Hey, I apologize. I was in a particular mindset due to another conversion, and I applied it to you in a completely unjustified manner. You were talking about educating in the first place. You have my sincere apologies for going off on you. Sigh. I should have more coffee.:/
I'm not talking about curing stupid. Primarily, I'm talking about inoculating others from their nonsense.
It is not legitimate for me to do this by muzzling the people who are saying things, or drawing things, or writing things, etc., that I don't like. The proper way to do this by making information available, or supporting making information available, to those whom I think need it.
It's not up to me to tell others what they must say, or not say. The facts are what set truth and reason apart from lies and unreason; to the extent that I can get the facts to my desired audience, I'm doing a good thing. But any time I attempt to muzzle another, it is a foregone conclusion that I have made a severe mistake.
Education is the inoculation you seem to be looking for. Not suppression of speech.
When you elect to repress speech, you need a lot better reason than "I don't like / agree with what this person is saying" or "I think someone might believe this, but I don't."
And why is this so important? Because there will, rest assured, (again) come a day when someone is trying to educate with the actual truth, and someone given the power to repress will shut them down. That path is a path far worse than having to tolerate the things we disagree with or are convinced are factually inaccurate.
To the extent that it is the government doing educating under coercion of law, only the facts as best we can ascertain them are acceptable. That is speech to the citizens from the government, our servant in the matter.
In other words, it is legitimate that we require the government to adhere to a very particular standard of speech. The other way around, however, with the government limiting our speech -- that's a very bad idea.
What do doctors do when unconscious accident victims arrive? Wait for them to wake up and give consent before starting treatment?
You are confusing the obligation to treat injury or disease in the case of a person that has not made (possibly cannot make) it known that they object to such treatment, with a power to imprison people over their explicit objections. These things are not even remotely in the same class.
If you refuse treatment, or carry documentation that you refuse treatment, or otherwise make it known that you do not accept treatment, they can't treat you. Likewise organ donation, etc.
Treatment of an unresponsive patient for whom you do not have documentation either way embodies a recognition that this is what most people want for themselves and for their family members -- which means that by far the overwhelming majority of such events will be consensual.
Even so, if the patient wakes up and says "stop", they have to stop treatment. Likewise if a legally responsible family member, spouse or someone with power of attorney says so.
Conversely, the vast majority of people do not want to be imprisoned against their will. If, on the other hand, you told them to lock you in a room, that would be just fine for both parties. You can ask, and they can do it, and all is well -- because that is a consensual act.
The only reasonable role of the medical community is to address those issues for which we give informed consent. If our consent is to be over-ridden, it is critical that the process is both formal and can be pushed back against because otherwise, the sequence of events is open to being entirely arbitrary.
So while it can be entirely appropriate for a doctor to advise the legal system that so-and-so seems to be off their rails in their estimation, the power to decide if that's so, and to do something about it, and the liability for doing so wrongly, should remain within that same legal system.
No doctor, plumber or priest should ever have formal power to restrain a citizen's liberty. It is a monumentally bad idea.
Yes, it is true that the government doesn't do a great job -- legislation, police, courts -- they all have problems, many of them severe. The proper remediation of that is to improve the government at whatever level(s) it is failing to meet our requirements. Not to assign powers to constrain liberty to non-governmental authorities.
If a person's behavior rises to the standard of actually causing harm, now we're talking about any person's right to defend themselves from same. But if you are simply exhibiting behavior others don't like or don't understand, but are not harming anyone in the process -- then we should keep our hands off you.
So.. what you're saying, essentially, is that Perl has more obscure regex handling. Okay. I agree.:)
More seriously, regex is a last resort for me; I only go there if I *really* need to. Which is rarely. So little tweaks like those you're describing don't particularly figure in language choice, as long as it's there if I need it. Regex fans have other motivations, and that's fine. Can't see this as any reason to inflict Perl on kids, though. Butterfly or not.
Why... would you do that? Python 3 is not a new version of Python 2. Python 3 is "other." I think you're just confused by the (admittedly very poor) naming convention they have adopted. It probably should have been called Serpent or something along those lines, because it really isn't an attempt to "be" Python 2 at all. Furthermore, if your code is tested and running, why would you convert it to Python 3 and then have to re-test? Seems to me the number of good business reasons to do such a thing would be a very small number (of course, you might want to do it for fun or educational value, but that's not really germane.) Python 3 is for new code, if you want to go that way (and you certainly don't have to.) Python 2 is solidly emplaced and not going away. It's a different thing. It's not a "you need to upgrade" thing or a "you have to move your code" thing or a "now Python is this other thing" thing. Python 2 is Python 2, Python 3 is other. That's all you need to know.
Perl is backwards compatible with itself
No, it isn't. For instance, later versions of Perl will choke -- the code will fail and/or act differently -- on various early usage patterns, such as hash references.
Perl has CPAN, the likes of which don't exist in Python.
CPAN itself is a bunch of usable Perl. There's a huge amount of usable Python out there as well. It's disingenuous to suggest that CPAN, which is merely a repository, represents a meaningful difference.
Better even than Python for text work and regex.
Meh. I haven't run into any text processing problems that I couldn't solve with Python that made me think, "gee, wish I had X Perl feature." And I wrote in Perl for quite a few years, I know the territory fairly well. Python's got some pretty solid regex handling as well. Python 2. No idea what Python 3 has, could care less. Different language and all that.:)
It's my opinion that for what Perl excels at, one can get off the ground quicker and easier in Perl than in Python
Oh good grief no. Perl is hard to read by nature. Python is easy to read by design. Now, if you had said "for the experienced Perl programmer who knows little or nothing about Python", then sure. But otherwise, just no. Perl is horribly obscure in terms of "getting off the ground." Moving to Python from Perl was like having a huge splinter pulled out my butt for that very reason. I can actually read other people's code and understand it without having to keep in mind a whole raft of special characters and the like. Instead, what is happening is almost always spelled out fairly explicitly in what nearly amounts to plain English, requiring much, much less of my brain to be dealing with the language, and leaving much, much more of it free to be dealing with the program logic.
I've been in IT far longer...
Not the OP, but I've been in IT since ~1972. You may have been at it longer, but I've been at it long enough to come to the conclusion that the objective of a programming language is to solve a problem, and specifically to do it in such a way that the solution is maintainable, effective, and doesn't naturally hide bugs because of ingrained opacity. Something may come along that is better at these things than Python, but I've not run into it yet, which could certainly be a result of me not looking at things that are already out there -- but it isn't a result of not looking at Perl. I've written an enormous amount of Perl, and if there is one thing I will say about it consistently with benefit of hindsight, it is that I wish I'd been able to write it all in Python. Because Python is much, much easier to write, clearer to read later, easier to debug, easier to fix, and yes, actually more fun.
I carry a purse, laughingly referred to as my "murse" by my stepspawn.
However, they come right to me if they need a tire pressure gauge, a flashlight, a good camera, mosquito repellant, a thermal leak detector (Montana... we take our heat transfer issues seriously here) or any one of a number of other things from connectors and cables to floss swords and eyeglass cleaners. Because they know I'm carrying all of that, and good deal more.:)
It is my fond hope that some day they will transcend their still-too-active egos and embrace the practical and the helpful even if the next guy over doesn't think they're as "cool" as they "should be."
I say they go. We're better off without those who corrupt or legal system.
So you want our politicians and judges and lawyers all to go to Australia? Can't say I see much downside to that. Well, for the US, anyway. Would owe some pretty deep sympathy to Australia, though.
Unless there is a supply of people who just really want to live a long way from anywhere(flights to Australia aren't exotic or anything; but they are very, very, tedious);
Plane ride? Flight? Oh, no. No. Those cattle cars are for you, little taxpayer.
Travel to and from Australia is just more time on the yacht with one's skimpily clad companions.
It's not a problem with black. It's a problem with gangster society, which transcends race - Whites, Hispanics, Orientals, Blacks, you name it, all have been pulled in.
Racism is idiocy. Recognizing that a subculture is toxic is just common sense.
Most people are too busy trying to appear politically correct to make any sense at all when these issues come up. A good number of the rest are far too deeply mired in their own prejudices to understand what is actually wrong. Between the two, it becomes very difficult indeed to have any hope for remediation.
Public transport in the USA is almost uniformly low-ball, by which I mean to wave my hands at uncomfortable seating, sparse scheduling, sparse pickup and drop-off locations, smelly (nothing like an old diesel engine to get your sinuses in an uproar), and simply old-school -- the number of cities with proper elevated monorail systems that don't impact the streets or create shadowy hangouts for the unsavory is very small, and those (looking at you, Seattle) tend to not actually implement route coverage that is worth even considering for most excursions unless you're one of the lucky few who live, work and shop right along the line itself.
Offering something worth very little for free isn't going to get anyone very far, no pun intended (but I'm always happy when they fall out like that, lol.)
Considering my own use of private vehicles, I use them because:
o It's point to point; I start where I am and I end up where I'm going o It's considerably more secure; windows up, doors locked, only trusted riders are on-board, and I control the vehicle o I have my music (and my ham radio gear), in short, the environment is customized for me o There's no waiting, no calling, and no communications problems o Joyriding o Car sex is fun and safe if done thoughtfully, while public transport sex is a direct route to the courtroom
Any of these would be sufficient, but all of them together are broadly decisive. A bright, scenic trip on a monorail appeals on its own merits; very little else does. That's because I have spent an enormous amount of time on public transport and liked it not at all.
My overall impression is that public transport as implemented here is that it is the very least we can get away with, regardless of the harm done.
I don't think we should be looking at it with an eye to making it incrementally better, either. It's a black hole that sucks very large amounts of money and returns nothing of new value. No one with an actual comprehension of the risks prefers public transport -- I think the most common case by far is that people use it because they have to use it.
What we need to be looking at is electric transport in varieties suitable for the individual and the various types of family units. Non-polluting in and of itself, utterly agnostic as to how the power it uses is generated, thus 100% friendly to conversion from polluting power generation to non-polluting. These vehicles can be extremely light and easy to park/store, ranging from tiny electric scooters for good weather use (we have one... awesome fun) through small enclosed commuter vehicles to full-on sedans and SUVs for people who need those. Circumstances and availability are rapidly improving in this regard. I see it as the best place to put our investment, if we are to be putting it anywhere in particular regarding transport itself. Beyond that, public funding should be going to infrastructure maintainance, because infrastructure decay is a very serious problem in this country.
I also think that in the urban context we tend to separate working- and living-specialized areas. This area is apartment buildings, that area has factories and so on, while shopping has clustered elsewhere. I suspect that's cost us more than it has benefited us. If the majority of people could reasonably live and shop close to their jobs, transport would be considerably less of an issue. But we don't seem to want to swallow that, and so we end up paying for our preference.
Come on. Modern air travel via coach is just about perfect.
For one-armed, one-legged people. Who have the patience of a saint with screaming babies. And the immune system of a god. And have deluded themselves that the TSA actually does something useful. And can go long intervals without actual food.
You're so glib. Oh, sure, it's easy enough to rewind. But what about when the tape gets stuck and the head gets dirty and the belts stretch? THEN what?
Slashdot Mirror
Speak for yourself. Also, roll over.
yep.
Hey, I apologize. I was in a particular mindset due to another conversion, and I applied it to you in a completely unjustified manner. You were talking about educating in the first place. You have my sincere apologies for going off on you. Sigh. I should have more coffee. :/
It is not legitimate for me to do this by muzzling the people who are saying things, or drawing things, or writing things, etc., that I don't like. The proper way to do this by making information available, or supporting making information available, to those whom I think need it.
It's not up to me to tell others what they must say, or not say. The facts are what set truth and reason apart from lies and unreason; to the extent that I can get the facts to my desired audience, I'm doing a good thing. But any time I attempt to muzzle another, it is a foregone conclusion that I have made a severe mistake.
Education is the inoculation you seem to be looking for. Not suppression of speech.
When you elect to repress speech, you need a lot better reason than "I don't like / agree with what this person is saying" or "I think someone might believe this, but I don't."
And why is this so important? Because there will, rest assured, (again) come a day when someone is trying to educate with the actual truth, and someone given the power to repress will shut them down. That path is a path far worse than having to tolerate the things we disagree with or are convinced are factually inaccurate.
To the extent that it is the government doing educating under coercion of law, only the facts as best we can ascertain them are acceptable. That is speech to the citizens from the government, our servant in the matter.
In other words, it is legitimate that we require the government to adhere to a very particular standard of speech. The other way around, however, with the government limiting our speech -- that's a very bad idea.
You are confusing the obligation to treat injury or disease in the case of a person that has not made (possibly cannot make) it known that they object to such treatment, with a power to imprison people over their explicit objections. These things are not even remotely in the same class.
If you refuse treatment, or carry documentation that you refuse treatment, or otherwise make it known that you do not accept treatment, they can't treat you. Likewise organ donation, etc.
Treatment of an unresponsive patient for whom you do not have documentation either way embodies a recognition that this is what most people want for themselves and for their family members -- which means that by far the overwhelming majority of such events will be consensual.
Even so, if the patient wakes up and says "stop", they have to stop treatment. Likewise if a legally responsible family member, spouse or someone with power of attorney says so.
Conversely, the vast majority of people do not want to be imprisoned against their will. If, on the other hand, you told them to lock you in a room, that would be just fine for both parties. You can ask, and they can do it, and all is well -- because that is a consensual act.
That's just the way it should be, too.
We can't cure stupid. Yet.
The only reasonable role of the medical community is to address those issues for which we give informed consent. If our consent is to be over-ridden, it is critical that the process is both formal and can be pushed back against because otherwise, the sequence of events is open to being entirely arbitrary.
So while it can be entirely appropriate for a doctor to advise the legal system that so-and-so seems to be off their rails in their estimation, the power to decide if that's so, and to do something about it, and the liability for doing so wrongly, should remain within that same legal system.
No doctor, plumber or priest should ever have formal power to restrain a citizen's liberty. It is a monumentally bad idea.
Yes, it is true that the government doesn't do a great job -- legislation, police, courts -- they all have problems, many of them severe. The proper remediation of that is to improve the government at whatever level(s) it is failing to meet our requirements. Not to assign powers to constrain liberty to non-governmental authorities.
If a person's behavior rises to the standard of actually causing harm, now we're talking about any person's right to defend themselves from same. But if you are simply exhibiting behavior others don't like or don't understand, but are not harming anyone in the process -- then we should keep our hands off you.
So.. what you're saying, essentially, is that Perl has more obscure regex handling. Okay. I agree. :)
More seriously, regex is a last resort for me; I only go there if I *really* need to. Which is rarely. So little tweaks like those you're describing don't particularly figure in language choice, as long as it's there if I need it. Regex fans have other motivations, and that's fine. Can't see this as any reason to inflict Perl on kids, though. Butterfly or not.
I'm going to be appropriating this gem. Minus the 'r' in "aftermarth", that is. :)
Your mom still uses gotos and line numbers.
In fact, I heard she uses punch cards.
Ah, redundancy. :)
(still writes in c)
The incentive is there, and the person you're replying to simply pointed it out.
To explain it somewhat differently, the OP will receive additional readers for each bit of readability added.
It's just that the OP -- and you, apparently -- don't fully understand the game yet.
By the way, failure to understand the value of readability may be due to too much coding in Perl. :)
Why... would you do that? Python 3 is not a new version of Python 2. Python 3 is "other." I think you're just confused by the (admittedly very poor) naming convention they have adopted. It probably should have been called Serpent or something along those lines, because it really isn't an attempt to "be" Python 2 at all. Furthermore, if your code is tested and running, why would you convert it to Python 3 and then have to re-test? Seems to me the number of good business reasons to do such a thing would be a very small number (of course, you might want to do it for fun or educational value, but that's not really germane.) Python 3 is for new code, if you want to go that way (and you certainly don't have to.) Python 2 is solidly emplaced and not going away. It's a different thing. It's not a "you need to upgrade" thing or a "you have to move your code" thing or a "now Python is this other thing" thing. Python 2 is Python 2, Python 3 is other. That's all you need to know.
No, it isn't. For instance, later versions of Perl will choke -- the code will fail and/or act differently -- on various early usage patterns, such as hash references.
https://docs.python.org/dev/distributing/index.html
CPAN itself is a bunch of usable Perl. There's a huge amount of usable Python out there as well. It's disingenuous to suggest that CPAN, which is merely a repository, represents a meaningful difference.
Meh. I haven't run into any text processing problems that I couldn't solve with Python that made me think, "gee, wish I had X Perl feature." And I wrote in Perl for quite a few years, I know the territory fairly well. Python's got some pretty solid regex handling as well. Python 2. No idea what Python 3 has, could care less. Different language and all that. :)
Oh good grief no. Perl is hard to read by nature. Python is easy to read by design. Now, if you had said "for the experienced Perl programmer who knows little or nothing about Python", then sure. But otherwise, just no. Perl is horribly obscure in terms of "getting off the ground." Moving to Python from Perl was like having a huge splinter pulled out my butt for that very reason. I can actually read other people's code and understand it without having to keep in mind a whole raft of special characters and the like. Instead, what is happening is almost always spelled out fairly explicitly in what nearly amounts to plain English, requiring much, much less of my brain to be dealing with the language, and leaving much, much more of it free to be dealing with the program logic.
Not the OP, but I've been in IT since ~1972. You may have been at it longer, but I've been at it long enough to come to the conclusion that the objective of a programming language is to solve a problem, and specifically to do it in such a way that the solution is maintainable, effective, and doesn't naturally hide bugs because of ingrained opacity. Something may come along that is better at these things than Python, but I've not run into it yet, which could certainly be a result of me not looking at things that are already out there -- but it isn't a result of not looking at Perl. I've written an enormous amount of Perl, and if there is one thing I will say about it consistently with benefit of hindsight, it is that I wish I'd been able to write it all in Python. Because Python is much, much easier to write, clearer to read later, easier to debug, easier to fix, and yes, actually more fun.
I TOLD you it was a planet. :)
That just makes me think we should raise the wattage. :/
You'll likely be happier if you abandon your change-counting and use the opportunity for anatomical study instead. :)
I carry a purse, laughingly referred to as my "murse" by my stepspawn.
However, they come right to me if they need a tire pressure gauge, a flashlight, a good camera, mosquito repellant, a thermal leak detector (Montana... we take our heat transfer issues seriously here) or any one of a number of other things from connectors and cables to floss swords and eyeglass cleaners. Because they know I'm carrying all of that, and good deal more. :)
It is my fond hope that some day they will transcend their still-too-active egos and embrace the practical and the helpful even if the next guy over doesn't think they're as "cool" as they "should be."
So you want our politicians and judges and lawyers all to go to Australia? Can't say I see much downside to that. Well, for the US, anyway. Would owe some pretty deep sympathy to Australia, though.
Plane ride? Flight? Oh, no. No. Those cattle cars are for you, little taxpayer.
Travel to and from Australia is just more time on the yacht with one's skimpily clad companions.
It's not a problem with black. It's a problem with gangster society, which transcends race - Whites, Hispanics, Orientals, Blacks, you name it, all have been pulled in.
Racism is idiocy. Recognizing that a subculture is toxic is just common sense.
Most people are too busy trying to appear politically correct to make any sense at all when these issues come up. A good number of the rest are far too deeply mired in their own prejudices to understand what is actually wrong. Between the two, it becomes very difficult indeed to have any hope for remediation.
Public transport in the USA is almost uniformly low-ball, by which I mean to wave my hands at uncomfortable seating, sparse scheduling, sparse pickup and drop-off locations, smelly (nothing like an old diesel engine to get your sinuses in an uproar), and simply old-school -- the number of cities with proper elevated monorail systems that don't impact the streets or create shadowy hangouts for the unsavory is very small, and those (looking at you, Seattle) tend to not actually implement route coverage that is worth even considering for most excursions unless you're one of the lucky few who live, work and shop right along the line itself.
Offering something worth very little for free isn't going to get anyone very far, no pun intended (but I'm always happy when they fall out like that, lol.)
Considering my own use of private vehicles, I use them because:
o It's point to point; I start where I am and I end up where I'm going
o It's considerably more secure; windows up, doors locked, only trusted riders are on-board, and I control the vehicle
o I have my music (and my ham radio gear), in short, the environment is customized for me
o There's no waiting, no calling, and no communications problems
o Joyriding
o Car sex is fun and safe if done thoughtfully, while public transport sex is a direct route to the courtroom
Any of these would be sufficient, but all of them together are broadly decisive. A bright, scenic trip on a monorail appeals on its own merits; very little else does. That's because I have spent an enormous amount of time on public transport and liked it not at all.
My overall impression is that public transport as implemented here is that it is the very least we can get away with, regardless of the harm done.
I don't think we should be looking at it with an eye to making it incrementally better, either. It's a black hole that sucks very large amounts of money and returns nothing of new value. No one with an actual comprehension of the risks prefers public transport -- I think the most common case by far is that people use it because they have to use it.
What we need to be looking at is electric transport in varieties suitable for the individual and the various types of family units. Non-polluting in and of itself, utterly agnostic as to how the power it uses is generated, thus 100% friendly to conversion from polluting power generation to non-polluting. These vehicles can be extremely light and easy to park/store, ranging from tiny electric scooters for good weather use (we have one... awesome fun) through small enclosed commuter vehicles to full-on sedans and SUVs for people who need those. Circumstances and availability are rapidly improving in this regard. I see it as the best place to put our investment, if we are to be putting it anywhere in particular regarding transport itself. Beyond that, public funding should be going to infrastructure maintainance, because infrastructure decay is a very serious problem in this country.
I also think that in the urban context we tend to separate working- and living-specialized areas. This area is apartment buildings, that area has factories and so on, while shopping has clustered elsewhere. I suspect that's cost us more than it has benefited us. If the majority of people could reasonably live and shop close to their jobs, transport would be considerably less of an issue. But we don't seem to want to swallow that, and so we end up paying for our preference.
Come on. Modern air travel via coach is just about perfect.
For one-armed, one-legged people. Who have the patience of a saint with screaming babies. And the immune system of a god. And have deluded themselves that the TSA actually does something useful. And can go long intervals without actual food.
Perfect, like I said.
You're so glib. Oh, sure, it's easy enough to rewind. But what about when the tape gets stuck and the head gets dirty and the belts stretch? THEN what?
Well, how many true Scotsmen? One? More?
Yes. Absolutely.
No. Not even close.
Well, perhaps, but I've never run into it. What I have run into, and said myself, is that "there is no right to not be offended."
The version you quote is ridiculous. The version I give you is profoundly defensible.