ghedipunk (he/him/they) @ghedipunk@kitty.town

"What's the fun of being a grown up if you can't be childish?"

Tom Baker as Doctor Who.

Current mood?

Bagpipes and drums.

I could seriously use a roommate just to help pay the bills.

Honestly not expecting anyone to actually want to roommate with a family of straight-passing adults and 4 children, though.

Hey fellow white guys...

I really don't have the patience to explain to you that we, as a group, really are assholes. Truly the worst of humanity... and that includes the atrocities (we) committed during the Crusades, WWII, and colonialism.

If you don't understand by now, you're either wilfully ignorant, or actively belligerent.

And if you're one or the other, you deserve my block.

K, thanks, bye.

As a software developer, math people who try to write code piss me off.

Yes, your function works great. It's sleek, elegant, and correct.

That's important. My hat is off to you.

BUT...

What is q? What is w? What is a, b, and c? And why do you also have A, B, and C? I mean, you obviously know that a and A are different...

Why don't you want people to actually use your equations? Do you think there's ANY value in obfuscating your code?

Knowing that a power saw could ruin your whole month, if enough goes wrong fast enough, you know not to try to open your beer with a power saw. That doesn't mean that you should ban all carpenters from using power saws.

Same with software. A misused global variable can destroy a business and leave everyone unemployed. Yet I need to read the config file's contents from everywhere in an application... a great candidate for a global object. Just gotta keep from overwriting/keep my thumbs safe.

"Global variables are bad."

No, they're dangerous. As pedantic as it sounds, that distinction matters.

Power saws are dangerous. They're not bad.

You just make sure the new kid knows where to put their thumbs, and you don't leave them laying around where people are being idiots.

Just like you don't leave global variables laying around where people are using Laravel.

The joy of solving problems is why I decided develop software

Besides the obvious of being able to feed my family, what gives me joy is to show off.

My ideal job would be a culture that says "Hey, what cool things can you show me? Here's the latest cool thing that I did, as well."

I had that twice at my latest jobs, and at my most recent job, corporate restructuring destroyed that part of the culture; I lost my drive.

On Monday I start a job that promises that opportunity to show off! :D

Really, please, do make me the fuddy duddy. Make my whole generation an object of scorn.

That's the only way that you can improve the world.

Those born in the 1980's like me?

Fuck... Those born in the 1990's?

Fuck all of us.

Transcend us.

Just decide to... then act on it.

Please.

saw socialism thrive).... while some of the worst ideas of the 1980's drove people to absolute ruin...

And look at the 2010's... Look at today.

And please, draw your own conclusion.

Because the kids are alright.

And I'm not a kid.

You need to decide that you need to lead.

And that day of decision is now.

The kids are alright, and I'm 2 years from being 40. Drive human rights to place where I am TRULY uncomfortable. Challenge my prejudices. Please. Make me the fuddy duddy racist to scorn

And...

Well...

The kids are alright.

(Google the above line. Watch the The Who video. Realize that yes, our kids are alright, realize that The Who sang about the kids of the 1950's... that the '60s were far more progressive... that the '70's witnessed US colonialism in the Middle East... that the '80's witnessed US greatness pretending to be at its peak and seeing through the charade... Realize that the 90's saw communism fall, but the 2000's saw socialism (people caring about each other...

Moderating social media is a full time job. (I know, I used to be a professional moderator for BET Channel, Blackberry, and others...)

Pay your instance admins.

Find admins of instances that actively fight harassment (like my own instance's admin) and pay them.

You're the customer, and all too often you're walking out with clean and safe timelines for free.

That's the work of your admin, and the admins of countless other instances that keep the garbage out of your face.

As a software developer, it pains me to admit, but must be shouted from the rooftops anyways:

Technology can't fix harassment.

Anyone expecting tech to fix harassment only enables the clever assholes.

Algorithms that boost messages are overwhelmingly used by the most vocal and ruthless of any population to polarize the rest of that population.

Let people boost messages, not algorithms. Let people stop harassment, not algorithms.

And PAY the moderators and community leaders their due!

One can't simply discus the Casimir Effect without playing Led Zeppelin's Kashmir.

Fool in the Rain and The Immigrant Song decided it.

Not sure if I want to go into the PDQ Bach rabbit hole, or the Led Zeppelin rabbit hole...

On one hand... The Short Tempered Clavier, 1712 Overture, and Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle and Balloons... On the other hand, Stairway, The Grunge, and D'yer Maker.

20 year as a software developer...

PHP?

Amazing language that desperately needs a compiler, that suffers from the fact that it's so easy to do stupid shit in it, and that is unfairly pigeonholed (by its own creators, no less) as a web language, rather than embracing the fully featured general purpose language that it is.

... in a pure Separation of Concerns system, the view named PageEdit would have no idea if the data that it's displaying for entry/edit is a completely blank form, an invalidly submitted and rejected form, or a page that had been successfully committed to the database previously.

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So... what works?

Well... the answer to that is, what works for an intern who got stuck maintaining a site that the actual developers had abandoned years ago?

I don't know the answer right now.