Why We Should Demand a Shorter Workweek - <AUTHOR> http://www.dsausa.org/shorter_work_weeks <comment><USER2> A much less awful non-marxist take on the subject: [http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/will-ever-able- enjoy...](http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/will-ever-able-enjoy- shorter-work-week-78891)

IIRC, a related issue that came up on HN a while ago is unpaid overtime. As any employee programmers surely know, giving employers unpaid overtime when projects are behind schedule is especially bad, because it creates moral hazard (incentives to set excessively tight schedules). But everyone does it, because it's expected (if you won't do it, they'll hire someone who will, right?).

Regulation -- punishing employers who accept unpaid overtime, and somehow _widely enforcing_ these rules -- is one of very few approaches that seem theoretically able to make any difference to this situation.

<comment><USER3> _"...this experiment owes its intellectual roots to the industrial organization of cereal baron W.K. Kellogg, who replaced the rotating eight- hour shift schedule at his plant in Michigan with six-hours periods, resulting in an explosion in hiring and lowered production costs."_

In Sweden, this is a no-brainer. In the US, for salaried workers, it's an interesting possibility. For factory workers? They were probably only _paid_ for 6 hours, given a 36 hour work week to avoid "full time" status so paying for benefits could be avoided, etc.

I wouldn't be so fast to praise US businesses for lowering hours in the work week - there was an explosion of this practice after the ACA passed, so employers could avoid paying for healthcare.

<comment><USER4> Full time "benefits" (vs part-time hours) didn't exist in 19th Century USA wen Kellog practice changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where I work there a few people who arrive an hour early, leave an hour late and work through lunch. I think it's fair to say they are the least productive members of the team in terms of the work they do. I doubt management sees it in the same way.

<comment><USER6> Strangely even technically competent managers seem to favor presence and subservience over actual results, at least for lower-level engineers at bigger companies. Thankfully at least the senior engineers will be in your corner if you know what you're doing.

It's also common to see brilliant engineers "broken" after going through job after job with the same ridiculous politics and the meaninglessness of exerting anything but the minimal effort.

<comment><USER3> I would argue that many managers may not trust that every employee would be more productive remotely. I can tell you from my personal experience that many people are less productive from home - whether there are more distractions, it's easier to be lazy, etc... I don't know.

If I'm paying for a person's productive power, working from home even part time is ok only if that person is equally or more productive at home as they are at work (on average). If their remote productivity is weak, then I would most certainly value their physical presence.

(Not everyone who fits this bill needs to be fired, either. It takes a certain amount of personal discipline to work remotely, and not everyone has that ability. That doesn't always mean the person isn't a valuable team member.)

<comment><USER7> With the obvious correction factor that remote lifestyle is inherently far superior and financially rewarding, so you'll get better employees cheaper, on average.

I took a $5K paycut (at a new job) to get flex time and limited work at home, but I ended up saving something ridiculous like $10K after tax, on child care and commute related costs by being able to swing shift start and end times and avoid rush hour whenever possible. My kids are grown-ish now and I've been thinking about going back to 9-5 M-F but it just sounds like a nightmare, a living hell, after having a superior lifestyle for so long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think we will, and that is because no one cares.

People don't seem to realize that working extremely long hours was the norm in the early 20th century. It was a long sustained effort by labor unions to those hours down from 100 a week to 40 a week.

We're regressing fast, but there will be no change in the US because everyone in this country believes they'll be the capitalists one day.

<comment><USER9> >>I don't think we will, and that is because no one cares.

Correction: no one who is currently in power cares. But there are plenty of young people who absolutely despise working even 40 hours a week and would do anything to change it.

<comment><USER10> "Anything", of course, that doesn't involve turning out to vote.

<comment><USER11> In France, at least, I don't know anybody that thinks voting would change anything.

You need a good option to vote well.

<comment><USER10> That's a common mantra, but it's not true. The voter base, especially the voter base for primary elections, has a significant effect on the options that are available. If 100% of young people, or even 100% of all people voted in every election, the available options would be vastly different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Today, proletarianized white-collar workers are required to work 50-60 hours a week."

This sounds barbaric to the ears of an European salaryman.

<comment><USER13> definitely, I work 45 hours a week an I'm already drained, I can't imagine working more..

work to live, don't live to work.

<comment><USER14> European here, 35 hours and I'm drained.

I'm thinking about negotiating fewer hours when I have more seniority.

<comment><USER15> I wonder though how many of those increased hours go into actual work. I'm sure some amount does, but how much time do you think the typical European office workers spends on a Reddit or Facebook as opposed to an American one.

As an American, I've worked at a "good" company in terms of expectations of hours and "bad" where one would want to come early and stay late (and make it known on the team chat) if only for appearances. I can say anecdotally that my amount of time slacking off increased with my time spent in-office at the second company, and from walking by, it seemed the case with others as well.

Honestly, what with software being salaried and exempted from any overtime, what incentive do I really have to kick out an extra couple hours a day?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The author blames the capatalists but the consumer and competition for goods and services are the culprit. If everyone could live where they wanted to, put their kids through good schools, did not have to pay student loans, save for retirement, and could afford vacations all with 30% less money than they make now then they you would see people seeking jobs that allow them to work less hours. When I take a Lyfy and a driver tells me that she has another job and is making extra money for any number of reasons she is not complaining that she is being overworked by Lyft, but that she doesn't make enough money (except for the occasional driver, like the one driving the landrover, that was driving for fun). Similarly, many engineers could pick up and move to Thailand and live like kinds doing some remote work (our designer does this), yet most would do anything to work at places like Google or Apple.

<comment> loup-vaillant You are assuming that working less hours means earning less money. An obvious enough assumption.

Well, that's false.

First, the actual mean work-week is not that high, once you take unemployment into account: some people are working their ass off, but many others either have precarious part-time jobs (fewer hours, but often no reliable schedule), or don't work at all. Reducing the official "full time" work-week would merely force the capitalists to re-allocate work a bit more equally. This will mean less unemployment, and less expensive unemployment insurance —which plays a big role in compensating for the loss of _gross_ revenue.

Second, we could consider allocating less money to capitalists, and more to workers. The ratio used to be 60/40 in the 70s. Now it is more like 70/30, if not worse. Taking that ratio back can easily compensate for 20% cut in our working time.

Of course, such a change is impossible to initiate through individual action alone. You _did_ capture the current conundrum of the isolated proletarian: work one's ass off, or don't earn enough. But there is a third alternative: _rise up and change this rotten world_.

Not easy. But as history has proven to us time and again, the world _can_ change.

<comment><USER17> What exactly do you mean by: > allocating less money to capitalists, and more to workers ?

Where are those ratios coming from, who's allocating this money, and how would you change the ratio?

<comment><USER18> People are always more than willing to redistribute "other people's money".

It always makes me laugh when I see this sort of talk in places like Hacker News. This is a very privileged subculture. If the proletariat rises up, the "intelligentsia" of Silicon Valley will likely be on the chopping block.

<comment><USER4> Not really. SV employees pay 40-50+% income in tax. The founders, maybe, are at threat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >We are usually so overworked, or constantly worrying about when we will work next, that we really have very little time to fight back or even to enjoy ourselves.

Bug or feature?

<comment><USER20> Strange attractor.

It's not the we can't enjoy ourselves, it's that the exhaustion of work affects the kind of enjoyment we seek. Instead of going for a nice, long empty walk for free, we feel we have to spend $30 at the movies. Or we don't have enough time to cook, so we spend $50 on a restaurant. Both of these activities keep the "economy" flowing, by constantly moving money out of our hands.

I don't believe us working hard enough to ensure that we can only entertain ourselves by spending money is a diabolical plan. But I think the evil part is when we're influenced to think that we need to spend all that money on ourselves...

<comment><USER21> The tone in the article that your employer _wants_ you exhausted is a bit weird. Sure, there are probably a few megalomaniacs that want unchallenged world domination, but most employers are simply ordinary people who want more money by you doing more work.

Exhaustion might be a very real effect, but I don't think it is usually a goal of an employer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You can demand all you want, but if there are no unions or legislations to back your demands, nothing is ever going to happen.

Unions, which are most widely found in western Europe accomplish little these days (the negotiated wages for call center workers are barely livable for example).

If you're a skilled developer, you can work your way to freelancer / self employed consultant or join one of the companies that offers part time work / 4 day work week (there was a recent article about one in Portland that only does 4 day work weeks).

If you're unskilled, you'll always be fucked to varying degrees, as such is life unfortunately.

Also it's hard to take an article seriously when it cites Marx, whose theories obviously don't work in the real world, as humans are competitive to varying degrees by nature.

<comment><USER23> > Also it's hard to take an article seriously when it cites Marx, whose > theories obviously don't work in the real world, as humans are competitive > to varying degrees by nature.

Marx's "theory" was a method of analyzing history by focusing on class conflict as the main driver for history. By applying that analysis to capitalism, he predicted that the proletariat would inevitably come into conflict with the bourgeoisie. Das Kapital was a deep dive into how and why this conflict comes about (both economically and philosophically).

As for what happened next, those are "implementation details" which Marx didn't write too much about. We've seen a few implementations (Bolshevism, Stalinism, Cuba, Maoism) and a few modern contradictions (current China, North Korea, etc.) and most have been flawed.

However, not every implementation of capitalism has been successful, either. There are plenty of fascist and repressive states that are capitalist. Nazi Germany and Italy during WWII, Argentina during Pinochet, hell, you might even say ISIS is capitalist.

So, I'd argue that many implementations of communism have failed in the same way that several implementations of capitalism have failed, but there is a large space for experimentation as there has been with capitalism. For example, democratically planned economies with analytical input is a space that hasn't been explored too well beyond very tiny experiments in sectors within Latin America.

<comment><USER24> Even if you concede all those points (which I won't) the entire Marxist system relies on the labor theory of value which was smashed by Eugen Böhm von Bawerk in his book "Karl Marx and the Close of His System". No one has really bothered to follow up on it since it was so definitive.

That his theory lives on is a testament to the degree to which people a.) never learn anything ever and b.) the intoxicating nature of what he proposes.

<comment><USER25> (EDIT: Perhaps the downvoter would care to give a counter-argument for why the LTV is a pre-requisite for Marx political ideology?)

I don't see what it is you believe relies on the labor theory of value.

Marx theories span a wide range, but certainly his political ideology did not in any way rely on the labor theory of value to underpin it, and it is something most people advocating Marxism don't even know or understand very well.

What it _does_ rely on is whether Marx hypothesis that capitalism will necessarily self destruct as it reaches the limits of market expansion is correct (no more people living out of reach of capitalist competition). Marx expected this to happen by forcing capitalists into ever harsher competition and automation at the cost of starting to throw workers back into poverty and as a result pulling the rug out under their own markets, eventually leading to sufficient social upheaval to drive the working classes to revolution.

It further relies on Marx hypothesis that upon the self destruction of capitalism, that the working classes can end the class struggle by seizing control and redistributing wealth and the control of the means of production.

The LTV is used by Marx as justification for why some of this is "right", but at the same time Marx theories on the political and economic development of society does not rest on right and wrong, but on how the self-interests of the members of the various classes affects society as the economic development alters the relative powers of these classes.

There are plenty things that can be wrong in these theories, but whether or not the LTV is right or not is an entirely orthogonal issue.

<comment><USER24> I'll try to summarize why the LTV is so intrinsic to Marxist analysis. Marx's basic argument in Capital is that labor is what creates value in capital goods. The argument goes like this: if no labor is added to capital goods they eventually rot and become worthless and cease to be a capital good at all. Thus labor is at the heart of what drives value because what gives something value is labor time stored within it. This is at the heart of the exploitation of the workers because the capitalist gets this return without having spent any of their own time to build and develop the capital and they pay less than the value of the capital goods to the workers who made the goods in the first place.

Understanding the employee/employer relationship is at heart of understanding capital and the returns capital receive over time. The employee is paid in advance of sales (most of the time) and thus the employer shoulders the risk of those sales never materializing in the first place. To compensate employers for that risk, employees are paid less than the full output of their labor. As we know wages are not taken back if the product or service they were developing was never sold. It's a mutually beneficial relationship that explains profits in a way that does not involve exploitation but rather mutually beneficial exchange.

If there is no exploitation you don't have Marxism in the first place. This is a very basic summary of "Karl Marx and the Close of His System".

<comment><USER25> > Marx's basic argument in Capital is that labor is what creates value in > capital goods.

Capital is an economic work which is of minor relevance to his political ideologies. It tries to explain and provide theories that certainly would support some of his political views if true, but Capital is not a pre- requisite for the political ideology (in as much as there's a large number of other possible theories that could equally provide justifications for the political ideology).

> If there is no exploitation you don't have Marxism in the first place

That's simply not true at all. For the political ideology, the concept of exploitation is merely one of many arguments used to justify why the working class should consider it morally acceptable to overthrow the capitalist regime. It was realpolitik.

It's worth noting that Marx' philosophical works are far more "capitalist friendly" than most modern day socialists, for example. Marx may have talked about exploitation, but he also talked about these structures as equally binding the capitalist into a role he could not escape, and spoke with admiration about the development the growth of capitalism was creating. After all, according to Marx, the growth of capitalism is what will make socialism possible. But _those bits_ don't get people out in the streets. Talk of exploitation does. And so Marx-the-politician was far more aggressive in terms of language than Marx-the-economist or Marx-the-philosopher.

The _subjective view_ of the working classes on whether or not there is exploitation is the only thing that ultimately matters in the context of his political ideology, and even then only because it has historically been an effective recruitment factor.

Other than that, the presence or absence of exploitation is relatively irrelevant to Marxism. Marx ideas about the structural development of social and economic systems and inevitability of socialism, for example, does not rest on exploitation, but on whether or not capitalism eventually will develop to a state where it causes sufficient social upheaval to be a catalyst for new revolutionary movements amongst the working classes, and whether or not the structure of this will lead to a socialist system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Has it only been capitalists who follow this trend, or have more or less all systems followed these patterns? Are there large economies which follow other systems, be they communist, socialist, kleptolists, or any other types able to bring forth a workers' paradise?

The one thing I sympathize with is the steamrolling of the low wage worker where some of those jobs are such that they don't have regular hours and can't get a full forty hours in order to skirt some labor laws and in order to maximize flexibility for the commercial concerns.

On the other hand I'd totally welcome the dsausa and any other parties to set up companies based on their philosophy and show others how things are done. Bring on that 32hour workweek without virtually being on call and somehow make it viable to keep on the worker who tends to be workshy, and the one who tends to make poor decisions, etc. Show me how it's done.

<comment><USER27> >somehow make it viable to keep on the worker who tends to be workshy, and the one who tends to make poor decisions, etc. Show me how it's done.

The work week would be shorter for everyone. The more productive workers are already carrying a couple of their workshy colleagues. For those dangerous idiots with negative productivity, they'd individually have less time to screw things up. Why would a shorter work week make the sum of those things any different? Everything should be about the same with a slightly higher overhead for HR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I recently went to Peru for a trip. We stayed at what a really, really nice hotel. It was kind of jarring, because in the Sacred Valley, you could look across the street and see the hovels where the locals lived -- brick houses with no windows or insulation, no heat or air conditioning, and sometimes even no doors. But my hotel had nice sheets, windows, heat, air conditioning, Wi- fi, and really, really nice food.

We got to the hotel after sundown, and it's so remote that you can't really leave. Fortunately, they had a restaurant. The waitress there was a young woman, mid-twenties. She was extremely nice and helpful, though her grasp on English was tenuous. By the time we finished our meal at approximately 10:30pm, we were ready to go to bed. She waved goodbye and say "See you in the morning!"

We were up bright and early at 7:30am, and we went to get breakfast. Sure enough, the waitress was there. Needless to say, after an extremely long day of sight-seeing, we returned to the hotel and the girl was still there and served us dinner.

Long story short, this woman was working 16 hour days, and she was happy to do it. The job she had was one of the nicest, cushiest jobs you could get in her region -- by far. I didn't ask, but if I had to guess, I'd say she sends most of that money home to her family so that their extreme poverty won't be _quite_ so bad.

I spend a lot of my time reading Hacker News and other non-work related websites. I can justify it -- my happiness is important -- but I'm loathe to say that I work too much at 40 hours a week, especially when I know what conditions are like in Peru and other third-world countries.

I get it. I understand the argument for shorter work weeks, and I agree wholeheartedly. But my sympathies go out to this nice waitress in Peru before they go out to Joe Brogrammer who "works" 50 hour weeks or Sarah Hedgefundmanager who has 6 minutes of bathroom time a day.

Then again, maybe I'm just a monster with no grasp on how hard life really is. :)

</comment><comment><USER29> 1\. For the knowledge worker, employment should be measured in results (not time).

I have achieved work-life balance by predetermining what I will deliver and when. My manager has buy off and he consequently doesn't care what hours I work.

2\. I fundamentally reject the principals of this article. If you feel oppressed by trading your products or services for a wage then please feel free to never take in a wage.

In America you are responsible for how much you work and how much you earn.

</comment><comment><USER30> life would be awesome with a 3-day weekend, every weekend. time to make it happen.

<comment><USER31> Personally I'd be bored out of my mind. I already can't wait to get back to work every monday.

<comment><USER32> What do you do at the weekend?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Workers should be given an hour or so to sit and listen to some rhetoric about a heavenly next life; it might stimulate their opioid receptors and reduce these pesky demands.

</comment><comment><USER34> Honestly, the author seems to be somewhat delusional about what America is like. People choose to work a lot because that enables them to have greater purchasing power. When I read phrases such as:

"As technology has boosted productivity into astronomic levels, we have not seen any shortening of the workweek or even a relaxing of the lunch break in fact we have seen just the opposite."

Of course not, the technology enables our work to be magnified. The company wants us to continue working to the same extent because they get more "bang- for-their-buck"

I would also like to say, I recently accepted a job paying about 20% less simply because I would be able to work slightly more relaxed. Ironically, it was a bank, as opposed to Google, Apple, Twitter, etc. As my friends all went and worked at those places, I noticed they had to work 50 - 60 hours a week pretty regularly.

Instead I chose to take a job where the work would have a larger impact on the company (i.e. I had more weight because I was more technical), and I could work less because I could out perform their expectations. Selecting my job in such a way is me selling my skill set for less money, but more time.

Usually people want to always maximize income, and because I am working on side projects I indeed feel I am maximizing income. However, the author seems to ignore this simple fact of life. Working less might be better for some people, it may even be better for the company... but there is no way in hell people are going to EVER want less in life. If this seems to be the case, then you likely don't see the full picture (i.e. perhaps they value freedom over money).

<comment><USER9> >>Honestly, the author seems to be somewhat delusional about what America is like. People choose to work a lot because that enables them to have greater purchasing power.

I'm not sure this is true, at least for the millennial generation and later. Most people I know who work a lot do so because they don't have any other choice, except maybe "move back in with parents and become a waiter at some diner."

<comment><USER34> That's almost 100% because they want a particular life style.

For example, my friend has a nearly perfect credit score, he lives with his parents still, works 30 hours a week (making about $35k a year), and his expenses are about $12k yearly. Clearly he has to work, but not all that crazy.

However, if he wanted to move out, get a car, etc. it would be pretty hard.

I should note, he's a millennial, didn't go to college, is 23, and has about 50k in savings because he's invested all of his money, lives at home, and works remotely. He plans to buy a house in his mid to late 20's (28 is his goal). This is common all over the world, and was common pretty much throughout all history except the 50's - 70's.

<comment><USER21> Your friend is pretty lucky to make over $20/hr without going to college. Does he do some kind of skilled construction work???

Otherwise, that sounds like a good plan if your parents can support you while you pull it off. (you = him, or somebody like him)

<comment><USER34> Definitely not me (and my ~$100,000 in student loans)...

He does quality assurance for a small business and handles other IT stuff. He loves digging around and finding bugs, and will also contributes to Gentoo. A fair number of the blogs he writes end up on the front page of HN, so you've probably read stuff by him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm guessing the company in the article that limited bathroom breaks to 6 minutes probably did so not out of desire for control, but because there had been abuse, and so in typical bureaucratic fashion, they made an unreasonable policy.

Corporations in the US are generally not great places to spend the day. That being said, US workers are in my experience, quite often spoiled, self entitled and lazy. So that is two problems, both of which prevent us from realizing maximum benefit as a society.

But I think the big gains for corporations right now may not be in squeezing the last percent from their workforce but in the simple elimination of nonsense work, nonwork, useless meetings, job making, resume padding and all the other counterproductive junk that makes up much of the business day. That's the low hanging fruit right now.

</comment><comment><USER36> I just read the article on In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas and made a connection to this one. It led me to wonder if a working population with more time on its hands would look like these college campuses...

</comment><comment><USER37> Work had, keep advancing your skills and get to the job where you will have more decisions to manage your own time. We are in the Internet Revolution, no one said it was going to be easy.

</comment><comment><USER38> It is always surprising that HN falls for this Marxist claptrap. Globalization, and the consequent lifting from poverty of hundreds of millions, is responsible for the slight flattening of wages in the West. Not that we shouldn't always strive for better but has there ever been a successful implementation of Marxist ideals no matter how small? Brook Farm?

<comment><USER8> The world is not split into Stalinistan and Reaganland.

There is a happy middleground that is currently in place in Western Europe, a place which coincidentally has the highest quality of life in the world.

<comment><USER38> Yes and they are Capitalists. The US has a better quality of life when compared to all of Europe which is why a tiny Nordic country is usually used.

<comment><USER39> > The US has a better quality of life when compared to all of Europe which is > why a tiny Nordic country is usually used.

Perhaps if you average _all_ of Europe which is a couple of dozen countries however against specific large countries (say the UK, France, Germany) then I'd say it's not that clear cut.

Indeed look at the US, the disparity between the poorest state and wealthiest state is as great as the disparity between European countries.

The US is materially more wealthy (largely by want of having the worlds largest currency and the PPP boost that gets you) however the UK (for example) has shorter working hours, better social welfare system, free at the point of access socialised healthcare, 28 guaranteed vacation days a year, maternity and paternity leave and we are the nearest politically to the US.

All things been equal I'd prefer to live in France or Germany than the US quite frankly.

<comment><USER40> There are 50 sovereign countries in Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> 15 years ago, a french socialist government passed a law that shortened work weeks from 40h to 35h. The result was a giant mess, the institutionalization of extra-hours, and absolutely no effect on unemployment.

I don't see how working less solves the real problem here: how to improve wealth distribution.

<comment><USER42> False, it's estimated to have effectively created around 400/500k jobs from a target of 700k, and is credited to a boom for the tourism industry (three days week-end).

Of course there have been short and long term, good and bad side effects.

<comment><USER41> Numbers of jobs created range from 100k to 500k depending on the source. You can see how this subject remains controversial to this day.

The other important thing to factor in, is the general evolution of the unemployment rate in France since the introduction of the law. It makes it really easy to see that it the effect was limited, both in influence and over time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> And if I want to work 60 hours a week, who are you to tell me I cannot? Capitalists don't force anyone to work 40 hours per week. The fact that I will and you won't is what pressures you into working to compete for the resources we both want. This article is devoid of economics (no surprise it's Marxist)

<comment><USER44> You can, but then your employer will be forced to pay extra by law (at least that's how the labor code in my, small European country, is). Or you can be self-employed and then the labor code won't apply.

(If you still don't like it, you must be from Mars or something. I don't know anyone who would hate to get the extra money, and in fact, I don't know anyone here who would want to work longer hours than 40.)

<comment><USER45> And are there more laws to force you to not simply self-incorporate and contract to your real employer? In the US, that's not _supposed_ to happen, but it does and going against it later means filling against your ex-employer when talking to the IRS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "Fast-forward 77 years and we are still appalled by capital's insistence on limiting the free time of workers"

WTF does this even mean? Are they lumping all 'business endeavours' into one personified beast that has desires, and is in oppositon to the very parts which make up the whole?

If I tell a worker: "Ill give you $300 to update this website" and he does a good job, and then I say: "I will give you $2000/week if you can keep the updates coming" isn't he free to say 'No'?

Work can't limit your free time, you ALWAYS have the power to pick who you sell your time to, how on earth could a business ever limit the time you don't sell to them?

<comment><USER47> Because unemployment is high, finding a new job is tough, living without one while you look eats your savings if you have any, and it's extremely unlikely that the next employer would be any better. If your boss frowns and accuses you of not being a team player because you leave the office before 7, if you have a family to support, and you're not in a high-demand profession, well, do you have that much of a choice? Even if you're not risking a firing, you're probably risking your next raise or promotion. The incentives aren't nearly as well balanced as you suggest.

<comment><USER46> Finding a new job is a simple as creating one! Find something you do that provides value to others and market it.

No boss, no hours, no office. Who is holding you back (but you?)

<comment><USER47> And yet, just like the guy looking for a new job and unable to find one, you have to find someone to pay you for the work. Except now you have to do it constantly instead of once every few years. For most people, that's not an improvement.

Even if all skills were suitable for freelancing (which they're not), not everyone is cut out to freelance. It's high risk, the income is uneven, you have to pay unemployment insurance but are ineligible to receive it, and you have to market yourself (which is difficult and eats up your time) and do collections (which also eats up a lot of time and is too often unsuccessful). You also take a hit on self-employment taxes. In the US you're also screwed on healthcare, which is a big deal if you have a family. It's very easy to end up working longer days as a freelancer and taking home significantly less pay than a full time employee would for the same type of work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces Overview - <AUTHOR> https://developers.redhat.com/products/codeready-workspaces/overview/ <comment><USER2> It's great to see what this project has developed into.

</comment><comment><USER3> will there be an open source version we can host ourselves?</comment>


Strong SSL Security on Nginx – Raymii.org - <AUTHOR> https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Strong_SSL_Security_On_nginx.html <comment><USER2> SSLv2 has been created by Netscape in 1995 and SSLv3 by the same company in 1996. From the start, SSLv2 showed weaknesses and has quickly been replaced by SSLv3. TLS is now, and since several years, the standard.

Those protocols, too often used, are vulnerable to Man In The Middle (MITM) attacks allowing a third part to intercept, modify and decypher transferred data.</comment>


Boustrophedon - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon <comment><USER2> Fun story about this: in college we had to make a barcode reader out of a simple phototransistor. To scan the barcode, you had to slide the device along a piece of paper. The barcode scanner had to be isolated from ambient light so that we'd get a good reading.

However, our project was to read a lot of information via the barcode (a paragraph of English text encoded as Code 39 or similar, can't remember the exact details), so it wouldn't fit on one line of paper. Lots of teams decided to implement complex heuristics to determine when to ignore readings when lifting the barcode reader off of the page and to scan the next line.

But we decided to use boustrophedon to generate the page with the barcodes on it so that we never had to lift the barcode scanner off of the page. You just had to scan left to right, then down one line, and then right to left.

</comment><comment><USER3> Scott Kim has a wonderful talent at designing "ambigrams". Check out his classic book "Inversions" and his gallery of more recent work!

[http://www.scottkim.com.previewc40.carrierzone.com/inversion...](http://www.scottkim.com.previewc40.carrierzone.com/inversions/)

An inversion is a word or name written so it reads in more than one way. For instance, the word Inversions above is my name upside down. Douglas Hofstadter coined ambigram as the generic word for inversions. I drew my first inversion in 1975 in an art class, wrote a book called Inversions in 1981, and am now doing animated inversions.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can see an advantage to having the beginning of the next line immediately beneath the end of the previous line -- it avoids a greater refocus adjustment distance to start new lines. This would greatly reduce mistakes where the nth or (n+2)th line is started by mistake instead of the (n+1)th.

However, I don't immediately see an advantage to flipping the letters across the vertical axis for each new line.

<comment><USER5> I found it surprisingly easy to read the mirrored examples in the article. I think it may be more comfortable -- after a while, at least -- to read the mirrored letters; because we don't read letter-by-letter anyway and the "word image" is intact (just mirrored).

Here's the example image (with mirrored letters): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon#/media/File:Bous...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon#/media/File:Boustrophedon.png)

And here's a non-mirrored version:

      THIS EXAMPLE OF BOUSTROPHEDON TEXT WAS
      AIDEPIKIW EHT ROF YLLACIFICEPS NETTIRW
      ARTICLE  ON  THIS OX TURNING METHOD OF
      TNEICNA  NI TXET HTIW LLAW A GNIREVOC
      GREECE AND ELSEWHERE

<comment><USER4> You raise a good point in that we don't read letter-by-letter anyway. So, this variant, which leverages recognition of whole words at a time, would have the line tracking advantage of Boustrophedon without the problem of duplicating letters for forward and reverse directions:

      THIS EXAMPLE OF BOUSTROPHEDON TEXT WAS
      WIKIPEDIA THE FOR SPECIFICALLY WRITTEN
      ARTICLE  ON  THIS OX TURNING METHOD OF
      ANCIENT  IN TEXT WITH WALL A COVERING
      GREECE AND ELSEWHERE

<comment><USER6> Problem here is that if you enter mid-page it's not necessarily obvious which direction to read.

<comment><USER7> But you can figure it out trivially easily based on which way the letters are flipped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> With enough practice, I could see this being much easier to read. There's no jumping from the end of one line and searching for the next, plus each line is visually distinct from the ones immediately above and below.

I wonder how much text I would have to read like this before it felt natural?

<comment><USER9> > I wonder how much text I would have to read like this before it felt > natural?

If you see my note above I mention that it wasn't a big deal. More to your question, frankly learning ancient Greek grammar was far more painful -- the effort to learn to parse old inscriptions was in the noise compared to the effort to understand what the hell they were writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://boustro.com/app](http://boustro.com/app)

<comment><USER11> It's surprisingly difficult to stop my eyes from snapping back to the left side after each line.

<comment><USER12> I also find that my brain wrongly pattern-matches words that form a different word when reading the letters in reverse.

So, I for example often misread "was" as "saw" or "on" as "no".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I first encountered the word in the excellent book, Expert C Programming, by Peter van der Linden, who explained that declarations in C are read boustrophedonically.

<comment><USER5> In C++, on the other hand, they're read stroustruphedonically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What was the reason for writing this way on stone? It can't be to keep text aligned - you can just walk to the left and keep going, and the text will stay aligned just as well as if you'd been writing right-to-left.

<comment><USER9> What is the reason for writing always in the same direction?

I don't ask this as a joke: is there seriously a cognitive advantage to having to pass your eye all the way back to the beginning of the next line (whether you read right-left, left-right or top-bottom) vs immediately dropping down and continue reading?

On the other hand I spent a lot of time in high school and university reading pictures of boustrophedon greek texts and once you are used to it you don't even think of it. Likewise R-L texts -- my difficulty with handwritten arabic is the wide variation in characters; the directionality rapidly became automatic, even in mixed-language texts.

In the case of boustrophedon texts, a dominating factor is the sheer irregularity of character shapes (nothing was machine made) and worse, a lot of the black and white photos in books are old, crummy ones which make the deciphering even more "interesting". And this was all before the development of spaces between the words too, and at a time when character shapes were evolving.

Regardless, all written languages I know of (even counting Korean, which is slightly different in-word), seem to have picked a single direction as a dominant, and even before the development of mechanised writing (which would make the characters extremely regular, which might drive a tend to optimize). So there could be some cognitive benefit. I could imagine there's an advantage in that you could train a NN in your visual system to recognize regularly- shaped characters and do look-ahead, but I have seen no studies of it.

<comment><USER15> Double the characters to recognize; double the heuristics to internalize for rapid reading.

No idea what the relative cost of those are but I'd wager it exceeds the mechanical cost of scanning back to the "front" of the line...

<comment><USER16> A mirrored letter still looks very similar. Most people learn the letter topologies first, and only later pin down the chirality. Just think of all the mirrored N's you probably used to write!

So it's definitely not twice as much work, I'd say it's not more work at all, you basically just don't worry about the chirality and that's it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's a tangentially related article about a crossword-solving program called Dr. Fill, which got tripped up by boustrophedon in its debut at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in 2012.

[http://www.crosswordtournament.com/articles/iw032212.htm](http://www.crosswordtournament.com/articles/iw032212.htm)

</comment><comment><USER18> My son would write like this when he was first learning to write. I was constantly having to prompt him to carriage return, and write the letters the correct way round.

</comment><comment><USER19> See also: the Boustrophedon cellular decomposition for robotic 2D coverage path planning, e.g. for mowing, painting, vacuuming, etc. The method works by decomposing an arbitrary environment into a union of smaller, simplified shapes that are easy to cover with a boustrophedon motion - moving back and forth like an ox plowing.

[http://planning.cs.uiuc.edu/node352.html](http://planning.cs.uiuc.edu/node352.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Older NVIDIA GPUs (and maybe current ones) used an alternating-direction scheme for coarse rasterization which was called (somewhat tongue in cheek) boustrophedonic rasterization. The idea was to have more spatial locality for the coverage samples issued by the rasterizer compared to a conventional same- direction scheme. Spatial locality in the two-dimensional sense correlates to spatial locality in the texture cache, for example.

</comment><comment><USER21> More or less the ancient Greeks - in their simplicity - chose to use ASCII 10 (newline/line feed) instead of 13+10 (carriage return+line feed). ;-)

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-great-newline- schism/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-great-newline-schism/)

<comment><USER22> >Even if you rule out unicode and stick to old-school ASCII, like most Facebook relationships … it's complicated.

Brilliant, encoding problems in an article about encoding!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Floyd Steinberg error diffusion dithering algorithm can use a boustrophedonous scan order to eliminate the diagonal geometric artifacts you get by scanning each row the same direction.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd%E2%80%93Steinberg_dither...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd%E2%80%93Steinberg_dithering)

"In some implementations, the horizontal direction of scan alternates between lines; this is called "serpentine scanning" or boustrophedon transform dithering."

I implemented some eight bit cellular automata heat diffusion rules with error diffusion, which accumulated an unfortunate drift up and to the right because of the scan order.

Rudy Rucker pointed out the problem:

[http://donhopkins.com/mediawiki/index.php/CAM6_Simulator](http://donhopkins.com/mediawiki/index.php/CAM6_Simulator)

"Rudy Rucker: I feel like you might have some kind of bug in your update code, an off-by-one thing or a problem with the buffer flipping. My reason is that I see persistent upward drift in the action, like if I mouse drag a blob it generally moves up. Also the patterns appearing in the blob aren't uniform. I mean...this IS supposed to be the 2D Rug rule, isn't it?"

So instead of scanning back and forth boustrophedoniously (which wouldn't eliminate the vertical drift, just the horizontal drift), I rotated the direction of scanning 90 degrees each frame ("spinning scan") to spread the drift out evenly in all directions over time.

[https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM...](https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM6.js#L4423)

        // Rotate the direction of scanning 90 degrees every step,
        // to cancel out the dithering artifacts that would cause the
        // heat to drift up and to the right.

That totally canceled out the unwanted drifting and geometric dithering artifacts! That made it possible to cultivate much more subtle (or not-so- subtle) effects, like dynamically switching per-cell between different anisotropic convolution kernels (see the "Twistier Marble" rule for an extreme example).

[http://donhopkins.com/home/CAM6](http://donhopkins.com/home/CAM6)

</comment><comment><USER23> And down the Wikipedia rabbit hole...

IBM 1360 Photo-Digital Storage System: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1360](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1360)

</comment><comment><USER24> My Latin 101 prof used to go through the rows of seats in boustrophedon order, his words, to read passages from Wheelock. Don't miss that class very much.

</comment><comment><USER25> >> boustrophedonically

Such a pitty I don't play Scrabble...

</comment><comment><USER26> I used to write some of my college notes this way, when I was trying to make myself thing more about what I was writing.

</comment><comment><USER27> I use this as my handle online in a few places (github, irc). Hi!

<comment><USER28> My first reaction to seeing this headline was recognizing it as a username. I thought that was here but given you are newly registered it must have been the place with the ducks.

<comment><USER27> I am not familiar with "the place with the ducks" as far as I know, so you probably have the wrong person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b that could have been useful to read text on a glass wall from both sides... too bad that they had not invented it yet.

</comment><comment><USER29> I was sure it will be a very illegal substance by that name.</comment>


Why is kernel_task slowing my Mac down so much? - <AUTHOR> https://eclecticlight.co/2019/02/20/why-is-kernel_task-slowing-my-mac-down-so-much/ <comment><USER2> This is a nothing article.

The article provides no meaningful analysis. Here's what might have made it worth reading:

* How does the hardware, and software like the kernel, manage heat in the machine?

* Some information about CPU power states, &c, and how the kernel interacts with the hardware regarding them.

* Some analysis of how Activity Monitor works and why it ascribes a certain amount of CPU activity to kernel_task, or to any other task.</comment>


Silicon Valley billionaires are trying to invest in slowing the aging process - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/super-rich-investing-immortality <comment><USER2> It seems like for the really really rich it might be better to just enjoy/live life until they're an older age, then put all their money into funds (which will be setup to essentially grow forever), use some small fraction of that money each year to freeze themselves (hibernate), and leave a note that says "DO NOT WAKE UP UNTIL DE-AGING IS FEASIBLE".

</comment><comment> xkcd-sucks People get incrementally better at modifying biology over time, but regardless, kings seeking immorality elixirs has been a standard trope for millennia

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Non-paywalled link: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health- fitness/body/super-rich-investing-immortality/)</comment>


Run full Linux distros or specific applications on top of Android - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CypherpunkArmory/UserLAnd <comment><USER2> Another related app is Termux. It can't run full Linux distro but it is much more lightweight and it has a pretty active community at /r/termux.

Termux wiki: [https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page](https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page) Termux repo: [https://github.com/termux/termux- app](https://github.com/termux/termux-app) Subreddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/termux/](https://www.reddit.com/r/termux/)

<comment><USER3> I have Termux installed but haven't really explored it much yet.

Q: Does anyone use a somewhat recent smartphone, Termux, and a bluetooth keyboard? How well does it work for ad-hoc systems administration over SSH, or command-line tasks like text processing using awk/sed/vim? My beloved LG V20 phone is still pretty much perfect for me and I don't want to give it up any time soon!

<comment><USER4> I use an original Google pixel and a cheap $20 keyboard and have done some basic scripting etc on it.

Main problem is tmux doesn't work well on it. Otherwise vim is pretty great, for example. It's actually even pretty usable without the Bluetooth keyboard thanks to the volume keys being a fn layer and ctrl

<comment><USER5> emacs works pretty well. even the touch scroll gestures are translated into scolling in emacs. and changing the buffer by touch also works. so you can use emacs eshell and a keyboard and it is perfect.

<comment><USER6> Emacs does work pretty well in Termux, but on Ubuntu Touch you can run full X11/GTK Emacs, which is nice. (I suppose you could do the same thing via Termux with an X11 session.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This runs on proot, which basically ptraces all processes under it and intercepts any syscalls that need privileges or deal with paths, and emulates them.

It works pretty well until you start to run many processes, and then proot starts to be a bottleneck. It's not multithreaded, so every syscall ends up going through a single loop. Any multithreaded code that makes a lot of syscalls will be reduced to being effectively singlethreaded.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how far we are from a real usable phone that docks into being a real usable PC. I suppose that's more of a hardware than software program. I'm aware of Samsung's DEX and similar, but I would guess the performance isn't great given the limited memory, etc, on a phone.

<comment><USER9> s10+ has up to 12 gb of ram. More than plenty of laptops. The videos of dex in action on that are awesome. Foldable phones that give a tablet sized display when on the go will be a piece of the puzzle, because a bunch of peripherals in tow doesn't solve anything.

I think we are there for performance, now it's a question of whether anyone gets the software right enough to make it practical. That includes the possibility of making a restorable image of everything on the phone so you can be up and running in an hour if you lose or break it. I have not used dex, so maybe they are already basically there.

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately the RAM battle has already been lost thanks to electron, etc. A laptop with less than 16GB for development just doesn't make any sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I never understood why there isn't something like this for iOS. A package of the top 100 or so most popular precompiled tools wouldn't be against the App Store rules AFAIK.

Going the emulation root like iSH seems nuts to me.

Running Vim, mutt, ffmpeg, imagemagic, httpd, etc, at full speed would be sweet.

Things like [1] [2] seem either dead or not getting much traction.

[1] [https://github.com/louisdh/openterm](https://github.com/louisdh/openterm)

[2] [https://github.com/ColdGrub1384/LibTerm/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/ColdGrub1384/LibTerm/blob/master/README.md)

<comment><USER12> What would you do with it if you can't add more software yourself? (which Apple expressly forbids). Try to customize your vim macros? Nope. Want to change your ~/.bash_profile? Also against the rules.

<comment><USER13> As far as the rules, quoting Federico Viticci[1]:

"For a long time, Apple's App Store review guidelines prohibited apps from downloading executable code from the Internet. The company's original stance resulted in IDEs that couldn't sync scripts and programs across multiple devices – a serious limitation for the emergent movement of programmers embracing the iPad Pro as a portable workstation.

Fortunately, Apple started relaxing their rules earlier this year, allowing "apps designed to teach, develop, or test executable code" to download and run code."

As an example of what's possible, in Pythonista 3[2] on my iPad Pro I installed StaSH[3] (bash-like shell implementation), youtube-dl using pip, and then wrote a simple script[4] to let me save YouTube videos with a long-press on a link -> Share -> Run Pythonista 3 Script...

1: [https://www.macstories.net/linked/pythonista-3-2-syncs- scrip...](https://www.macstories.net/linked/pythonista-3-2-syncs-scripts-with- icloud-supports-open-in-place-via-ios-11s-files-app/)

2: [https://omz-software.com/pythonista/](https://omz- software.com/pythonista/)

3: [https://github.com/ywangd/stash](https://github.com/ywangd/stash)

4: [https://gist.github.com/solarfl4re/0a3647788f8ec2f375f2da3db...](https://gist.github.com/solarfl4re/0a3647788f8ec2f375f2da3db55fb0fe)

<comment><USER11> Amazing, I may steal the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> bump-ladel Related: under development for iOS, iSH - a usermode Alpine Linux [https://github.com/tbodt/ish](https://github.com/tbodt/ish)

<comment><USER8> Wow...that's a pretty crazy approach. Userland x86 emulation on an arm device, and a ton of ASM code and a sort of JIT. Guess options are limited in a walled garden.

Edit: Found an HN discussion about it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18421016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18421016)

<comment><USER14> The assembly and pseudo-JIT are there for performance, IIRC. iSH should work fine without them.

<comment><USER8> Yes, not being critical at all. Just amazed at the dancing bear :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Way more interested in the other way around. Having to carry a second phone just for things like instant payments or city bikes app sucks.

<comment><USER16> I would love it too- I would like to carry an old bb with just contacts and emails synced. I'm not an App guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Somewhat related: Run arch on any distro: [https://github.com/fsquillace/junest](https://github.com/fsquillace/junest)

</comment><comment><USER17> I want a "phone" with data only that runs Linux and has docking support. The average techie could piece one together now with a pi, screen, and 4g module. It can't be that hard to build one in a phone form factor. It is all open source so you could whip up correctly shaped boards in weeks. The hardest part to me is the enclosure/case to screen finish.

<comment><USER18> Get a GPD Pocket 2 : [https://liliputing.com/2018/07/gpd- pocket-2-preview.html](https://liliputing.com/2018/07/gpd- pocket-2-preview.html)

<comment><USER19> Neat! I would pick one up right now if it weren't for the keyboard layout. I would shoot myself with the up arrow between comma and dot. Would have loved to see a 60% option, which is de-facto standard for semi-minimal mechanical keyboards. I feel there's a certain overlap between users of 60% keyboards and the target audience for this device.

<comment><USER20> You're exaggerating the impact of that layout decision. I use many keyboards (including ortholinear) and this is never really a problem.

You can always remap the dot key to be only be triggered when pressed with super or fn key (and that can also work with shift).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Last time I used UserLand I couldn't install something major (maybe typescript from npm, it's been a while) because there was some file path limit (maybe 143 bytes, again, it's been a while) that a bunch of the package's files violated. Has this been addressed with new versions?

<comment><USER22> Did you submit an issue, or do you expect developers to be able to read your mind?

<comment><USER21> Fair enough. I had a few minutes of spare cycles and I tried it out. It failed on the first thing I tried (installing Typescript), so I dropped it and didn't look back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A bit of a tangent, but does anyone know what happened to Microsoft's x86-on- ARM emulator? I thought it was going to be the next big thing for mobile but there seems to be little trace of it?

<comment><USER24> It's shipping with all Windows-on-ARM laptops, and probably used pretty heavily on those machines. It's the only way to run Chrome and pretty much all Win32 apps.

<comment><USER23> Oh I see, thanks. Do you know if there's any way to get it on other systems that don't come with it? I was so looking forward to getting Windows on my phone someday...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't have an Android phone and I don't miss one. In rare cases I might want to do the opposite what the author does: Run an Android app on my computer (Linux). Sounds weird that that is still not standard. I know there has been more than one attempt to implement it. But AFAIK none of them really successful. Would be glad to get corrected.

</comment><comment><USER26> Have not used termux, just installed and don't understand what is is. It just goes into a linux env directly without login that is running 3.18 kernel and I can install some packages on top of that, what is it?

mainly used juicessh in the past, use connectbot occasionally, both are excellent, but I'm confused what I can use with Termux

<comment><USER26> just played with termux, looks neat, basically it is a local linux running on your cellphone.

if I can miracast the screen to a tv or pc monitor(if the phone provides a hdmi-out), along with a bluetooth keyboard, then I have a portable little computer that I can use anywhere?? that is fantastic.

<comment><USER26> talking about miracast, we now need a chromecast or firetv dongle to relay that, hope the TV and monitors will support all kinds of casting one day.

for now, can termux add chromecast?

<comment><USER27> You can mirror your screen to your Chromecast through the Google Home app

<comment><USER28> At your phone's resolution, which is a mild bummer (an not, as far as I'm aware, things like chromecasting youtube work)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> For Samsung users there's Linux on Dex

<comment><USER30> Notice that only S9 had DeX over USB-C earlier, not using a DeX-hub. This is now gone with the recent upgrade to Android 9 on at least S8. Tested it out as recently as yesterday!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Just tried this and great it runs PowerShell Core and .NET Core where Termux seems to struggle with.

Since I have a handful of PowerShell modules I regularly use, this will be useful.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is easier to use than Termux or any of the others. Looks nice.

</comment><comment><USER33> VNC into chrooted linux.

<comment><USER34> ...which requires a remote Linux machine to VNC into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Awful name.

It's like calling your app "An Executable." The name means a concept in the same problem domain. 'A program in userland' is already a thing.

<comment><USER32> Seems pretty good. Android runs on the Linux kernel, but is missing the GNU/Linux userland. This app gives you that.</comment></comment>


On Air Travel: Pat-Downs, Pissing, and Passport Stamps - <AUTHOR> http://lithub.com/on-air-travel-pat-downs-pissing-and-passport-stamps/ <comment><USER2> The woman is not been checked everytime because of her hair - she has been put on the SSSS list [1]. I am a white male with rather boring short hair and I am on the list with American Airlines (most likely because I used to fly round the world regularly - hint TSA - the world is a sphere). Interestingly it is only AA that SSSS me - every other airline is fine.

1\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening_Selection)

<comment><USER3> I was a minor when selected once for SSSS. Is that supposed to happen?

<comment><USER4> I don't see why it shouldn't. At least some American teenagers have joined ISIS and travelled to Syria, along with many more Europeans.

(I'm not supporting the system, but since it exists I don't see why being 18 should affect the implementation.)

<comment><USER3> I mean, ISIS wasn't around when it happened to me, but I understand your point. Although it's odd to me to bomb-swab 12-year-olds. The most you might find is a kid who really likes to play with fireworks (and I became an amateur rocket scientist a _long time_ after).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I suppose this essay sounds good if you read it with no connection to reality and only see things through the narrative lens of white supremacy, but you can't hide things in hair that lays flat as easily compared to "nappy" hair. Somebody who isn't as self-centered as the author might ask if anybody has ever been caught doing this, and in fact it has happened many times.

[http://www.pri.org/stories/2011-12-13/south-african-woman- ca...](http://www.pri.org/stories/2011-12-13/south-african-woman-caught- smuggling-drugs-her-dreadlocks-video)</comment>


Masahiro Kikuno, Japanese Independent Watchmaker - <AUTHOR> http://watchesbysjx.com/2017/05/portrait-masahiro-kikuno-japanese-watchmaker.html <comment><USER2> I see he has a copy of "Watchmaking" by George Daniels. That is the "Knuth" of watchmaking.

Here in Britain, we have Roger W Smith, the only watchmaker in the world who makes _everything_ by hand. He was the principal disciple of George Daniels, a truly legendary watchmaker, who sadly died a few years ago.

Daniels famously taught himself watchmaking by taking apart old clocks, putting them back together and repairing them when he was young. If he had been born in the digital age, he'd have been a hacker comparable to Woz.

He didn't just make his own watches, he also made all the specialised tools needed. These days he is perhaps best known for the Daniels Co-Axial Escapement found in some Omega watches, which for many years was believed to be impossible to make.

If you google Roger Smith, he has lots of interesting videos on Youtube showing various parts of the watchmaking process from raw materials.

There are a few interviews with George Daniels too. Here's one talking about his first complete, from scratch watch:

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=CSeTi93f2eU](https://youtube.com/watch?v=CSeTi93f2eU)

<comment><USER3> If anyone is really interested in Watchmaking, I wouldn't start out with G. Daniel's book. It's really about making a watch from raw materials.

I would start with books by Fried. If you feel comfortable with 90% of Practical Watch Repair in a year, or two; go for Daniel's book. I guarantee most will not get through Practical Watch Repair, but might come back to the hobby/profession later in life. When time is more cherished?

George Daniels was a brilliant Watchmaker. The book is o.k. There are parts of the book where it seemed rushed. George expects the reader to have a working knowledge of basic watch repair, and know exactly how a mechanical watch function. There's not much on repair, cleaning, or oiling.

I really liked Kikuno's workshop. That is years worth for tooling too. It's not cheap stuff either. My point is don't go out and spend a fortune on tooling until you can clean, oil, and time a 17 jeweled wristwatch with under $500 worth of tools.

It's a really a good feeling resurrecting an older watch, and knowing how to fix it if it breaks down, or runs slow.

That said, I'll get political. Many of the major watch houses will not sell you parts for your watch. You buy a $10 grand Rolex, and can't buy a new crown. They claim it's for quality assurance, but it's a money grab. That's it. The govenemment knows it violates The Sherman Anti-trust Act, but they have bigger fish to fry--I guess? They said it was a rich man's problem? This said while they wearing Rolexes(couldn't be gifts?), with Lobbyists scurrying around in the chambers.

If you do get good at watch repair, you will look at watches, maybe the world, differently?

Since I got into watch repair, I stopped looking at the outside of many mechanical things. It just happened? Maybe because I used to be an auto mechanic, but I believe it was the watch repair that changed me.

<comment><USER4> All the question marks make me read this entire comment in uptalk (rising terminals). I can't decide if that's a good thing? I'm Ron Burgundy?

<comment><USER5> > _I can 't decide if that's a good thing?_

It is. I found it a refreshing stylistic quirk

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's great to see people like him and others like messersmiths such as Cut Brooklyn, swordsmakers, etc. continue the tradition of hand-made precision[1] products and doing it themselves rather than designing and then farming out the work to others or automating the process.

It is, though, a kind of double edged sword. On the one hand they continue centuries-long traditions, on the other hand they get coöpted by hipsterish connoisseurs who work for companies feverishly contributing to the demise of traditional craft in the name of efficiency and doing things better.

In addition, many of these products are not unnecessarily anachronistic (like say making an electronic device with discrete components and hand made pcbs).

Bravo to these people.

[1] By precision I mean they must follow a meticulous process to achieve near- perfection of result.

<comment><USER7> The watchmaker is selling his watches for between $45k and $250k and producing one a year on average so yes, he'll need rich customers. I suspect that there may be a different market in Japan though - perhaps older and more traditional people.

Sooner or later he will need to take on an apprentice - it would be nice if he can start a school like that.

You mentioned electronics, and the Japanese tradition of craftsmen making the whole thing brought to mind the slightly eccentric electronics of Susumu Sakuma. He (was?) making retro audio amplifiers on his kitchen table at one point.

[http://www10.big.or.jp/~dh/sakuma/index.html](http://www10.big.or.jp/~dh/sakuma/index.html)

<comment><USER8> That is not that much of an income taking into the skill going into these watches. Wonder if he has to deal with much repairs and returns?

<comment><USER7> I agree that the income is (relatively) modest compared to the training time and skill level involved. I suspect that the income could grow organically in the future with apprentices &c.

I'd imagine a 'return' would be a trip to the chap's house and personal attention until the watch was working properly. My old hand-assembled clockwork camera (a mass produced item compared to the mechanisms in the OA) has worked faultlessly for around 15 years. And I bought it second hand then.

<comment><USER9> To add to your comment, from what I know of the independent watch industry, it's exceedingly difficult to branch off on your own as a watchmaker and survive long term. Those apprentices need salaries after all. It seems to take not just incredible technical and artistic ability, but a knack for business and entrepreneurship as well. In addition, the independent watchmaking brands tend to have so much of their prestige wrapped up in their namesake's persona, rightfully so in my opinion, that it makes it difficult for them to survive once they are no longer able to lead the company.

Also, I believe that even amongst the highest echelons of independent watchmakers, few are able to survive on their brand alone and rely heavily on either restoration work, work for larger more established brands, or a combination of the two. Even guys like Dufour and Voutilainen, two of the most respected independents in the watch world, partake in outside work for the big brands like Patek, VC, and AP.

If anyone is interested this is a post on a fairly recent visit to Beat Haldimann's workshop[1]. One of my favorite articles on these kinds of visits is from 2006 and involves a visit to the home/atelier of a former French kickboxing champion turned watchmaker[2].

[1][http://www.watchprosite.com/independents/a-true-discovery- my...](http://www.watchprosite.com/independents/a-true-discovery-my-visit-to- beat-haldimann/16.1127286.8604221/)

[2][http://www.watchprosite.com/richard-mille/alone-with-the- rm0...](http://www.watchprosite.com/richard-mille/alone-with-the- rm008-/18.294986.1928928/)

<comment><USER7> Looking at link [1]

I wonder if those huge street 'watches' are actually apprentice pieces? The large scale of the movement making them easier to make and, I presume, less susceptible to small errors in the making of the parts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me actually a lot of Jiro Ono (famed sushi-maker).

"Once you decide on your occupation, you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That's the secret of success and is the key to being regarded honorably."

<comment><USER11> Sounds a lot like he was forcing himself to do the work in order to succeed and to be "regarded honorably".

<comment><USER12> I think the idea is that the key to being regarded honorably is to be _really_ good at what you claim you do. And a life time is only long enough to master, i mean, really master, a single thing.

I think it must be a totally alien, or even irritating, idea to a bunch who expects to paid enormous sum of money because they have done a crash course in JavaScript spanning a month and claims to be able to build websites that can "deliver value" to the business..

That is considering they can even grasp the idea of things like "honor", which itself is a rather unpopular idea because it often gets in the way of making money....

<comment> FLUX-YOU >I think it must be a totally alien, or even irritating, idea to a bunch who expects to paid enormous sum of money because they have done a crash course in JavaScript spanning a month and claims to be able to build websites that can "deliver value" to the business..

What's funny is that some of them are actually being paid enormous sums of money for very little skill investment.

So in light of that, programming is apparently not a field that expects you to master anything before your salary is maximized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love watchmakers, it is such a blend of skills that I don't even know where to begin with my praise or interest in the field.

I just want to throw out there that Dan Spitz, of Anthrax fame makes watches as well, and has an interesting story too.

[https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/interview-meet-dan- spitz-a...](https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/interview-meet-dan-spitz- anthrax-guitarist-turned-master-watchmaker)

<comment><USER14> Wow this is incredibly cool.

I also found that he produces his own benches for watchmakers and other tinkerers. Looks really great: [http://danspitz.com/watchmaker_bench/](http://danspitz.com/watchmaker_bench/)

<comment><USER15> Those are really wonderful benches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well... that's the first I've every heard of seasonal time. That's amazing.

[http://museum.seiko.co.jp/en/knowledge/wadokei/huteijihou/in...](http://museum.seiko.co.jp/en/knowledge/wadokei/huteijihou/index.html)

<comment><USER17> If you like that kind of thing and happen to be visiting Tokyo, the Daimyo Clock Museum is worth dropping into. It's a little one-room museum with a couple of dozen old clocks that implement that variable-hours setup, some of them running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Since so many knowledgeable people interested in watches are around here ... What are some affordable, good quality watch brands? Somewhere around 100 to 300 Euro maybe? I like those beautiful, elegant designed watches but 10k EUR upwards is way out of my league.

<comment><USER19> If you want to get into something interesting (from a historical perspective) - these watches can be found rather inexpensively:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raketa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raketa)

Look for ones with mechanical movements prior to 1990 or so (?); they were one of the last (or maybe the last) company making mechanical analog movements (non-quartz) long after every other watch manufacturer switched. Eventually, they had to switch too, but like 30 years later.

There's a story (pretty sure its true) of the czar buying a failing Ohio (?) watch maker, lock stock and barrel; literally, they bought the entire company and employees, and moved the employees to Russia to teach them how to make mechanical movement watches - and that continued on through the Soviet era.

But with glasnost, etc - that came to an end - and quartz took over.

I recently purchased one of these watches - it was fairly inexpensive (about $70.00 USD); it was a Lunokhod commemorative watch - with a 24 hour movement, and an orange face.

In many cases, you can get these watches as "New-Old Stock" \- because non- quartz movements fell out of fashion, and the old stock just sat unsold. But now, with collectors learning about these watches, and the want for mechanical movements, they've come back. But because so many exist, they are still fairly inexpensive to find and own (even the really old versions of such watches).

<comment><USER2> If you want a very interesting Russian watch from a historic and engineering perspective, your first port of call should be the Vostok Amphibia.

There's far too much to write about these, but this article covers most of it:

[https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/vostok- amphibia](https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/vostok-amphibia)

For the in-depth engineering details, be sure to follow the watchuseek forum link. The interview with the designers is also good, albeit written in Russian so parts may get lost in translation.

For completeness I'll just mention the Poljot 3133, which is an excellent, low cost mechanical chronograph. It is the most technically advanced Russian movement, while the Amphibia is the most advanced case design. Poljot went out of business a few years ago, but there's still enough stock around that you can find plenty of new watches with this movement from companies like Volmax.

Vostok are still making new, fully in-house mechanical watches, and they are just as good or in some cases better than they were in the 90s. Meranom are their official online retailer. Note that Vostok Europe are a completely different company that no longer use any Russian parts, although they did use Vostok movements in their older models.

I personally would avoid older Russian watches unless you are prepared to spend a lot of time on research, or don't mind buying something that isn't what you were expecting. The vast majority on the open market are frankenwatches (mixed-up parts, often botched internal repairs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Permanence - One of the beautiful things about these watches is they will be treasures for hundreds of years.

I serious doubt anyone will look back at my code in one hundred years and be amazed by the beauty. Not that it is not beautiful, software just doesn't feel like it has any lasting permanence.

You can create amazing things with software but does any implementation actually have permanence?

<comment><USER20> Well, does bread?

[https://www.instagram.com/sourdough_nouveau/](https://www.instagram.com/sourdough_nouveau/)

Not everything beautiful need be permanent. Some of it can last just one morning. (In Tibetan Buddhism, there is also the Sand Mandala that epitomizes this)

There's a beauty to lasting treasure, but there's a beauty to ephemeral treasure too, I think. Something crafted with ultimate care to be shared and consumed immediately.

<comment><USER15> There is beauty in transitory experiences too most certainly! The unseen rainbow has beauty, but as a human I like to think I am more than a blink of a cosmic eye.

Even though I know I am not....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know what milling machine he has? It has such a weird collet holder and spindle.

<comment><USER22> Looks to be a clone of a Deckel G1L. I think it is pitched as an engraving machine that can also so light milling. The pantograph allows it to make complex parts by tracing a scaled template with a stylus. This is how they made complex curves before CNC and is probably faster for certain on-off parts if you include CAD and CAM time.

<comment><USER21> That is super awesome. I can't believe I never heard of a pantograph milling machine before. Thank you for the info!

<comment><USER22> If you want to see one in action, I suggest checking out Stefan Gotteswinter's channel on Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/user/syyl](https://www.youtube.com/user/syyl)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I can't discern from the article whether or not he actually makes movements. It says that "The hairspring, mainspring, jewels, crystal and leather strap are bought from suppliers, primarily Seiko subsidiaries." However, I imagine he buys entire movements and concentrates on the case, face, hands, and other aesthetic elements.

<comment><USER19> > However, I imagine he buys entire movements and concentrates on the case, > face, hands, and other aesthetic elements.

I'm not so certain about that; the article mentions his making a wristwatch (and pocket watch) version of a traditional Japanese clock which varies the length of a day by the seasons. Such timepieces (as clocks) fell out after the Meiji restoration (according to the article) when Japan transitioned to western style clocks.

Given that, unless Seiko (or some other company) is also making movements for traditional Japanese timekeeping, I can't imagine your scenario being true, simply because the market for traditional Japanese timekeeping watches would have to be pretty damn small, as they are virtually useless for practical use in the modern world, and only would serve as curiosities and/or art.

Just my opinion based only on the article, though - I could be completely wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anyone know if there's a mirror somewhere?

Hackernews' "Eye of Sauron" affect seems to have nobbled the site.

<comment><USER25> Is that really a fitting metaphor, though? Because the Eye of Sauron never stopped anyone from going into Mordor or from going on with their own business. It just looked ominious. Whereas HN submissions actually crash the websites they're pointing to.

I've only seen the movies (and read the wiki too), so I could be wrong.

<comment><USER26> "Is that really a fitting metaphor, though?"

A better metaphor would be "the HN LOIC"[1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Orbit_Ion_Cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Orbit_Ion_Cannon)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So, how do one goes to learn watchmaking? I know there are some really impressive and traditional schools and that apprenticeship still going on but besides the George Daniels book, is there a friendlier and more approachable book for hobbyists? Can someone recommend some pointers?

</comment><comment><USER28> What a fascinating man.

I'm slowly starting to fantasize about having a job where I can create actual objects myself and my work has a tangible effect rather than some zero-sum value shuffling.

</comment><comment><USER29> Although they're quite kitsch and not something I'd wear, good on him for taking on something not many people would dare these days.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does he have an Etsy shop?

</comment><comment><USER31> Crazy, cool and complex stuff. Those pieces belong in a museum...or on my wrist.

Double kudos for the Pentax and the truly amazing 100mm f2.8 macro lens he uses. I have it and it's fantastic.</comment>


Smoothing the Design Handoff with a Component Library - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2020/04/04/component-library-handoff/#.XoiKgsPj_aY.hackernews <comment><USER2> Or don't have big handoffs?

We learned this in System admin tasks</comment>


Playing Games May Damage Your Brain - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/archives/006125.html <comment><USER2> I tried to log in to see if I could get the name of the highly prestigious journal that published this... thing, and I got an _actual popup window_ telling me that I have to _log in_ before I can read _Taiwan News Online_!

Someone needs to send the Taiwan News that List Apart article on "gradual engagement".

Anyway, wake me up when this research makes it into _Nature_. Until then I will use my back-of-the-envelope heuristic: only N=30 + no actual showing of harm (just a "lessening of blood flow") + correlation substituting for causation ("Depressives and schizophrenics also have lower blood flow!") + highly sensationalist topic + no link to the data = 99% probability of total and utter crap.</comment>


Things you probably don't know about Go (2012) [slides] - <AUTHOR> https://talks.golang.org/2012/10things.slide <comment><USER2> > 6\. Mock out the file system

Does anyone know if this is possible to do in Rust? I've been searching the last couple of days and I think my biggest problem is not knowing what combination of search terms to use.

<comment><USER3> I went to lib.rs, searched for mock and found this: [https://lib.rs/crates/filesystem](https://lib.rs/crates/filesystem)

<comment><USER2> Well, I certainly knew about the filesystem crate before, but never thought to see if it offered this functionality. Thanks for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> i miss Andrew... haven't seen him talk lately. but anyways, not sure i understand the mock file system slide -- it's still calling os.Open?

<comment><USER5> Check the date in the URL. Might explain your confusion

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm missing the context for some of these. A lot of them seem obvious, or just thing+unicode?

I like the commandline godoc, still dislike gopath. And.. what is the gopher's name?

<comment><USER7> Some folks were really trying to make the Gopher's name "Gordon", but it never really caught on. The gopher has no name.

<comment><USER8> Presumably those people were British and referencing an iconic 90s kids TV character?

<comment><USER7> Oh neat, TIL about Gordon the Gopher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Other things:

reflect.StructOf is broken if you use embedded fields

<comment> ainar-g Can't find that in the Bugs section of the documentation of package reflect[1]. Is there a GitHub issue?

[1] [https://golang.org/pkg/reflect/#pkg-note- BUG](https://golang.org/pkg/reflect/#pkg-note-BUG)

<comment><USER9> There are various issues/comments(i.e [1] ) but in practice you find out about them when your program crashes.

[https://github.com/golang/go/issues/15924#issuecomment-45557...](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/15924#issuecomment-455575431)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> somebody knows how to create slides like that?

<comment><USER11> I guess it is this [https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/tools/present](https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/tools/present)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> If the title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd > appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To > Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is > meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

<comment><USER13> I dislike that guideline.

This time I clicked, but, in general, I'd rather have the original title, gratuitous adjectives and all, so that I can have a clue that the link is going to lead to a listicle.

<comment><USER14> I'd like to have those flagged with [Listicle].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a talk from 2012, so I believe the title needs a "(2012)" suffix according to what I've seen in the past on HN.

</comment><comment><USER16> HN-type rant : Guys , it's 2019 already, why not have a presentation tool that works on mobile browsers ?

That talk looks extremely interesting but i can't browse past slide 4

<comment><USER17> It's a slide tool written by the Go team, mainly used by them to present at conferences. You'll also notice they've stopped using it as much recently. There was no talks in 2018, and only 1 in 2019. Previous years had many more.

List of old talks: [https://talks.golang.org/](https://talks.golang.org/)

You can actually explore the entire source for the site here: [https://github.com/golang/talks](https://github.com/golang/talks)

The specific talk linked on this post is here: [https://github.com/golang/talks/blob/master/content/2012/10t...](https://github.com/golang/talks/blob/master/content/2012/10things.slide)

The tool to generate the HTML based on the linked .slide: [https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/tools/cmd/present](https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/tools/cmd/present)

<comment><USER18> What happened to PDFs?

<comment><USER19> Nothing. PDFs still exist; they haven't gone anywhere.

If you're asking why the Go team doesn't use PDFs for presentations, that's probably a question for the Go team themselves or one of the golang-* newsgroups on Google Groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> (2012)

</comment><comment><USER14> 1-7 of these features exist in C#, and in C# you get a real type system. C# isn't even my favorite language that has all these features, just the most mainstream.

8-10 are of dubious usefulness. It seems they break the principle of least astonishment[1], but maybe they're idiomatic in Go.

So yeah, still waiting to see any reason to think Go's popularity is anything more than hype and fanboyism.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment)

<comment><USER21> Because Go is taking a strong stance that smaller languages are more productive, and I think they're right.

C# has all these features because C# has every single feature and facility that every programming language has ever had thrown into a single ungodly soup of keywords and syntax.

Don't get me wrong, this means C# is bloody powerful but once you involve more than one dev you get into the problems of every dev understanding and/or preferring their subset of C#. Every PR is 50% policing style and structure desperately trying to keep the codebase grokable by everyone and politics about everyone's favorite pet feature and design pattern. C# rewards cleverness with incredibly slick looking but utterly incomprehensible code unless you wrote it two minutes ago.

Not saying Go is the answer or the way but I think it's scratching a lot of people's itches for something high level that's restrictive enough that there's only one or two "right" ways to accomplish a given task.

<comment><USER14> > Because Go is taking a strong stance that smaller languages are more > productive, and I think they're right.

As a face-value claim, that's obviously untrue. Forth, by any reasonable metric, is a smaller language than Go, but I think you'd have a hard time claiming it's more productive.

I'll generously assume that you mean that "languages with a carefully selected set of features are more productive", and there I'd agree with you. That's Python's "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." But then the question becomes, "Which features?"

A very key choice you have to make up-front is the type system, and it's obvious that Go's type-system choices are bad[1]. Weak static types[2] gives them the worst of both worlds: the types don't get out of your way like a dynamic type system and they don't catch errors like a strong/flexible type system. Single-pass compilation for speed is the only attempt at a justification for this choice, but it's a bad justification: 1) this is solved by partial recompilation for all but the largest use cases[1], and 2) if you're using `go generate` to solve the obvious problems with the type system, you're introducing a second pass that saves keystrokes in exchange for giving up even more type safety. So you add a linter: congratulations, now your single-pass compilation is three passes. This isn't a tradeoff, it's just giving away all benefits of types in exchange for a veneer of minimalist aesthetic.

I'm not going to quote what you said on C#--I'll only respond by saying that if you read my post, you'll see I said it's not my favorite language. I'm not espousing it.

> Not saying Go is the answer or the way but I think it's scratching a lot of > people's itches for something high level that's restrictive enough that > there's only one or two "right" ways to accomplish a given task.

...which is extremely short-sighted. The "only one right way to do it" only lasts as long as there's no NPM-like ecosystem of libraries. Look at Python: most projects pull in at least a few common dependencies, and there's immense pressure on Python to integrate these back into the language--a pressure to which they have succumbed in many cases (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). Most projects also pull in some section of really, really bad dependencies that should never have been released into the wild and probably never will be updated. There's no way around subsetting: at least if you use the wrong language features, they'll be supported and deprecated responsibly, unlike the average 0.0.2-versioned 5 line function imported from NPM or PyPy[3].

Ideally you have a set of core features and a strong standard library that don't push people to import a bunch of terrible libraries, which is why Python has fared so well despite some really awful limitations (i.e. the GIL). But again, Go isn't that.

[1] They're probably not bad for Google: the people who made Go made it to solve Google's problems, and they're smart guys. But you are not Google (unless you are Google), and if you're operating at Google's scale, you can make your own programming language that solves your problems rather than Google's.

[2] Go fanboys generally don't know that weak/strong and static/dynamic aren't the same thing, and like to claim that Go has a strong type system because it has a static type system. This reinforces my belief that people choose Go because they don't understand type systems.

[3] NIH isn't even enforceable: good luck preventing people on your team from "importing" code from Stack Overflow using their keyboard's copy/paste function.

<comment><USER8> I get really sick of people arguing personal preference as if it's irrefutable fact. I have written pretty sophisticated applications in more than a dozen different languages over the last 3 decades and yes, you're absolutely right that Go does fall short in many respects, but then so does every other language. There isn't such thing as a perfect language; it's _always_ about weighing up benefits vs trade offs.

So how about we get off our proverbial soapbox and enjoy the fact that we are lucky enough to work in an industry where we can choose the tools we like.

<comment><USER14> > I get really sick of people arguing personal preference as if it's > irrefutable fact.

This reads as, "My personal preference is for people not to argue for their personal preference." Before you go on to argue for your personal preference.

> So how about we get off our proverbial soapbox and enjoy the fact that we > are lucky enough to work in an industry where we can choose the tools we > like.

Sure, we can choose the tools we like provided those tools are popular enough to have an ecosystem of jobs, or we're willing to shoehorn ourselves into a narrow set of jobs.

...which is why I'm sick of languages getting popular based on hype rather than pragmatics. Every Go job is a job that I've either got to reject based on the tool, or use their terrible tool.

<comment><USER8> > _This reads as, "My personal preference is for people not to argue for their > personal preference." Before you go on to argue for your personal > preference._

I haven't argued my personal preference though. All I'm saying is that arguing that your personal preference is anyway more "correct" than others is about as sensible as trying to discuss the science behind religion.

<comment><USER14> > I haven't argued my personal preference though.

Yes you have, and you're still doing it.

Your "preference" in this case, which you are arguing for, is to not have people argue for their language preferences.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>