\n".join(list)
is probably better if you're really set on just making a single call to print. (well, ok, technically, list is a reserved word in python so in both the examples above that's a problem, but I stuck with the name since I inherited it from the GP)
Actually, now that I actually look at your code more closely, I think that it would print every character in each string separated by line returns, and still make as many print calls is your list has items... you really should check your code more carefully if you're going to be correcting people.
Besides which, with the abundance of soup kitchens and charity groups out there, I find it difficult to believe than anyone has to go dumpster diving for food. People who do so usually have some mental issues, and wish to avoid the social interactions which are involved with seeking charity.
Actually, a lot of people dumpster dive because you can get really good expensive food for free. The fancier the store/restaurant, the more likely they are to throw out perfectly good, often still packaged food, because of a minor defect. I turned this up after just a few seconds of searching, I'm sure you can find more information if you look.
Lots of dumpster divers aren't homeless at all, and those who are probably do it because they get better food than at a soup kitchen.
No we don't. We need space based solar power eventually. Fusion power would be nice, but space based solar power is the real long term solution. Ultimately almost all power we use comes from the Sun (well, or long dead distant stars in the case of fission), and it just makes sense to get at it directly. Unlike Fusion there are no show stopping technical problems with solar power, it looks quite likely to be to be cost effective, and the amount of power available is, for all current practical purposes, unlimited.
In particular if we were able to set up off-world manufacturing plants for the satellites, ideally on the moon, it should be possible to get essentially unlimited cheap power this way, and this technology may not be so far away.
I've been using Geany lately. It's a nice lightweight IDE, and it's fast, stable, and has all the most critical features.
I've worked some in bigger IDEs (Visual Studio when working in windows) and I dislike the lack of control I have. If I'm making a cookie cutter program, Visual Studio is great, but if I want to do anything unusual it usually proves to be a big hassle to figure out the Visual Studio way to do it, and a lot of time goes into setting up the environment. I can see how if you were doing the same sort of coding all the time, and were developing for only one platform such an environment would be more efficient, but I prefer the flexibility of a lighter weight system.
But on the specifics of 'rigoddamndiculous' it is an impromptu word. It is self documenting and shouldn't have a definition for the same reason we don't write up definitions for every word with 'fuck' inserted. fan-fucking-tastic for example.
Not that you're wrong, but probably as a matter of good style you should stop using impromptu words once they make it into the urban dictionary. The whole point is that they're silly and fresh and catch your attention. If they're in a dictionary, they're no good anymore.
Well, with 9.04 I can now hook my laptop up to a projector and make it work by hitting a button instead of fiddling with resolution settings and logging out and back in. Of course 9.04 also broke compositing for my graphics card, which is mildly annoying. On the whole I'd rather have easy to use external monitors than eye candy, so it's a net plus. The external monitors issue has been a long time and serious problem with Ubuntu, so the fact that that's improving suggests to me that they're on the right path.
Ubuntu's update system is definitely lacking. If you put/home on a separate partition though you can do a fresh install without losing your data or settings. I've done this several times, and never had a worse problem than an occasional program complaining of an outdated config file.
A complete reinstall takes maybe 20-30 minutes, and since you keep all your settings, all you'll need to do is use apt-get to reinstall whatever non default programs you use and you'll be ready to go.
Probably this doesn't apply to you, but my experience has always been that the people who are most careful about avoiding germs are the ones who get sick the most. A certain amount of exposure to germs is necessary to prime your immune system, and while I'm all for regular showers, worrying about touching the tap after washing your hands is the sort of thinking that's probably going to do you more harm than good.
You want to make sure that germs on your skin don't get the chance to multiply to numbers your immune system can't handle, but intermittent exposure to a range of germs is probably just good for you.
You haven't listed a single thing that isn't available for Linux that is available for Windows. In fact, your post seems to lack a single concrete argument, which makes it difficult to argue against.
I don't know what features Windows has that Linux apparently doesn't. I have done Windows development, so it's not as if I'm talking from ignorance here. At least if Visual Studio qualifies as one of your 'better commercial development environments.' I haven't been impressed.
Your 'anything you can do in Linux, you can do in Windows' argument completely misses the point. Of course both can do what you need, the question is, which makes it easiest? I've found that the set up time for a new project is many times as long on Windows. It's true that for large projects this isn't as important, and obviously you should develop on the platform you plan to deploy to, but for me, the ability to throw together small programs easily to automate and customize my work process is of immense value, and that's just too difficult under windows. The ability to see the source code of any program I'm working with has also been of great value in improving my skill as a programmer, even if it's rarely vital to the success of a project.
It seems to me your main gripe is that it's harder to write Windows apps in Linux, and if writing Windows apps is the only thing you care about, I'm sure I'm not going to change your mind. I do work in Windows sometimes myself, because it's such an important platform. But lots of projects can either be planned to be cross platform, or, if web based, are naturally cross platform, and in those cases, it's natural to choose the OS that maximizes ease of development.
And "shitty PHP based websites?" Really? I mean, I'll grant that PHP isn't the most elegant language ever created, but are you really suggesting ASP is better? You're a Visual Basic developer aren't you?
This isn't quite true. I use Linux primarily because it's such an excellent development environment. However, I'd like to see it get a larger market share so that I can reap the benefits of manufacturers producing and testing drivers for hardware, and software developers releasing versions of their programs for Linux. I don't really care about market share for it's own sake, but market share comes with perks!
I figure Linux would only need around 5% market share to get me most the advantages I want though. Not everyone needs to use it!
Because Win XP has been out for the vast majority of that decade, and building additional functionality in to an OS when you can't force an upgrade from all users is really difficult?
Which of course is an argument in favor of open source development. Not that Vista provided any significant improvement that I know of. Maybe Windows 7 will provide an actually worthwhile improvement over XP in terms of functionality, but I'm not holding out much hope.
A lot of Linux fans claim this is all easy, but it really isn't for someone with little motivation to switch. Yeah, if I got a book or read lots of tutorials I could master it, but why would I do that?
This is a good question. I suppose the answer is, 10 years from now you're going to have to have completely relearned everything anyway; Microsoft changes stuff with every new version of Windows, but by sticking with Windows, you leave yourself at the mercy of whatever stupid ideas Microsoft might come up with to make your computer run worse (like building DRM into the OS).
Linux has been improving in terms of usability dramatically with each year, while Windows hasn't become any more useful in about a decade as far as I can tell. At this point, Windows' only advantages over Linux - larger app selection and better hardware support - have nothing to do with the quality of the OS, and everything to do with marketshare. In fact, Linux' out of the box hardware support (with no 3rd party drivers) is vastly better than Windows'.
I look at programs like Media Player and Outlook Express, and they maxed out in terms of functionality years ago, and the newest versions present a dramatically inferior user experience. Vista as a whole was another example of a degraded product created only so they'd have something new to sell.
So why switch to Linux? Because Microsoft has shown no sign of making something better for so many years that it's about time to give up hope and move on.
This is definitely still a work in progress, but it's gotten a lot better. In the latest version of Ubuntu, for the first time I'm able to plug my laptop into a projector, hit a button and start using the projector without logging out, using the default settings on a base install.
Give it another 6 months and I bet you'll find Ubuntu has the same functionality as Windows for this stuff, and give it a year, and Ubuntu will do it faster and with better customizability. If this is a big deal for you though, I'd wait 'til then to try Linux again.
Actually, there is a menu option in Ubuntu under Applications->Add/Remove that provides a simpler interface for adding applications. Not that anyone who knows what he's doing would use it, but it's there!
Leave yourself a sticky note somewhere to be found on the next loop?
Right. Or, you know, a reinforced steel box containing hard drives buried out in the middle of nowhere in a place you know you're not going to be dropping any nukes would do.
Chronicles was sort of fun, but calling it "meditative" and "complex" is nuts. The plot was filled with holes, and the character interactions made it feel like a soap opera, with robots. Its one saving grace was Summer Glau.
I suspect this patent will be declared "obvious" and nullified if someone challenges it.
Right. It is important to realize that a lot of the time big companies patent things simply to have steelclad assurance that no one can sue them for infringing. Microsoft knows their patent probably won't hold up under scrutiny, but this way they can be sure of never even going to court.
I think that a large chunk of the stupid patents we see in slashdot articles are exactly this sort of defensive patent, meant to help avoid frivolous lawsuits.
In reality, depriving yourself of sleep makes you less productive.
My own experience has been that a mild level of sleep deprivation increases my productivity since my mind is less resistant to menial tasks. However, and this is very important, when sleep deprived, my rate of learning is much lower. My experience is that when I'm sleep deprived it's my ability to form memories that suffers.
Since ultimately your effectiveness depends much more on how well you've learned than your current mental state, being well rested is of far more value than people give it credit for.
Well, it's not as distinct as all that. The belief in the virgin birth implies a disbelief in the theory that virgins don't get pregnant. There is a vast amount of evidence that virgins don't get pregnant, but these people choose to reject that evidence. Probably I didn't express that very well above.
Well, ok, it's possible that they reject the idea that believing in a virgin birth implies accepting that virgins can get pregnant, but I choose to ascribe greater reasoning ability than that to them.
The key concept of evidence based, inductive reasoning is that as evidence accumulates for a given theory, it becomes progressively more probable that it will continue to provide correct predictions. If you have a great deal of evidence against a given theory, and none in favor of it, it seems unlikely that the theory will provide good predictions. You're right that miracles aren't in principle inconsistent with evidence. Find me a solid evidence of a miracle, and I'll change my beliefs in a second.
You're right that peer pressure and appeals to authority are the main reason most people believe science. That doesn't however make it correct, and there's a lot of misunderstanding of science out there as a result. It is in fact possible to personally verify a great deal more than you apparently realize, at least in terms of the basic tenets and core ideas of the major scientific theories. Obviously the details need to be taken on faith for practical reasons, but the confidence in a relatively small set of core ideas allows you to deduce a great deal with a good degree of confidence.
I can understand deciding to believe in miracles. It's a very appealing idea, and certainly I won't make any attempt to argue with someone who claims you just have to take it on faith. But do you really believe that an impartial examination of the facts supports any of the miracles described in the Bible?
Well, there is a great deal of consistent evidence that supports the theory that life had a chemical origin, and as of yet only one piece of evidence in favor of Mary being a virgin. I'll grant that the current theory about the origin of life is not rock solid and could conceivably be wrong, though I find it very unlikely, and am willing to act on the assumption that it's most likely true. The idea that Mary was a virgin has so little evidence for it, and so much evidence against it, that I feel confident in taking all my actions based on the assumption that it is false.
I don't know that I can explain the concept of inductive reasoning any better. I feel at a bit of a loss here.
This is quite precisely my point. Belief in miracles isn't consistent with an evidence based approach to understanding the world.
Unless you've experienced a direct, personal revelation (and most Christians I've met don't claim to have), the only reason you have to believe Mary was a virgin is either that you read it in a book, or that all your friends and family believe it. These are not good reasons for believing something.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on. Someone mod this up. If slashdot doesn't reward obscure references to single lines of Star Trek dialog, who will?
One particular issue we have is how code is refactored. Big blocks of code might be moved into a function or put inside an if statement. The indenting is usually stuffed up in the process. I suppose one advantage in python is that doing that would more than likely break the code entirely. But I don't want to be the guy trying to fix a system on site with vi in a dos window with a hundred million dollars hanging on the outcome of a test in the middle of the night in nigeria with no idea where my blocks start and end.
In python, improperly indented code rarely runs, and personally, I'm perfectly ok with a system that forces you to keep the code indented properly. Your guy using vi in a dos window is going to leave you with code that is going to be a real nuisance for the next guy who comes along if he's ok with totally botched indentation.
More to the point, if you have a hundred million dollars hanging on your test, and your only IDE is vi under dos, you're doing something wrong that has absolutely nothing to do with your choice of programming language. Actually, I'm being unkind, once you learn how to use it, vi is pretty effective. For a real challenge, try programming with just cat, or better still, using nothing but bash IO redirection.
I'm really getting nitpicky now, but my second example only works if the list is a list of strings (the first example is good for a list of basically anything). If you want to print an arbitrary list with a single call to print, and with line breaks between the entries, the correct code would look something like:
which may be what Tweenk was aiming for
remains the most elegant solution in my mind
Of course, if you just want to print the damned list,
works just fine no matter what the list is made of. The extra code is really just there to insert line breaks.
It should have been:
for item in list: print "\n".join([str(x) for x in item])
works and produces the same output in the python version. I suppose creating a single string saves you a few function calls, but if you're using print statement it's a safe assumption that performance isn't your top priority, and the more legible version is preferred.
Alternatively
is probably better if you're really set on just making a single call to print. (well, ok, technically, list is a reserved word in python so in both the examples above that's a problem, but I stuck with the name since I inherited it from the GP)
Actually, now that I actually look at your code more closely, I think that it would print every character in each string separated by line returns, and still make as many print calls is your list has items... you really should check your code more carefully if you're going to be correcting people.
Besides which, with the abundance of soup kitchens and charity groups out there, I find it difficult to believe than anyone has to go dumpster diving for food. People who do so usually have some mental issues, and wish to avoid the social interactions which are involved with seeking charity.
Actually, a lot of people dumpster dive because you can get really good expensive food for free. The fancier the store/restaurant, the more likely they are to throw out perfectly good, often still packaged food, because of a minor defect. I turned this up after just a few seconds of searching, I'm sure you can find more information if you look.
Lots of dumpster divers aren't homeless at all, and those who are probably do it because they get better food than at a soup kitchen.
No we don't. We need space based solar power eventually. Fusion power would be nice, but space based solar power is the real long term solution. Ultimately almost all power we use comes from the Sun (well, or long dead distant stars in the case of fission), and it just makes sense to get at it directly. Unlike Fusion there are no show stopping technical problems with solar power, it looks quite likely to be to be cost effective, and the amount of power available is, for all current practical purposes, unlimited.
In particular if we were able to set up off-world manufacturing plants for the satellites, ideally on the moon, it should be possible to get essentially unlimited cheap power this way, and this technology may not be so far away.
it used to take expensive propriety tools to handle.
Like diamond studded chastity belts?
I've been using Geany lately. It's a nice lightweight IDE, and it's fast, stable, and has all the most critical features.
I've worked some in bigger IDEs (Visual Studio when working in windows) and I dislike the lack of control I have. If I'm making a cookie cutter program, Visual Studio is great, but if I want to do anything unusual it usually proves to be a big hassle to figure out the Visual Studio way to do it, and a lot of time goes into setting up the environment. I can see how if you were doing the same sort of coding all the time, and were developing for only one platform such an environment would be more efficient, but I prefer the flexibility of a lighter weight system.
But on the specifics of 'rigoddamndiculous' it is an impromptu word. It is self documenting and shouldn't have a definition for the same reason we don't write up definitions for every word with 'fuck' inserted. fan-fucking-tastic for example.
And yet...
Not that you're wrong, but probably as a matter of good style you should stop using impromptu words once they make it into the urban dictionary. The whole point is that they're silly and fresh and catch your attention. If they're in a dictionary, they're no good anymore.
Well, with 9.04 I can now hook my laptop up to a projector and make it work by hitting a button instead of fiddling with resolution settings and logging out and back in. Of course 9.04 also broke compositing for my graphics card, which is mildly annoying. On the whole I'd rather have easy to use external monitors than eye candy, so it's a net plus. The external monitors issue has been a long time and serious problem with Ubuntu, so the fact that that's improving suggests to me that they're on the right path.
Ubuntu's update system is definitely lacking. If you put /home on a separate partition though you can do a fresh install without losing your data or settings. I've done this several times, and never had a worse problem than an occasional program complaining of an outdated config file.
A complete reinstall takes maybe 20-30 minutes, and since you keep all your settings, all you'll need to do is use apt-get to reinstall whatever non default programs you use and you'll be ready to go.
Probably this doesn't apply to you, but my experience has always been that the people who are most careful about avoiding germs are the ones who get sick the most. A certain amount of exposure to germs is necessary to prime your immune system, and while I'm all for regular showers, worrying about touching the tap after washing your hands is the sort of thinking that's probably going to do you more harm than good.
You want to make sure that germs on your skin don't get the chance to multiply to numbers your immune system can't handle, but intermittent exposure to a range of germs is probably just good for you.
You haven't listed a single thing that isn't available for Linux that is available for Windows. In fact, your post seems to lack a single concrete argument, which makes it difficult to argue against.
I don't know what features Windows has that Linux apparently doesn't. I have done Windows development, so it's not as if I'm talking from ignorance here. At least if Visual Studio qualifies as one of your 'better commercial development environments.' I haven't been impressed.
Your 'anything you can do in Linux, you can do in Windows' argument completely misses the point. Of course both can do what you need, the question is, which makes it easiest? I've found that the set up time for a new project is many times as long on Windows. It's true that for large projects this isn't as important, and obviously you should develop on the platform you plan to deploy to, but for me, the ability to throw together small programs easily to automate and customize my work process is of immense value, and that's just too difficult under windows. The ability to see the source code of any program I'm working with has also been of great value in improving my skill as a programmer, even if it's rarely vital to the success of a project.
It seems to me your main gripe is that it's harder to write Windows apps in Linux, and if writing Windows apps is the only thing you care about, I'm sure I'm not going to change your mind. I do work in Windows sometimes myself, because it's such an important platform. But lots of projects can either be planned to be cross platform, or, if web based, are naturally cross platform, and in those cases, it's natural to choose the OS that maximizes ease of development.
And "shitty PHP based websites?" Really? I mean, I'll grant that PHP isn't the most elegant language ever created, but are you really suggesting ASP is better? You're a Visual Basic developer aren't you?
This isn't quite true. I use Linux primarily because it's such an excellent development environment. However, I'd like to see it get a larger market share so that I can reap the benefits of manufacturers producing and testing drivers for hardware, and software developers releasing versions of their programs for Linux. I don't really care about market share for it's own sake, but market share comes with perks!
I figure Linux would only need around 5% market share to get me most the advantages I want though. Not everyone needs to use it!
Because Win XP has been out for the vast majority of that decade, and building additional functionality in to an OS when you can't force an upgrade from all users is really difficult?
Which of course is an argument in favor of open source development. Not that Vista provided any significant improvement that I know of. Maybe Windows 7 will provide an actually worthwhile improvement over XP in terms of functionality, but I'm not holding out much hope.
A lot of Linux fans claim this is all easy, but it really isn't for someone with little motivation to switch. Yeah, if I got a book or read lots of tutorials I could master it, but why would I do that?
This is a good question. I suppose the answer is, 10 years from now you're going to have to have completely relearned everything anyway; Microsoft changes stuff with every new version of Windows, but by sticking with Windows, you leave yourself at the mercy of whatever stupid ideas Microsoft might come up with to make your computer run worse (like building DRM into the OS).
Linux has been improving in terms of usability dramatically with each year, while Windows hasn't become any more useful in about a decade as far as I can tell. At this point, Windows' only advantages over Linux - larger app selection and better hardware support - have nothing to do with the quality of the OS, and everything to do with marketshare. In fact, Linux' out of the box hardware support (with no 3rd party drivers) is vastly better than Windows'.
I look at programs like Media Player and Outlook Express, and they maxed out in terms of functionality years ago, and the newest versions present a dramatically inferior user experience. Vista as a whole was another example of a degraded product created only so they'd have something new to sell.
So why switch to Linux? Because Microsoft has shown no sign of making something better for so many years that it's about time to give up hope and move on.
This is definitely still a work in progress, but it's gotten a lot better. In the latest version of Ubuntu, for the first time I'm able to plug my laptop into a projector, hit a button and start using the projector without logging out, using the default settings on a base install.
Give it another 6 months and I bet you'll find Ubuntu has the same functionality as Windows for this stuff, and give it a year, and Ubuntu will do it faster and with better customizability. If this is a big deal for you though, I'd wait 'til then to try Linux again.
Actually, there is a menu option in Ubuntu under Applications->Add/Remove that provides a simpler interface for adding applications. Not that anyone who knows what he's doing would use it, but it's there!
Leave yourself a sticky note somewhere to be found on the next loop?
Right. Or, you know, a reinforced steel box containing hard drives buried out in the middle of nowhere in a place you know you're not going to be dropping any nukes would do.
Chronicles was sort of fun, but calling it "meditative" and "complex" is nuts. The plot was filled with holes, and the character interactions made it feel like a soap opera, with robots. Its one saving grace was Summer Glau.
I suspect this patent will be declared "obvious" and nullified if someone challenges it.
Right. It is important to realize that a lot of the time big companies patent things simply to have steelclad assurance that no one can sue them for infringing. Microsoft knows their patent probably won't hold up under scrutiny, but this way they can be sure of never even going to court.
I think that a large chunk of the stupid patents we see in slashdot articles are exactly this sort of defensive patent, meant to help avoid frivolous lawsuits.
In reality, depriving yourself of sleep makes you less productive.
My own experience has been that a mild level of sleep deprivation increases my productivity since my mind is less resistant to menial tasks. However, and this is very important, when sleep deprived, my rate of learning is much lower. My experience is that when I'm sleep deprived it's my ability to form memories that suffers.
Since ultimately your effectiveness depends much more on how well you've learned than your current mental state, being well rested is of far more value than people give it credit for.
Well, it's not as distinct as all that. The belief in the virgin birth implies a disbelief in the theory that virgins don't get pregnant. There is a vast amount of evidence that virgins don't get pregnant, but these people choose to reject that evidence. Probably I didn't express that very well above.
Well, ok, it's possible that they reject the idea that believing in a virgin birth implies accepting that virgins can get pregnant, but I choose to ascribe greater reasoning ability than that to them.
The key concept of evidence based, inductive reasoning is that as evidence accumulates for a given theory, it becomes progressively more probable that it will continue to provide correct predictions. If you have a great deal of evidence against a given theory, and none in favor of it, it seems unlikely that the theory will provide good predictions. You're right that miracles aren't in principle inconsistent with evidence. Find me a solid evidence of a miracle, and I'll change my beliefs in a second.
You're right that peer pressure and appeals to authority are the main reason most people believe science. That doesn't however make it correct, and there's a lot of misunderstanding of science out there as a result. It is in fact possible to personally verify a great deal more than you apparently realize, at least in terms of the basic tenets and core ideas of the major scientific theories. Obviously the details need to be taken on faith for practical reasons, but the confidence in a relatively small set of core ideas allows you to deduce a great deal with a good degree of confidence.
I can understand deciding to believe in miracles. It's a very appealing idea, and certainly I won't make any attempt to argue with someone who claims you just have to take it on faith. But do you really believe that an impartial examination of the facts supports any of the miracles described in the Bible?
Well, there is a great deal of consistent evidence that supports the theory that life had a chemical origin, and as of yet only one piece of evidence in favor of Mary being a virgin. I'll grant that the current theory about the origin of life is not rock solid and could conceivably be wrong, though I find it very unlikely, and am willing to act on the assumption that it's most likely true. The idea that Mary was a virgin has so little evidence for it, and so much evidence against it, that I feel confident in taking all my actions based on the assumption that it is false.
I don't know that I can explain the concept of inductive reasoning any better. I feel at a bit of a loss here.
This is quite precisely my point. Belief in miracles isn't consistent with an evidence based approach to understanding the world.
Unless you've experienced a direct, personal revelation (and most Christians I've met don't claim to have), the only reason you have to believe Mary was a virgin is either that you read it in a book, or that all your friends and family believe it. These are not good reasons for believing something.