Wire of Death - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_of_Death <comment><USER2> "To the German authorities it was officially known as the Grenzhochspannungshindernis ("High Voltage Frontier Barrier")."

How German. And by that I don't just mean that it's a long word per se, but also the bureaucratic, almost euphemistic, but also overly precise wording. Informally, people would simply call this an "Elektrozaun" (electric fence).

<comment><USER3> Bureaucratic German is very ... special. In cases like this one, it is cynical in covering up or disregarding human suffering and death. As Thomas Pynchon says, "a million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some of them even know it".

In some cases, Bureaucratese can be quite funny (but never intentionally), and mocking it can be very enjoyable. At work, we call our trouble ticket system the "Störungsmeldevorrichtung". ;-)

<comment><USER4> There's a general tendency to treat large-scale violence and force in bureaucratic language. Nobody would call a bunch of thugs who ride into a village and murder all the people they don't like something other than a bunch of murderers. But once they claim authority and do it in large numbers or in a somewhat legitimized ("legitimization by procedure") way, those murders are being called 'executions' like in the area under control of the IS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Never heard of this before! Thank you for posting this link.

OT: Historians deem it unprofessionial to ask this question, which always comes to mind: what's the moral of this story?

Should it remind us about the contradiction of "what is right" and "what is necessary"? Should we take lessons from it at all?

For me it's exactly this what makes history interesting. We may never get rid of atrocities but we'll get to know a lot about human nature, about what our actions will lead to over the long term and what delusions we can entangle ourselves in. For Germans this fence made a lot of sense. And who is to say that if Germany didn't erect it, the Netherlands wouldn't have done so at some point.

Like a financial bubble that inevitably will pop, we will repeatedly live in these scenarios that seem to be outrageously unsustainable afterwards.

<comment><USER6> "All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again."

Maybe the question of moral is unprofessional for the historians, but I think it is crucial to consider it. Humans have _very_ short memory as a civilization - we lose the collective memory of things that happened before oldest of us were born. II World War is hitting this border right now, and you can notice all kinds of things happening that two decades ago would be unthinkable - like rising popularity of neo-nazi movements, or regular people suggesting methods to deal with immigrant crisis in Europe that would make the continent look pretty much like 1938 Germany.

This is a big problem, because we've wasted thousands of years of collective experience this way. Knowing what king ruled where at what year (which is what we're being taught in schools) is of very little value for most people. But the moral coming from their mistakes and successes is actually helpful. It's funny that people do study the Bible this way, but not history. It's also sad.

That said, the problem nowadays is that any attempt on trying to preserve collective memory of lessons coming from past events will be criticized as propaganda and brainwashing.

<comment><USER5> "we've wasted thousands of years of collective experience" \- nicely put.

It's exactly this what good education of history should counter - the waste of collective experiences. It is very inefficient to go through the same cycles over and over again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> More graphic:

[http://imgur.com/gallery/zzSmB](http://imgur.com/gallery/zzSmB) (NSFW)

<comment><USER8> A striking caption from one of the images in this gallery

> This monastery was occupied by the Germans, most monks escaped to the > Netherlands. The wire was build right through the monastery's yard, all 2.5 > km of it. The monastery had to pay for the expenses.

The parallels to someone yelling about building a wall and having Mexico pay for it is chilling.

<comment><USER9> No it doesn't

Comparing a wall and a wire that electrocutes you is ridiculous.

<comment><USER10> It really isn't so ridiculous. Walls are often topped with razor wire or electrified wire. Even if "Trump's Wall" isn't planned to have that now, it may have it after a few escalations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> |In 1918 only 10% of Dutch and Belgian households had electricity. Most people didn't know the dangers of electricity at all which meant for a lot of people their first contact with electricity was also their last." \- I wonder to ask how many volts are they using during that time?

<comment><USER12> Voltage does nothing. It is the current that kills you.

2000 Volts / 1000 ohm (resistance of human skin) is 2 amps if you close the circuit. That is deadly with a healthy margin.

But put on a insulator shoes and you can hold (the same) wire with 2 dry hands and nothing will happen - the same way birds can rest on wire and live. Of course holding 2 different wires will be bad idea.

Btw - a basic safety precaution in engineering school - always plug and unplug stuff with one hand.

[http://engineering.mit.edu/ask/how-do-birds-sit-high- voltage...](http://engineering.mit.edu/ask/how-do-birds-sit-high-voltage- power-lines-without-getting-electrocuted)

<comment><USER13> >Voltage does nothing. It is the current that kills you.

Yes, but... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xONZcBJh5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xONZcBJh5A)

<comment><USER12> No. Because breach your skin on the thumbs with the needles of the oscilloscope and 9v battery will easily stop your heart.

The current that passes trough your body is determined by the properties of the whole circuit. And it is ultimately the current that kills you.

<comment><USER14> Actually it's the _energy_ \- think of a static shock, which is similarly in the kV range (or higher) and thus the instantaneous current and power is also very high; but it doesn't last long enough to cause any real damage (i.e. the amount of energy imparted is tiny.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had the privilege in 1979 of traveling in Eastern Europe and crossing the border in a rural area between DDR (East Germany) and BRD (West Germany) with my US passport.

The East's border was two 3m (10ft) fences topped with razor wire, with a 10m (30ft) gap of ploughed land between them. I assume the ploughed land was a minefield, but I didn't ask. There were towers with fixed machine guns and searchlights positioned closely enough together to allow the soldiers in them to monitor everything.

Inside the border was a 5km exclusion zone.

The West German boder? A small guard post, with a passport control officer dressed in blue jeans, and a sign saying Wilkommen in BRD. (Welcome to the German Federal Republic). 5k inside the western border was a sign in English saying "no US military personnel beyond this point." (At that time the post- WWII Allied occupation forces were still in place.)

What does a border look like that prevents the passage of determined people? It looks like that, or like the Wire of Death. It's doggone ugly.

</comment><comment><USER16> _Within 100–500 meters of the wire anyone who was not able to officially explain their presence was summarily executed. The youngest person to be executed was a four year old._

<comment><USER17> Not true. The four year old died accidentally by touching the wire while playing. Still tragic but not as depraved as made out.

<comment><USER18> OK thanks. It was almost sounding like they executed a four-year old because he was not able to officially explain his presence…

<comment><USER19> Yeah, the article makes it sound like a sapient fence or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tech-no-logical part of the 'doodendraad' was reconstructed in 2015 near Zundert. along it, people planted 24000 crocus bulbs as part of an art project called 'de dodendraad leeft!' (the wire of death lives!). this march, they bloomed for the first time.

a short video here : [http://nos.nl/artikel/2095442-video-dodendraad-zundert- komt-...](http://nos.nl/artikel/2095442-video-dodendraad-zundert-komt-tot- bloei-met-24-000-krokussen.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Why not just break it with rope and a hook? Were the wires to thick to break by pulling?

At 200km of length you could break it faster than they repair it. Also repair would cause downtime that could allow for people to slip through.

<comment><USER21> Or how about short-circuiting it?

<comment><USER4> I think one of the other linked articles said that only 10% of the Dutch population at the time had an understanding of electricity (I would guess the people close to the fence were rural population, because most of the cities are in the west at the sea). Which makes the whole thing so dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What made you want to post this? Something in the news or current events reminded you? Interesting. Didn't know this existed.

</comment><comment><USER23> It really hits home how much effort and ingenuity can go into a terrible thing.

<comment><USER3> A few years back I watched a lot of videos on nuclear tests (one can find them at archive.org - the video and audio quality is terrible, and the resolution is tiny, but it is well worth the time), and I was struck by the same thought - if only we could spend that much effort, money, time and creativity into building a better society, ending hunger and disease, what would the world look like today?

It is really depressing to think about this for too long.

<comment><USER24> Don't be too down on society. Humans are doing a lot of horrible things but we're also doing some wonderful things too.

Just look at the many billionaires who are doing amazing things with their wealth [http://givingpledge.org/](http://givingpledge.org/)

<comment><USER23> Yes. And we are still on a massive, unprecedented progress run that has created abundance.

I just hope we stay on that path.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _In 1914 one million Belgian refugees were already in the Netherlands_

This is often forgotten. And instead Belgians I know are now complaining about, what, some tens of thousands?, Syrian (and other) refugees entering the country. And yes, some of these Belgians even want to build fences to keep them out. Hmm, where did I hear this story before..

<comment><USER26> Pretty lame. If you live close to the border, Flemings and Dutch are intermarried, they speak the same dialect and all. Refugees were close to home and actually went home after the Germans left.

Refugees of Syria (and Iraq and Afghanistan and also all of Africa etc) have been flooding Belgium for 20-30 years now. Somehow they never depart in any of the other 360 degrees surrounding their countries. Or choose to stay in one of the many countries they pass through on their way. Only North West Europe will do: Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden.

On the plus side, last year Saudi Arabia did offer to help Belgium, not by taking up refugees until the war is over but by funding construction of more mosques.

<comment><USER27> This is incredibly misinformed. First of all, the majority of refugees are staying in the middle east zone. See UN data [1]: ~4 million Turkey, Lebanon and others. Estimates round ~1 million for all of Europe.

Regarding that they only "flood North West Europe": in Spain, for example, the ~4 % of the population is Muslim (not all of them are immigrants but it's a decent indicator). In Sweden, it is ~5%, ~5-7% in Belgium, ~5% in Germany.

1: [http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php](http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php)

<comment><USER26> "Incredibly" misinformed? Not really. How many in Saudi Arabia? Gulf states? Iran? The *stans? North Africa? Georgia? In China or Japan or Russia or Kenya or New Zealand for that matter?

How many would be in NW Europe without the spreading plan? How do the ones that weren't even registered, or the ones that went missing move around the Schengen zone?

About the second set of figures. Total immigration is much higher than 7%, because not all immigrants are muslims. Even then, I'd say these numbers confirm that migration is much higher in NW Europe.

But you know, 7% of Belgium being muslim is not even the problem. The problem is that this is happening in a few decades time. In countries that have never seen immigration and were screwing it up big time long before the Syrian refugee crisis. Culturally and economically.

Au fond, immigration policy in Europe is completely reckless. There is no vision, just passively reacting to whatever happens and calling that being compassionate. And to go back to the original reason for my post: I'm especially sick of hearing specious, patronizing arguments like "but 100 years ago Belgians fled to the Netherlands". We need to move beyond that sophistry. Especially if you live in Brussels.

<comment><USER27> See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_W...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War). Saudi Arabia is the 6th country. UAE 10th, Kuwait 11th, Egypt 12th. Sweden is 13th. Germany is the only rich european country in higher positions, and it's the fourth one.

Why don't they go to China, Japan, Russia, Kenya or New Zealand? Well, just look at a map. Syria -> Greece can be a long but doable journey. Except Russia (and that would be entering via Georgia, which doesn't seem to be like an easy route) all of those are pretty unfeasible.

About the figures, yes, they're not the best but they're an indicator and probably useful for comparison. And they do not confirm that immigration is higher in NWE. Sweden and Belgium have far less population than Spain (~10 vs 45 millions). If you add immigration percentages in France, Portugal and Italy, I'm pretty sure that it's not higher, and even if it is, it wouldn't be by much.

> The problem is that this is happening in a few decades time. In countries > that have never seen immigration and were screwing it up big time long > before the Syrian refugee crisis.

So what's the solution? Sweeping the problem under the rug? Because it's not an impossible task. It can be done. Spain has received a huge amount of immigrants in the last decade (2000 it was 2%, 2010 was 12%). The fact that a lot of them were spanish-speakers helped a lot, but you don't either see problems with the muslim population (12% of the foreign population is Moroccan, for example).

<comment><USER26> Hi julian. We're looking at the exact same page and we're seeing different things. That happens sometimes.

I see NW EU doing way too much. I see countries on the way to Europe (Greece, Macedonia, Serbia) doing even more. Btw as far as I'm concerned, that includes Turkey. I see other countries who are much closer culturally and/or geographically quite simply not doing that much.

You could say that a number of them do almost nothing. Or maybe a lot of the refugees actually choose to travel into specific directions. I.e. they want to use their refugee status for migration purposes into Europe.

About intra-European Syrian refugee numbers. You mention Spain a lot: 8,365 refugees on 46.5 million. Italy has 2,451 refugees on some 60 million people. Belgium has 14,850 on 11 million.

About intra-European _muslim_ numbers. (You started mentioning those. They seem like a bad proxy for total immigration but anyways.) 7% (or 7+%) in Belgium. 10% in France. 5% for Spain.

About dealing with total immigration, beyond the Syrian refugee crisis. For the past 2-3 decades, Belgian society has been sweeping it all under the rug. That includes minimising and censoring events, coming up with dubious comparisons (like the WW1 canard), campaigns focusing on the racism of Belgians. There's been a lot of social engineering and it's not working well for anybody, immigrants included. Enough with the sweeping already. Let's start with regaining control over the borders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> >The youngest person to be executed was a four year old.

German efficiency eh?</comment>


The Market for Discontinued Photographic Film - <AUTHOR> https://leejo.github.io/2020/08/14/the_market_for_discontinued_film/ <comment><USER2> ILFORD still makes film. They have a tour of their factory on their YouTube channel:

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpoALotxf0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpoALotxf0)

See also The Impossible Project, some folks who reverse engineered how to make Polaroid instant film:

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM5k4B1C7cs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM5k4B1C7cs)

* [https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/27/weve-come-full-rectangle-p...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/27/weve-come-full-rectangle-polaroid-is-reborn-out-of-the-impossible-project/)

<comment><USER3> That video is nothing short of amazing. Ilford HP5+ [1] has been my go-to film (I only shoot black and white) since Fujifilm dropped Neopan 400 [2] back in 2013 and my supplies ran out two years later. I have heard that Oriental SEAGULL 400 should be similar to my old love Neopan, but there is only so much time I have as an amateur to shoot.

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

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopan#Neopan_400_Professional...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopan#Neopan_400_Professional_\(Presto\))

Film photography is certainly something I can recommend, at least to anyone interested in photography in general. The lack of instant feedback does indeed change how you operate even when you shoot digital. I would never dream of not shooting primarily digital though if your salary depended on capturing anything but a fully controlled scene.

<comment><USER4> Good on Ilford for keeping film alive. Fujifilm finally ran out of Acros 100 in their freezer, so now get Ilford to make it.

There's some mystique around Oriental Seagull, but in reality it is "just" rebadged Kentmere. It was really cheap and nice for about 5 minutes back in 2016...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I work in a retail photography environment. The amount of 16-25 year olds who come in to buy film is astonishing. Many of them don't even know why they're shooting film. They need help loading their cameras and have no idea what to do with the film afterwards. They'll regale me with stories about how they got an amazing deal on a Canon AE-1 for $200. To me it's quite obviously an "in" thing to do with young people right now. I have to admit that it kind of makes me laugh, but overall I am happy that it's helping an element of an industry that I love stay viable.

<comment><USER6> 200 dollars, for an AE-1? I remember when those were selling for 20 dollars.

<comment><USER4> They've gone from being so old they're crap to being so old that they're cool again. All the sweet deals now are on 90s camera equipment.

The autofocus versions of the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens are competitive or cheaper compared to the manual focus ones even though they have identical optical formulas and the manual focus ones are almost guaranteed to need an expensive professional overhaul at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I shoot a lot of film; it's my main hobby. I have 50 film cameras here. The FP-100C this fellow writes about was very nice while it lasted, and I enjoyed shooting it.

The trick with expired films is that unless it was stored refrigerated or, better, frozen, it degrades. Some films degrade quickly, others slowly. I sometimes shoot 40-year-old Kodak Verichrome Pan b/w film and it usually looks like new. I've used other expired films that looked like crap. Some people like that degraded look but not me.

There are enough good films still produced that I've decided (except for that Verichrome Pan) to just shoot fresh stocks.

</comment><comment><USER8> Curious, just last week I shot one of the last Kodak Aerochrome rolls available in Germany. This was particilarilly challenging because it was a 40 mm sheet glued onto the 120 roll film and I used a Twin Reflex Camera, which I had to use sideways to get a panorama format with that stripe. This means the image in the viewfinder was not only cropped and mirrored, but also upside down. This made the little adjustments to the camera position and angle one usually makes automatically a particular kind of brainfuck.

I actually quite like TLRs with their mirrored viewfinders, as it forces you to view the image a little bit more abstractly which gives better results (unless you have to react quickly etc).

</comment><comment><USER9> I have been scavenging film from people who have switched to digital for decades now, they would give me bags of it. I rescued a load just before lockdown else it was going in the rubbish, some of it was from the early 1980s or late 1970s. You don't know what you'll end up with as a result, but it's all part of the the fun.

<comment><USER10> Doesn't that go bad eventually, from background radiation if nothing else? Or from slow chemical reactions?

<comment><USER9> It no longer meets the specifications, that is correct, but expiry imparts its own unique qualities, which reflect the history of its storage and treatment - and that is often quite an attractive trait in film, which retains its mystery until developed :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was pretty depressed when Kodak discontinued Kodachrome. There was one place that still developed it for a long while, but then they shut down also. Luckily, Fuji still makes Velvia Fujuchrome. They had discontinued Velvia 100 in 2005, and there was an outcry, and they brought it back with Fujichrome 50, redesigned the original coatings to work with the new base. Actually, I always preferred Fujuchrome to Kodachrome or Ektochrome, colors are more saturated. Velvia 50 tends to make people look a little red, so find and use Velvia 100 for people, but for anything else with color, Fujichrome Velvia 50 is sick.

<comment><USER9> Yaar, me too, but there is a process again to develop it, albeit in black and white. I still have some Kodachrome left over AND some Agfa Scala! My dad's Kodachromes from the 50s are still perfect. I miss Cibachromes, though. The ultimate combination.

RVP50 is not good for people. Never was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I still shoot film, but I have to admit I always feel guilty when I dispose of the used chemicals. That, and not the cost, is the main reason I prepare a lot for each frame, and I tend to get much better shots.

Still, I'd like to see a day when I could get the same results on digital as on film. The existing solutions like Silver Efex don't even come close.

<comment><USER13> From my research, the main thing you shouldn't pour down the drain is spent fixer.

Classic developers contain chemicals like metol and hydroquinone, often in combination, as active agents. The remaining chemicals in developer are things like sodium bicarbonate, borax, and sodium hydroxide. If you are concerned, switch to Kodak Xtol which does not use metol or hydroquinone.

Stop bath is just acetic acid and a pH indicator. You can use water as a stop bath if you like, you just run the risk of changing the pH of your fixer.

As for fixer, it's not fixer that is the problem per se—it's the silver that the fixer removes from your film or paper. The silver will mess up the sewage treatment plant. You can remove the silver by dropping some steel wool into the fixer, it will undergo a redox reaction and you'll end up with rust and metallic silver.

The only thing I am actually scared to work with is selenium toner. You should definitely NOT pour selenium toner down the drain.

<comment><USER14> Quite apart from the waste, selenium toner is... nasty. I mean the smell. One gets rather used to many of the smells of the darkroom, equating them in one way or another with the artist's struggle and horrible little bedsits on the Boul Mich and so on. Selenium is different. It's the sort of smell that makes platinum/palladium seem like a much better idea.

<comment><USER15> All of the non-oxygen chalcogens (sulfur, selenium, tellurium, in theory polonium) are known for their unpleasant-smelling organic compounds -- and, as the elements get heavier, the smells only get worse. Sulfur compounds are bad, selenium compounds are awful... there aren't a lot of chemists working with tellurium compounds, but reports are that even trace amounts have a _horrific_ smell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> An option not yet mentioned in the comments, if you shoot sheet film, is to use X-ray film, possibly cut to the size you need.

</comment><comment><USER17> I continue to be floored by how Leica, Hasselblad, etc. retain their sale value among the photo community. For something that is clearly (to me at least) totally reproducible by digital equipment, cumbersome to use, and expensive, it's like people are clamoring to buy the stuff out of sentiment.

Speaks a lot to the value of brand and emotion, doesn't it?

Note: if I could afford it, I'd buy myself a nice M6 and 903SWC...

<comment><USER18> See: classic cars. Most cars from the 60's-80's are objectively _bad_, but there's something interesting about driving and maintaining them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I bought a load of expired films a couple years ago on Facebook marketplace for about $3 each. This allowed me to learn how to develop, scan, test different cameras, and affordably pursue a hobby that would have otherwise cost me thrice as much. Analog photography really changed my perspective and I'm very grateful for that.

I'd love to see a discussion on here about the market for discontinued film cameras. I've sold a fair amount of my point and shoots for 10x-30x as much as I bought them for, mostly because they were usually thrifted for $5-$10.

If someone had the skills to repair some of the "for parts" cameras sold on eBay, such as the highly sought after Olympus mju-ii, a decent profit could be made while bringing some quality, discontinued cameras back into life.

I wonder if/when any company will ever start to reproduce analog cameras again.

</comment><comment><USER20> Part of me knows shooting with film is ridiculous in 2020.

It's expensive, you don't get immediate feedback, old film cameras can often have light leaks, etc... But there is something magical about holding and shooting a film camera. You physically load the film. You can hear the film advance as you shoot. You take out the completed canister. When you get your developed film back you can see and hold the film that physically changed due to light coming in through the camera. In a world where everything is digital creating a physical image with light is kind of amazing.

I still mainly shoot digital. There are too many advantages to not shoot digital in my opinion. However, if you're a fan of photography I recommend giving film a chance. The experience is really special.

</comment><comment><USER21> Reminds me of the market for tubes for guitar amplifiers. The "good" tubes are JAN (Joint Army Navy) tubes which were last produced in the 1960s. Someone must have acquired quite a cache of them because they are still turning up albeit at increasingly steep prices.

<comment><USER22> > The "good" tubes are JAN (Joint Army Navy) tubes which were last produced in > the 1960s.

s/1960s/1980s

Sylvania was still making them up to 1981, when Philips ECG bought the Sylvania tube factory so they could supply the US military. They continued making JAN tubes until 1988. A lot of these are still available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Funny to see this come up. I just took my Nikon F6 with me for my family holiday last week. It was such a pleasure to use. I've always appreciated the dynamic response of film.

<comment><USER24> I still have my Canon EOS-3. I usually use a 6D because, well, it is more convenient, and the price both to buy and to develop film is now high enough to be annoying, but in most scenarios, I prefer the photographic output from my film camera.

<comment><USER6> I have an EOS-1 that I adore.

<comment><USER23> I remember a long time ago picking up an F100 and comparing it with a 1v. The 1v felt so light!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Surprised to see so many film users on HN in the comments. I also shoot film Ilford and Portra both in 35 mm and medium formats. It feels very different from anything digital.

<comment><USER26> I wonder if the increase in quality of smartphone cameras has driven more people back to film cameras.

10 years ago or so, if you wanted to dabble in photography you could spend $500 on an entry-level dslr kit and start taking significantly better pictures than your smartphone or point and shoot. Then you'd quickly hit the limits of the mediocre auto exposure settings and relatively low dynamic range, and be rewarded with even better shots for learning about the exposure triangle and better learning how to control your camera. It still took a bit of work & learning which is part of what makes something a fun hobby.

Now days the latest iphone will pretty much nail the shot 8 times out of 10, and for power users you can tweak exposure, focus, and now even low depth of field and extremely low light stills are possible. (This is a bit of a generalization, for some styles of photography like birds and wildlife you obviously still need long lenses. But smartphones can cover the 24-70mm equivalent range really well). It's pretty hard to justify an entry-level DSLR anymore. But a film camera still offers a relatively affordable way to slow things, and make photography more intentional, challenging, and fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> For those interested in the rise and fall of film photography, I recommend Instant [0]. The book chronicles the story of Polaroid. The last parts of the book capture the bad decisions around the shutting down of film production.

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/14577509-instant](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/14577509-instant)

</comment><comment><USER28> In the age of low-scale manufacturing, how hard would it be to create a film factory with today's technology, creating or buying the various chemicals and the physically transferring them on film rolls? Can't believe there wouldn't be a boutique market by now.

<comment><USER29> Film chemistry is very complex and no small scale production has been able to match the quality or quality control of Fuji, Kodak or Ilford.

<comment><USER30> To expand on this: the problem isn't putting out one batch of high quality film; it's putting out batch after batch that performs exactly the same. Nobody wants to lose an important shot because this batch of film exposes a little differently from that batch or has slightly different color response.

Any craft brewery can make an outstanding batch of beer, and many do it quite often. The miracle of Budweiser is making zillions of barrels of Bud and Bud Lite that are indistinguishable from one another year after year.

<comment><USER29> It's not really like that. Either you can coat a 5000-foot roll of acetate with 14 layers of chemistry to a high degree of uniformity, then slit and sprocket the film, and package it, or you can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One of the films he mentions, Acros 100, was recently re-introduced as Across 100 II. It seems very similar to the original, although is probably made by Ilford under contract.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep! It has but unfortunately they're not making it in large format sizes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Kodak still makes Ektar and Portra color film, I believe.

<comment><USER33> There are dozens of current film manufacturers (if you include various rebrands and films produced under licence in China and other Asian countries). Among these, the best-known are:

ADOX, Agfaphoto, Bergger, CineStill, FilmFerrania, FOMA, Fujifilm, ILFORD, Kodak, ORWO, Rollei, Shanghai and Ultrafine.

Kodak still produce Portra 100, 400, 800, Ektar 100, Professional T-Max 100, 400, 3200, Tri-X, Pro Image, ColorPlus 200, UltraMax and also motion picture film of course.

As I understand it, Kodak sell about a billion dollars worth of film each year - but still lose money on other parts of their business.

Still, I don't understand the generally pessimistic tone of the blog-post - seems very strange considering the poster was gifted a very valuable and desirable load of film.

<comment><USER34> CineStill is basically a rebrand of Kodak motion picture film.

What is worth mentioning is that Kodak invested to start making again Ektachrome slide film after discontinuing it 8 years ago.

Fuji also discontinue its last black and white film Acros but started to produce a new formula after an year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Kodak Alaris still sells professional film

</comment><comment><USER36> Film is going to return, no doubt about it.</comment>


Apple's hardware "dilemma" - <AUTHOR> http://counternotions.com/2012/06/06/hwdilemma/

<comment><USER2> > _...the differences between consecutive iPhone versions, from 3G to 4S, are > purely incremental improvements or aesthetic embellishments, not hardware > breakthroughs. Sure, better cameras, higher resolution screens ...but no > significant surprises or breakthroughs in hardware._

Personally, I consider the retina display to be the most exciting hardware enhancement since Wi-Fi, and certainly qualifies as a breakthrough in my book. It's not a slightly better resolution, it's a completely different screen.

What kind of breakthroughs is the author asking for? It's not like any other manufacturers appear to be providing them.

<comment><USER3> I agree. This article comes off as confused and unguided. First it mentions the "inability of analysts (or anyone) to understand Apple" (unpredictable). Then, it says Apple's hit-driven business results in their product refreshes being incremental/expected (predictable).

The self-contradictory ramble continues. He mentions how Apple knows how to design a user experience, rather than being design-blind and spec-obsessed, then goes on say that Apple has hardware spec issues, and that's a "dilemma". What...?

To top it all off, Apple is actually leading as far as hardware specs go (unless by "good specs" you mean "cram every feature you possibly can into the chasis without regard for user experience whatsoever"). The retina display is one obvious example. I wouldn't even consider a tablet without one at this point. The iPad 3's GPU is yet another example of Apple's hardware advantage. The fact that they bested NVIDIA, a company dedicated to designing the best GPUs, is extremely impressive.

Imagine you're a consumer walking into a store to buy a laptop/tablet/phone. From your perspective, who is leading the pack in every way that actually matters to you? I don't see a dilemma here for apple.

<comment><USER4> I'm fairly amazed that people are _still_ stuck on the idea that Apple sells lower-specced products for more money and makes it up with, depending on your opinion of them, either a good experience or flashy marketing.

Certainly they don't win on _every_ spec, but I think that if you do a fair comparison on all specs together, weighted by the ones that actually matter, you'll find Apple near the front of the pack. I guess people's opinions take a while to change.

As for the article, I agree completely. I finished it thinking, "That was interesting... wait a minute, none of that really made any sense." Too bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Methinks Apple's brilliant insight (other than profound supply chain management) is: specs shouldn't matter. Specs are an excuse for underwhelming performance.

Author touches on the point with "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole." Apple is doing what it can to ensure that _users don't care about specs_ ; the just want X done. Retina is a good starting point: the resolution is now so high that nobody will ask about pixel count - whatever it is, it's better than users' eyes. Likewise with other specifications which Apple is straining or succeeded at making irrelevant: iPad battery life is "charge at night, use all day", MacBook Air size/weight so low it fits in a manila envelope, pervasive use of wireless so cable compatibility is nigh unto a non-issue, progressive elimination of files & filesystems, instant-on behavior ... all vs. competitors' "no, really, it's good enough" specifications of "5 hour battery life if you're careful, 6 pounds and hope there's enough space in your briefcase, USB/Firewire/Ethernet/PS2/Centronix/RS-232/eSATA/XYZPDQ/OMGWTFBBQ ports, don't forget to put double quotes around the file path, 90 second startup..."

Users don't want to ask "is X compatible with Y?" and have to learn technical obscurities about what that question means. They have X, they want to get Y, and put together they should _just work_. Forget specs - if my mother-in-law has to know about technical specifications, the manufacturer did something wrong.

<comment><USER3> _> vs. competitors' "no, really, it's good enough" specifications of "5 hour battery life if you're careful, 6 pounds and hope there's enough space in your briefcase, USB/Firewire/Ethernet/PS2/Centronix/RS-232/eSATA/XYZPDQ/OMGWTFBBQ ports, don't forget to put double quotes around the file path, 90 second startup..."_

Not to mention the PC MacBook Air clones, which in addition to questionable battery life, screen resolution, etc., ALL fail to have an actually usable trackpad. They've tried to emulate various multitouch gestures, but it all feels absurdly clunky and impossible to actually use. I tried one in a store and every time I tried to scroll with two fingers, it would intermittently zoom in like crazy. When it did actually scroll, it was laggy and choppy.

I know this is a bit off topic, but seriously, does anybody know what is up with PC track pad drivers? Why are they so laughably bad. Actually, it's not even laughable it's so pathetic... I'd cry (if I was a PC manufacturer).

Seriously though, I'm genuinely worried/curious about this. I am still looking for a Windows laptop that rivals the MacBook Air, because I do programming both on Windows and Mac (I by no means have an emotional attachment to any OS or HW vendor, so I'm pretty unbiased when it comes to these things). I'm still confused as to why this does not exist in any usable sense.

<comment><USER5> Get a MacBook Air, thereon run Parallels (or some PC virtualizer), therein run Windows, therewith run Visual Studio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I noticed recently is that Apple has been pushing the new iPad based almost purely on specs - i.e. Retina. Now that's not to say that the Air didn't also differentiate in part on specs: light thin and long battery life, but those had obvious functional implications, where as the Retina display is largely a drag on hardware performance.

<comment><USER5> To the contrary: "retina" is the opposite of specs. Resolution is so high users don't care what it is; like weight, size, and battery life, screen quality is now so good nobody cares what the numbers are because it just _is_.

<comment><USER7> The screen is there for me. The size is fine, given the limitations of having a usable keyboard. The weight is fine, though no one would complain if it were even less.

Battery life? Not for me. Not even close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Apple has the best hardware-software-service integration in the industry, bar none. So the fact that the new device wars are now actually fought not on hardware specs but on vertical integration accords Apple a unique advantage._

Apple's secret sauce is this realization: That customers want their problem solved, and the way to deliver that with personal computing is through vertical integration. I'm not sure anyone else gets it yet, even Microsoft and Sony, which already have retail stores.</comment>


Show HN: Improovi: Simple suggestion boxes for businesses - <AUTHOR> https://improovi.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

I had the urge to build a minimalist online suggestion box, so here it is. I'm curious to see if anyone here has a use case for it. It's pretty basic right now; you can create a traditional suggestion box for employees, or you can make public boxes and collect feedback from customers. Public boxes have their own link for easy sharing (i.e. you could put it in an email, send via chat, etc.).

Ideas for the future:

\- QR code generator for boxes (reduces friction when getting the customer to your box)

\- Voting

\- Ability to show or hide your identity when submitting a suggestion

\- Forms/Surveys

\- Pretty much anything else-- I'm open to suggestions

</comment><comment><USER2> The 'How it works' link doesn't go to that section. In general, the landing page could tell me everything on one laptop screen. The least important thing _to me_ is giving you my email and putting it at the top of the information hierarchy makes me worried that the site is mainly about harvesting an email address. To put it another way, giving you my email has a cost _to me_ and the site asks for that payment before telling me what I am buying.

Good luck.</comment>


A Million Lines of Bad Code - <AUTHOR> http://varianceexplained.org/programming/bad-code/ <comment><USER2> I recently read the book "How to Win Friends & Influence People", bad title great book. My main take away from this is I've been talking to people really badly for the last 27 years. I wish I had read this book in middle school.

But this blog reminded me of some of the concepts from the book, its far more productive to give positive encouragement than to give negative feedback, and just adding a complement isn't enough if you follow it with a "but".

"Hey pretty cool program! Its a great start. I bet we can make it run faster if we changed the way files are imported to something like this... nice work"

will get better results then this

"Hey pretty cool program, but you're reading in files wrong"

which even that is better than this

"You're reading in files completely wrong, try googling for a better solution" which unfortunately among engineers seems to be the most common reply.

<comment><USER3> I like teaching. I don't think I'm amazing at it, but I like sharing knowledge and experience with my friends and co-workers and see them improve, or just sometimes for the abstract sense of helping. Of course, sometimes I fall flat and come across as arrogant or condescending, but I hope that's rare. I read "How to make friends" a long time ago, and I apply those rules diligently to my interactions with people.

Recently though, I've been assigned a guy to help me with one of my tasks, managing the build pipeline. This requires a wide range of knowledge about unix and scripting (Bash, Perl AND Python. Yup. On top of Makefiles, of course).

The guy doesn't know how to use a command-line.

I'm surprised to find myself to be very unhelpful and curt with this guy. He's the unlucky recipient of my resentment at the amount of effort I will have to put in before he can actually become remotely helpful. Of course, it doesn't help that he's in far off timezone where I'd have to stay up late to help him, and that I have trouble getting direct answers from him about his knowledge level. The communication and experience gap is too large.

Anyhow, this is just my two cents relating an experience to show how a seemingly normal and friendly human being can revert to angry "RTFM"s.

<comment><USER4> > _Anyhow, this is just my two cents relating an experience to show how a > seemingly normal and friendly human being can revert to angry "RTFM"s._

The guy is not just a human being, he's also a professional whose job it is to know what he's doing. Shouldn't there be some sense of "duty to do a job well", not just "duty to care about someone's feelings"? If he's not pulling his weight and is failing at his job, then the poor responses are his fault also.

<comment><USER3> Sound like you haven't been working with outsourced talent and a boss that says "this is all we've got, deal with it." ;)

The "interesting" thing here is the cultural gap, where these folks have had all initiative beaten out of them throughout their education, where the cost of failure is higher than that of not trying. It's really disheartening.

My point is, it's heard to blame the person when you know how flawed is the system they come from.

<comment><USER5> Your boss should pay you handsomely for the extra overtime and responsibility involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If only my clients and recent bosses would consider refactoring a valid billing line item...

I can only imagine sending an invoice today to my three top clients with "5 Hours Refactoring Bad Code That is Working But Could Be Better Looking....$400".

There is just no way I would get paid.

Unfortunately, I have interests outside of working on code that mostly preclude me from sitting for hours happily breaking-and-then-refixing code that is currently working ok and that I cannot bill on.

Hell, just keeping up to date with the unreal pace of change that is occurring in software right now is almost a full-time job in itself, much less fixing old stuff that is going to go away soon anyway.

<comment><USER7> Would it work to say, "Added test coverage, refactored code to increase future maintainability"?

<comment><USER8> Client: "Send us some screen shots of the new features."

You: "Err..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > So I wrote a Perl script that read in the file, combined it, and printed it > out as a single line. Then I had my Java program call the Perl script > through the command line, capture the printed output, and save that as the > string.

When I first started (in Python), I didn't understand what a function was, but I wanted my program to react differently depending on user input, and had some conception that I should be breaking my program up into files by purpose. So what I did to get it working was this: I named each file "$cmd.py", then I concatted the user's input with ".py", opened & read the file with the associated name, and ran the resulting string through exec() !!

I came to this result incrementally by googling different aspects of the problem that I didn't know how to describe properly. If someone had been a jerk to me about it then, I probably would've been really self-conscious about it. But no one was a jerk, so I'm not ashamed: what I did is ridiculous and funny & I'm glad to be able to laugh about it now.

<comment><USER10> The result was still great though, wasn't it? You made the computer do what you wanted and it was probably better than doing it by hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I agree that mean-spirited feedback is not helpful/constructive. I can see how that would discourage someone who is new to programming. In fact, "feedback" is probably not even the correct name for that... maybe "bullying".

However, I have to disagree with the notion of having to write a lot of shitty code to learn to write good code. Granted, that is one way to learn, but not nearly the most effective way to learn.

For years, when I started my career, I wrote lots of shitty code. I feel badly about having done this because I unwittingly caused quite a bit of havoc in the products I was working on, and even pissed off a few customers along the way. Writing shitty code can have really bad effects on a team and on a product.

Fortunately for me, I eventually ended up working in an extremely talented team. They were not only talented at programming, but also highly skilled at teaching others good programming. Their method was simple- they accepted nothing that failed to meet their high (and documented) standards of readability and testing, but were extremely thorough in spending time showing you what you did wrong. They were never demeaning and always constructive- they always had a high level optimism in every new-comer's potential. Given enough time, it was clear that some new team members weren't going to work out, but those who had it in them to patiently improve their skills flourished and enjoyed very successful stints with this team.

After a rough first few days on the team, I heeded their warnings and agreed to check my misplaced ego at the door. Then, and after a couple of months of embarrassing ineffectiveness, I gradually became a better programmer and went on to become a great team member. I'm really grateful for the patience these guys had with me and the other noobs. They really made a difference in my career and in the career of my peers!

<comment> FLUX-YOU This kind of thing can really have an effect on your career in the immediate future. There are a lot of expectations that people come up with regarding what you should know by X years into your career and people judge you pretty strongly on this.

I personally don't get any feedback on my code and I don't really have time to police myself on it. I end up blending in with the conventions I see in whatever current document I'm working on (e.g. presence of type prefixes, casing style, underscore usage). I always thought this was bad practice in the general population but I guess I get paid for it.

We aren't going to raise the industry-wide skill level if we let people figure it out on their own the hard way. That's valuable up until a point but eventually they should start wanting to know what the effective way of doing X is (if it exists). Individuals take a long time to arrive at an optimal point with that stuff, and may never even reach it.

I'm fairly sure NASA doesn't let staff (astronauts especially) in training learn everything the hard way. Imagine if your workplace maintained something like this: [http://llis.nasa.gov/](http://llis.nasa.gov/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not quite right. All the code I wrote last year looks bad to me; naieve, clumsy, artless. Because I have learned so much since then. It never gets any better. Not because I don't get better; because I DO get better.

I've been writing code since 1976.

<comment><USER13> I hear this sentiment a lot (and notice it in myself, though I have a lot less experience so it hasn't been as long running), and it worries me.

Are you _sure_ it's better? Are you keenly aware that there are no, say, cycles in your coding approach?

I know this year I look back at last year's code and go, "oh boy, why'd I do it that way?" And I _feel_ like it's better, but I'm always a little afraid I'm just chasing novelty. Not sure how to objectively know if it's better.

<comment><USER14> Don't forget also that familiarity makes things seem more clear. Code you wrote yesterday needs to be particularly atrocious for you to find it hard to understand. Code you wrote a year or two ago might as well have been written by a stranger (really memorable hacks aside).

Perhaps look at code from 2 years ago and 3 years ago, and if possible blind yourself as to which is older, and rate each one.

<comment><USER12> I'm pretty sure I remember my code. I agonize over it, put all my effort into it. I remember code I wrote in the '80\. I remember the code I wrote 7 years ago, and refactored last year. Code is my life.

I've had that sneaking suspicion that maybe I'm not really getting any better, yes. But I have independent corroboration - I've worked with another guy for most of that time, and we've got one anothers' code to look at. What one of us learns, the other learns too. He's not cycling, or just writing bad code. And he says the same about me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> More important than good code is shipped code.

I'd say about half my bad code is due to inexperience, what the post is referring to. As time goes on it DOES get better, especially since -- like most of you -- I'm constantly reading and trying to improve my skills.

The other half of my bad code is due to time constraint. This is either because a quick hack is needed, or the proper planning time is not allocated to do a proper job.

This leads me back to my initial statement. Sometimes you just need to get the job done. If you're not good enough to do it right, but you hack it and it works, that's good enough for now.

This is how systems get built poorly and bloat up, but there are deadlines and requirements that need to be met, and if you never ship, you'll never get the budget to rebuild that old system you allowed to get unwieldy. It's a constant struggle to balance quality, functionality, and deadlines.

<comment><USER16> [https://i.imgflip.com/kc24o.jpg](https://i.imgflip.com/kc24o.jpg)

(Sorry for commenting in a form of a meme, but it really was asking for it)

<comment><USER15> Very valid point. But not every product, as much as the stakeholder would like to believe, is a space shuttle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There are some useful ideas here, and public shaming per se probably isn't the answer. But publicly talking about bad code, and the properties of code that makes it bad, is an important way to socialize what makes good code, plus the meta fact that code quality is important.

To the extent that the aphorism about writing bad code is true, I think it's just another way of saying that people's code improves with their coding experience. I really don't think you need to write bad code _in order_ to learn to write good code. It's hard to know for sure, but I think the most positive influence on my code quality was _reading_ lots of very good code, not having written bad code. (It's the same with my writing, too.)

[Edited for clarity, ironically.]

</comment><comment><USER18> I think this is reasonable, but at the same time, _please_ get those million lines out of your system on somebody else's project.

If that can't be done, if you can't spend your free time honing your abilities, then accept helpful feedback from other more experienced developers. Don't just accept feedback--assume your code is garbage, and ask how you can make it better. If the answer eventually becomes "it's good enough for business purposes", then find out why that is, and learn from _that_.

Communication is hard, and explaining why a codebase is just wrong can be as difficult as explaining to somebody why you find them abrasive.

At the same time, it's the job of senior engineers to make the effort and _try_.

Sadly, in a startup environment, it's usually smarter business-wise in the short-term just to sack the inexperienced developers or railroad them into simpler work that they can't screw up, and kick the can down the line.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not a real fan of assigning a context-independent global value label like "good" or "bad" to code. While there probably are examples of truly "bad in all respects, in any context" code, the vast majority of code that I've seen tends to fit more into "<this attribute> of the code could/should probably be improved when using it in <this context>".

I find that viewing (and discussing) code this way has a lot of benefits:

        * It is really hard for a single global negative value judgement made about code to not be taken personally by the person who wrote it (e.g., "your code sucks" == "you suck").  This is much easier to avoid when talking about attributes of a thing, since (a) it comes across as more objective than subjective, (b) gives plenty of opportunities for acknowledging aspects of the code that _don't_ suck, and (c) lends itself to much more of a "give and take" discussion.

        * It gives you the opportunity to talk about "figures of merit" and trade-offs that are the reality of engineering, but rarely taught in schools (e.g., readability/development cost/flexibility vs.  performance, etc.)

        * It gives you a framework for explaining why things like idiomatic style, "principle of least astonishment", and general elegance actually contribute to code quality (and aren't just excuses for subjective attacks).

</comment><comment><USER20> Code is art and every artist wants to go back and redo their bad works[1]. But the best thing to do is learn and move on to create better art.

1: [https://www.yahoo.com/movies/bp/steven-spielberg-finally- adm...](https://www.yahoo.com/movies/bp/steven-spielberg-finally-admits- walkie-talkies-were-mistake-142746809.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't see anything wrong with the "mean-spirited" humor in the XKCD comic. The cartoon is funny. It's _supposed_ to be a joke. Anyways, it's not like those remarks are directed at anyone in particular -- just a fictional stick figure. I don't have any ethical qualms about laughing at his expense.

<comment><USER22> You're right to not have qualms about laughing at something that's literally just black and white pixels (and some in-between grays) that are arranged in some configuration on your screen. ;-)

That said, this XKCD comic is one of Randall's rare misses. It's about mocking something which I -- as a developer -- would actually like to promote: People taking initiative and teaching themselves to code. Even people who are shitty at it.

In fact, I'm almost always very impressed with people who are not professional coders but who have taught themselves a few coding skills in order to solve some problem or to actualize some idea -- even if the code itself is horrific from a professional standpoint. That's awesome! And if they want help, I won't mock -- I'll help! It's a rare opportunity to really show someone why I find the act of programming to be so fascinating and satisfying.

<comment><USER21> > _You 're right to not have qualms about laughing at something that's > literally just black and white pixels (and some in-between grays) that are > arranged in some configuration on your screen. ;-)_

Not sure what you're trying to say here? Its a cartoon about a stick figure who can't code. Funniest part was "it's like someone took a transcript of a couple arguing at ikea and made random edits until it compiled without errors" lol

> _That said, this XKCD comic is one of Randall 's rare misses. It's about > mocking something which I -- as a developer -- would actually like to > promote: People taking initiative and teaching themselves to code. Even > people who are shitty at it._

I understand that you feel passionately about this, and I agree wholeheartedly that non professionals should not be mocked. That said, I dont think that's what's going on here. What we have here, is a _cartoon_ that's poking fun at an exaggerated circumstance. No individual or group is being (sincerely) called out or told they shouln't try to learn to code. It's all just a joke, for amusement.

Its like saying Peanuts is mean spirited for mocking people with poor hygiene with the character Pig Pen: It discourages those people from leaving their homes and interacting with people. I should instead encourage those with poor hygiene to pick up that bar of soap and go outside!

... But that's silly, right?

<comment><USER22> > Not sure what you're trying to say here? Its a cartoon about a stick figure > who can't code. Funniest part was "it's like someone took a transcript of a > couple arguing at ikea and made random edits until it compiled without > errors" lol

I'm just poking a little fun at your earlier reductionism. You're right, it's just a stick figure. A real human has not been hurt.

My main issue with the comic is that it's not particularly funny. To me. The zingers don't really zing. It's just someone whaling on someone else for three panels. And since I'm not catching onto the humor, all I'm left with is the weird feeling that the comic is condoning that kind of behavior.

<comment><USER21> You're overthinking a cartoon in attempt to find malice where there is none. I'm sorry you didnt find it funny, but that doesn't mean it was written to be anything else but humorous.

There's nothing sinister in this cartoon, no matter what you feel. You might as well accuse all cartoonists of condoning their characters' outlandish behaviors. (e.g. "The writers of the Simpsons must condone child abuse because I didn't find the humor in Homer choking his son" ... Give me a break.)

<comment><USER22> The cartoon was clearly meant to be humorous. The humor fell flat. So the cartoon just comes off as mean. It's not the end of the world. I'm not going to attempt to reconcile it with Pig Pen and Homer Simpson in some effort to create Chasing's Grand Unified Theory of What Is and Is Not Mean-Spirited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I kept some of my original bad C, asm, and REXX code back from my high school days after I finally moved on from BASIC in 1991. I pull it out from time to time for a quick chuckle.

</comment><comment><USER24> You have to have thick skin in the programming industry. Because you're surrounded by what might be the world's worst communicators, programmers. We can tell the machine exactly what to do, but our social IQs tend to suffer on the whole.

<comment><USER20> Not to mention we're told from a very early age how smart we are so inevitably we begin to not only believe it but also believe we're smarter than everyone else.

Here's a hard-earned lesson for any newly-minted developers out there: Yeah, you're smart. But not as smart as you think you are. And regardless, it doesn't give you license to treat anyone poorly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have here some 10 year old C++ code I've written lying around. It's pretty terrible style-wise, but not as bad as I imagine it to be without looking at it.

But the main point is that it worked in production for years. I would have written it much better today, and it will probably work faster and be easier to maintain. But it would also probably take longer to develop (though less time to debug and stabilize) - and ultimately, it would do the same work in production.

I'm not saying that improving your coding style and skills is not important. Just that we need to keep our eye on the ball - which is delivering working software, not code.

</comment><comment><USER26> There's a difference between practice and mere repetition. You wouldn't get any better at speaking Russian if you just spoke gibberish, even if you did it for 10 years. You need to know what improvement looks like.

</comment><comment><USER27> 1000000 lines of bad code is a bit of an exaggeration. Many (most?) programmers never write that much code in their entire careers. I've heard 10000 LOC as a milestone for REALLY learning a language (once you're familiar with programming in general), I'd say it's on that order of magnitude for writing non-terrible code in general.

<comment><USER28> The problem is that a lot depends on what kind of problem your solving, and whether it varies a lot. I've written ~10k lines of python (single small project). But, I'm still at the point where it seems every other line requires me to google something, and i'm sure normal python people would snicker at the result. OTOH, I've probably written close to 750 (maybe a million, aren't small companies cool!) lines of C/C++ over the last 20 years and that is probably not enough either. Although I rarely even have to think about the code, rather i'm totally working at the algorithm/interaction level and the text pops out of my fingers.

I would say 10k is enough that you can put it on your resume... But, even that is probably way less than the average comp-sci graduate writes. So, I would still consider it a starting point. Especially, since reading other peoples code is just as important a skill, and that isn't something generally picked up in school, or on little weekend projects using a new language.

But again, it depends on the breadth of the problems being solved. We hired a web developer a couple years ago, who in the space of about a year wrote ~150k lines of PHP and javascript, and got a _LOT_ better at it, but he solved most of the problems the same way and there was a metric ton of duplicate code, and imprecise problem solving (AKA problems solved in the most roundabout way). Over the last 2 years I've probably only written about 50k lines of PHP/Javascript but I've added about 20x the functionality he added. So, I would say that i'm better now than he was when he left, but i'm still not really that good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd hate to see my old VB4 code I wrote back in the day. I'm sure I did worse, except at the time I thought I was a rock-star. Of course it was the late 90's and everyone who had a compsci degree was a bad-ass developer no matter what language you used or how many bad lines of code you wrote.

</comment><comment><USER30> I remember reading some advice like this around the time I started programming. It was something along the lines of "every dev has XXXXX lines of bad code in them, so write a lot of code to get them done with!". (I think it was from Joel Spolsky, IIRC.) It helped motivate me to just write a ton of code, even early on when I didn't really know what I was doing. Just writing a bunch of code without worrying too much about if it's "right" or not is really important, at least early on.

I think I write better code now because I spent so much time just writing stuff early on, and learning from my mistakes. That, along with some good mentors helped me so much more than the people that merely criticize you because of your code. I definitely agree with this article.

</comment><comment><USER31> Why not use Findbugs[1] by default, it is now well integrated in major IDEs?

[1] [http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/](http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/) [2] [http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/2902/static-...](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/2902/static- code-analysis-integrated-with-github) [3] [https://github.com/LMAX- Exchange/freud](https://github.com/LMAX-Exchange/freud) [4] [http://spoon.gforge.inria.fr/](http://spoon.gforge.inria.fr/)

</comment><comment><USER32> The xkcd thing is just one webcomic, I reckon it is just a joke and probably Randall Munroe did not consider its implications or think it would be taken seriously. Though xkcd is really popular and probably is relatively influential (especially in programming circles) That being said, I totally agree with this article. Also 'read a style guide' is one of the worst possible suggestions I could think of. Style is just style. Its one of the least important things I could think of. It depends on your work situation but in many cases why not just go with whatever style you are happy with personally and makes sense to you.

</comment><comment><USER33> What if you are an experienced engineer talking to another experienced engineer ?

Seems to me if someone writes bad code when they SHOULD be writing good code, code-shaming might be in order.

I'm all for being nice and understanding. Everyone programs at a different level and I may not write code that is as good as I think, but some code is just obviously bad...and constructive criticism (if willing to be accepted) might help

</comment><comment><USER34> Yeah, you shouldn't shame people because their code is bad. But the other side of that is when someone says your code is bad you don't take it personally. There is more than one way to not be a nice person.

Just think, if everything is pretty good and isn't _that_ bad and doesn't need _that_ much improvement, why should anything ever get any better, ever?

</comment><comment><USER35> This times a million. I love helping people to learn C, for example. And the thing I do most other than basic instruction is helping to keep their spirits up and reminding them that refactoring is the most important part of coding.

</comment><comment><USER36> one of my first projects as a consultant fresh out of college was HORRIBLY coded by my standards today. Sometimes I still fire it up and it still works (which fills me with pride); however, perusing the code hurts my eyes and I often wonder what was going through my mind.

</comment><comment><USER37> Shouldn't the compiler recognize this as an append instead of copying every time?

<comment><USER38> It should. But the Java compiler punts everything to runtime, and the JVM doesn't optimize it either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> That's all true, but the cartoon is still funny!

</comment><comment><USER40> This is why my handle is "moron4hire". It's supposed to be a daily reminder to myself that I'm not that hot.

</comment><comment><USER41> good read, thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER42> Bad code is a great wedge for business people to get programmers obsessed with individual relative ranking and prevent any sort of collective action.

I certainly had jobs in the past where I got _angry_ over bad code when, in fact, I should have been bad at the businessmen making me use the bad code (instead of putting time on the calendar to write things properly) and setting the deadlines that caused the bad code.

For sure, there are some sloppy, borderline-unethical engineers who write shitty fast code to get promoted away from the maintenance messes they generate... and there are definitely some incompetent engineers. For the most part, though, bad code is a symptom of bad leadership rather than bad programmers. Under a tight enough deadline, everyone's code will be shit.

And, of course, it goes without saying that the proper response to bad code isn't to flip out on the person, but to teach him how to do it better. One of the reasons why I like using high-productivity languages like Haskell rather than Java is that it selects for people who genuinely want to improve.

</comment><comment><USER43> Thought his was talking about win95 or win98...

<comment><USER44> Windows ME? In all seriousness I've witnessed people shame over bad code, yet later when other people looked at their code was just was bad. We all write bad code, hopefully we're able to make it less bad the more we write it.

<comment><USER43> :) think you're the only one that could find the irony out of it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > _Building a string with a series of concatenations like this is extremely > inefficient_

No. Not in Java since 1999 or so.

<comment><USER46> Factually incorrect. Creating new strings by concatenation requires reallocation because Strings are immutable in java. Using a Builder is over 700x faster:

Concat code: [http://pastebin.com/CcezmJbf](http://pastebin.com/CcezmJbf)

Builder code: [http://pastebin.com/Dd6kzcKa](http://pastebin.com/Dd6kzcKa)

Results, using JRE 7:

> time java concat data.blk Finished. java foo data.blk 170.08s user 1.52s > system 102% cpu 2:48.12 total

> time java builder data.blk Finished. java builder data.blk 0.30s user 0.05s > system 151% cpu 0.230 total

<comment><USER47> What about the time to write the program?

<comment><USER46> About the same.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lessons from Bar Fight Litigation (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2014/01/21/lessons-from-bar-fight-litigation/ <comment><USER2> Worth noting: participants' size, strength, or degree of training doesn't even signify. The simple fact is that whoever gets the first shot in probably gets the last. There _can_ be exceptions if the other person is both trained (in the right kind of martial art) and ready, but that combination is damn rare. So here are your options:

(1) Never visit bars, or at least limit yourself to the very top tier.

(2) Be willing to throw the first punch (kick, whatever).

(3) Be trained (again, in the _right kind_ of martial art) and be ready all the time. That means being ready through an awful lot of false alarms, and also taking the risk of your readiness being interpreted as escalation. Your friends probably won't want to hang around in bars with you if you're like that.

(4) Learn how to de-escalate potentially violent situations.

Really, having been in a few fights, I highly recommend #4. That one skill is likely to be more useful than everything you'll ever learn in a dojo.

<comment><USER3> Do bar fights actually happen in this day and age? I've hit up bars of ill repute around the world since before I was of legal drinking age, and I've only witnessed a single bar fight between two grumpy locals in rural New Zealand.

<comment><USER4> I have personally never been in a bar fight in my life.

But, yes, bar fights still happen regularly.

That said, my experience is:

      1. They are somewhat cultural.  More common in some regions/bars/demographics

      2. They happen more frequently as the night/drinking deepens

<comment><USER5> _But, yes, bar fights still happen regularly._

Where are you going to find regular bar fights? Is it more a US thing, a rural thing, a college town thing? Because despite having spent way too much time in bars in various parts of Europe, I've basically never seen anything escalate beyond shoving and shouting.

<comment><USER4> My general view is bar fights are more common when there's not a perceived tendency of escalating into knife and gun fights. I don't have data to support it though.

I last saw a bar fight on the north shore of Kauai. I _love_ Kauai, but locals have told me, "there's not much else to do at night other than drink and fight."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > It seems that resolution of the dispute caused the symptoms to subside. What > I haven't noodled out yet is whether eliminating the stressor of litigation > also eliminated the stimulus of psychosomatic subjective complaints, or > whether eliminating that stressor triggered some sort of objective change in > the person's physical condition.

Or the client greatly exaggerated the "symptoms" for personal gain and thus doesn't have to fake it anymore. I've had many friends/family members reportedly fake (or greatly exaggerate) injuries, sue, and then brag about it afterwards. It seems incredibly common in the United States.

<comment><USER7> In the case of minor car accidents it does seem to be the common practice. I also feel that insurance companies have raised prices so high it could be argued that you'd be foolish not to do the same.

I live in Vancouver, Canada where the average car insurance per month is around 200$.

<comment><USER6> > In the case of minor car accidents it does seem to be the common practice.

No, it's common practice that you can sue for pretty much anything, not just car accidents. Most of the fraud that I have seen did not involve car accidents but stupid, mundane things like slip and falls or whatever. I also have a customer of mine that is basically a "professional victim" that serially looks for people to sue (this lady's super lazy). I've also seen startups almost go out of business because of software patent trolling. This behavior is not just limited to car accidents, believe me.

> I also feel that insurance companies have raised prices so high it could be > argued that you'd be foolish not to do the same.

It can also be argued that the insurance rates are high AS A RESULT OF many lawyers/people are gaming a system that is easily gamed.

> that you'd be foolish not to do the same.

I'd argue that it's ethically wrong to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find this amazing -- the half a dozen or so bar fights to which I've been "witness" (yes, I had a dissolute period in my life) were over pretty much immediately: one swing, perhaps a response, and that was it.

The reason I put the word "witness" in quotation marks is that in only one case did I see the first swing being taken. Otherwise there was commotion and I'd turn and see someone on the floor, or two guys grabbing each other and bystanders pulling them apart.

Note I said "amazing" not "implausible" \-- my experience is only mine, and I am sure there are those who lead a more exciting life than mine.

<comment><USER9> The article fully supports your characterization of bar fights? You seem to think that its opinion differs from yours.

<comment><USER8> It does seem that way from my reading: "Typically, the loser of a bar fight who later initiates a lawsuit has been beaten up pretty badly" and fights lasting "less than 60 seconds" (I'm thinking less than 10 seconds).

But the author is talking about ones that lead to litigation, presumably a minority but one which is by definition self-selecting.

I also hadn't considered people trying to get back in after being chucked out (which does seem to happen in a surprising number of cases) as "bar fight" though I can imagine that also leads to litigation and is all the same from the insurance company's POV.

In any case these days I tend to drink in a higher class of joint (excepting Antonio's in Palo Alto where I still go)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I've learned in 25 years on this earth is to avoid fights and conflict as much as possible, especially physical conflict. The cost benefit ratio just doesn't add up for me in any scenario, unless my life is on the line.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how situations like this play out in countries where CCTV is everywhere.</comment>


Microsoft is creating a new Rust-based programming language for secure coding - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-were-creating-a-new-rust-based-programming-language-for-secure-coding/ <comment><USER2> Video where this was introduced, which has more details: [https://vimeo.com/376180843](https://vimeo.com/376180843)

Slides: [https://www.slideshare.net/KTNUK/digital-security-by- design-...](https://www.slideshare.net/KTNUK/digital-security-by-design- security-and-legacy-at-microsoft-matthew-parkinson-microsoft)

<comment><USER3> The slides don't really add much detail. They're just a light introduction to the sort of region-based memory management that was already being used by Cyclone, well before the Rust project was even a thing.

<comment><USER4> The video explains more:

\- Need to keep old insecure code around, too much money to rewrite the world from scratch in Rust, C#, or whatever safe language makes your day

\- They are just starting the project, so far only interpreter and runtime model

\- It is based on CHERI CPU research ([https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/)), which has memory tagging

\- They are planning to open source the existing work in a couple of months

\- Looking for collaboration

<comment><USER3> > Need to keep old insecure code around

That's what process boundaries are for. (As a bonus, you get protection from any Spectre-like issues arising in the old code.)

<comment><USER4> Process boundaries don't protect against internal exploits, which is what most of the C and C++ exploits are all about.

If you are able to force a process to change its behaviour, the process boundaries become useless.

<comment><USER2> Process boundaries _specifically_ protect against these exploits.

<comment><USER4> So how does a process boundary protect against Heartbleed?

<comment><USER2> Process boundaries help you when you start jumping through a ROP chain that spawns a shell because your process doesn't have access to things that it shouldn't, even when compromised. Calling Heartbleed an example of a process "changing its behavior" doesn't really make sense in the context of exploits that can cause arbitrary code execution.

<comment><USER5> You don't have to spawn a shell as a seperate process. Injecting and executing code inside a vulnerable process has been done for a long time.

<comment><USER2> A shell spawned in an unprivileged process is not very useful.

<comment><USER4> One doesn't need to spawn a shell.

<comment><USER6> Injecting and executing code inside an unprivileged process is not very useful.

<comment><USER4> Some black hats would consider stealing data, data corruption or triggering DOS already very useful for ransonware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious to see what Microsoft does.

The big breakthrough with Rust was ownership, and Microsoft seems to agree on that. Rust has a lot of other baggage that could be dispensed with. Of course, Microsoft has their own baggage.

<comment><USER8> More precisely Cyclone already had borrow checker over a decade ago. Rust derives much of its memory model from that language.

<comment><USER9> Which is awesome. Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This slideshow is pretty interesting (in particular slide 14):

[https://www.slideshare.net/KTNUK/digital-security-by- design-...](https://www.slideshare.net/KTNUK/digital-security-by-design- security-and-legacy-at-microsoft-matthew-parkinson-microsoft)

Talks about sandboxing C/C++ libraries that interact with Rust. Kinda make a safe unsafe sandbox Rust interface ("less unsafe?") if I understand it correctly (I likely don't).

The actual linked article is all over the place, I cannot make heads or tails of it and seems to be conflating multiple security issues/mitigations together into a mish mash.

<comment><USER4> You really need to watch the video.

Basically a new language for system software and containers that allow to tame existing software, due to the expenses of rewriting everything into safe languages.

It is based on the CHERI tagged architecture.

[https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/)

Just starting now, they have done the ground work, will open source it and are looking for collaborators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Midori v2?

[http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/10/objects-as-secure- capabil...](http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/10/objects-as-secure- capabilities/)

<comment><USER12> You mean Sing#?

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm surprised Microsoft didn't "invent" their own version of Go yet. Actually I'd use it in a heartbeat over Google's if they add generics to it. Just call it "Micro".

<comment><USER14> This so much! Go would be a great language if it had generics and no "interface {}". I'd use that over any flavor of Rust any day.

<comment><USER15> I'm curious what the next big language iteration will bring. It's been a while that I got excited about a new language, last time was probably C#, but that's 20 years ago... Crazy, that there hasn't been any new language revolution sort of how Java was one. But maybe I should look more into new things like Julia, but they seem a bit niche.

<comment><USER16> I hope the next big programming language will be one that is split into two language-variants: the "low-level-variant" and the "high-level-variant".

The high-level-variant is a dynamic language with optional typing, which is good for scripting, fast prototyping, fast time-to-market, etc.

The low-level-variant is similar to the high-level-variant (same syntax, same features mostly, same documentation), but it has no garbage collector, typing is mandatory and it runs fast like C/C++/Rust. Compiled packages that are written in the low-level-variant can be used from the high-level-variant with minimal effort or without additional effort at all. The tooling to achieve this comes with the language.

<comment><USER17> Proponents would say that julia is both languages at the same time

<comment><USER18> Yes, and I think Julia is a perfect starting point for an extremely productive general purpose language.

The one major wart with Julia is reliance on GC, I'm interested to hear what workarounds exist. If no common usage patterns rely on the GC, it should be possible to write "recycling" code that doesn't incur GC pauses and hence, unpredictable latency.

I really enjoy using Julia, it's a great balance of concision, expressiveness, and performance.

<comment><USER19> There is a common demand from people for extracting just a very concrete computation from a julia codebase and compiling it to a standalone library (or even just using it within an existing julia program, but guaranteeing certain allocation or real time behavior). For example, julia includes a pure julia implementation of libm, but we also maintain the openlibm C library, since we link it into some of our C dependencies that need good quality math functions. It would be nice just to compile the julia version and have it be a drop in replacement for the libm that can be linked. Of course for that you don't want the runtime, or GC or code generator. The challenge here is coming up with the right interfaces and abstractions to make this a feasible and useful thing, without splitting the community into those that care about it and those that don't. We've started some work in this direction, but it isn't really usable yet.

<comment><USER20> This sounds amazing and exactly what people have been clamoring for. Extremely excited.

I think it will also rocket up Julia's popularity and usage not just for ML but as a general purpose language

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I _really_ like the idea of implementing mutability control at the level of a collective as opposed to a single object. A great many transactions are multi- object.

Love the idea that a Netscape-legacy language has traction there. I hope they don't return to their pre-Nadella practices.

<comment><USER22> Actually in Rust you have a problem where you can't express partial access to a struct at a function level. This means that you can't put some code into a separate function right now, making use of closures/iterators harder. There are attempts to fix this ([1] [2]). If borrow checking is done on collections of objects instead, the problem can be tackled more easily I think.

[1]: [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/53488](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/issues/53488)

[2]: [http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2018/04/16/rust...](http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2018/04/16/rust- pattern-rooting-an-rc-handle/)

<comment><USER23> There's some friction there, but in practice it's easy to work around most of the time. I'm not sure extending the type system there is worth the weight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is great news. Microsoft is adopting/forking Rust. That means Rust will be supported for all eternity.

<comment><USER25> Or at least Microsoft Visual R++

<comment><USER26> That will be very sad if it's the case.

One reason of why I'm using Rust is because it's built by a group of people that I like, and Microsoft is not on that list.

However, I always keep a open-mind, I mean, I don't see anybody will be hurt if Microsoft become a direct contributor of Rust language itself. In fact, I could like Microsoft a bit if they did invest in Rust. I hope they do that <delete>instead of trying to fork things/build something alike (if that's the case here)</delete> (I watched their intro, their design is different than Rust and I somehow like what they did there).

<comment><USER27> I'm about as old-school anti-Microsoft as it gets (I had a 4-digit slashdot ID!) but even I have to admit that they've been pretty serious in offering olive branches to the broader open source community in the past decade. I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.

If someone had told me ten years ago that my favourite code editing environment on the Linux desktop ten years later would be browser-tech-based, MIT-licensed, and made by Microsoft, I'd have stared at them like they had just grown a second head. But here we are. Interesting times, man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Found the article to be somewhat vague and found this slideshare presentation which was...a little less vauge.

[https://www.slideshare.net/KTNUK/digital-security-by- design-...](https://www.slideshare.net/KTNUK/digital-security-by-design- security-and-legacy-at-microsoft-matthew-parkinson-microsoft)

It _seems_ like they want to do something like Rust, but with a new focus on regionalized memory management.

</comment><comment><USER29> What does "Rust-based" even mean? Inspired by Rust? Does it transpile to Rust or something? Very confusing phrasing to me...

<comment><USER30> Historically it means they would start with Rust and then add in just enough Windows proprietary stuff to make it not run on any other platform.

<comment><USER31> Given their past years of behavior and focus on dev tools, what in the world makes you think that would be the case? They ported their chromium browser to every platform from day 1.

<comment><USER32> Two words: Steve Ballmer.

<comment><USER33> The former CEO who retired five years ago?

<comment><USER32> Yes. That's why people are still super nervous whenever Microsoft dares to embrace something new. Past experience.

I'm not saying they're like that today, but that's why some people get all on- edge when Microsoft does things like this.

<comment><USER33> But he's not the CEO any longer and he hasn't been for years. So why is what he did more than a decade ago relevant absent of evidence that he has any direct control of the company today?

<comment><USER34> One CEO doesn't make an evil empire. Bad influence remains. Many evil minions that were forged from Bill Gates and then Steve Ballmer are still in the company. And ontop of this, Microsoft is still a big money-driven Company, so some natural evilness is always there.

Microsoft has become better in the last years, but they still do bad things. So why should people trust the wholeheartly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Seems like Microsoft really needs Rust. They've completely gutted their prized aggressive prerelease testing, and the quality of the software they expose users to has declined dramatically.

<comment><USER36> I heard 70% of their bugs are related to memory handling or off-by-one errors. About 7 severe bugs per year. It can cost them from anywhere between 100k to 10M to fix the bugs and problems caused by these bugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This so reminds me of when I hear of J#, and again when I heard of C#. Will it be called R#?

</comment><comment><USER38> What a huge validation of Rust. Here's to hoping this improves Windows.

<comment><USER39> Lol, if they wanted to make it better they'd adopt some practices and tools from Linux to get common-sense developers interested instead of looking for MS drones that don't know why they do what they do.

<comment><USER40> They did: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/wsl/about](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about)

Linux tools run on Windows 10 just fine. WSL 2 even uses an actual Linux kernel.

<comment><USER39> WSL performance is terrible not to mention WSL 2 is still pre-release with lots of bugs and so is their updated terminal app. I don't even think WSL 2 will support Docker, and it is using a broken VM and Plan 9 to share files so you lose most of the performance benefits of Linux. It appears MS is trying to get people to try Linux on Windows and make it bad so that they get a negative first impression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think it's gonna be something good from the creators of Typescript, the most flexible and object oriented language. Microsoft created too many languages compared to any other company and they really one step ahead in this field.

</comment><comment><USER9> Impossible! Java-heads consider this solved! /s

</comment><comment><USER42> How long before redox will run on my surface?

</comment><comment><USER43> embrace, extend, extinguish once again?

</comment><comment><USER4> For the hating Microsoft crowd, here are the projects where they are also using Rust,

[https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/?s=rust](https://msrc- blog.microsoft.com/?s=rust)

And the talks done about the internal adoption,

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCB19DRw_60](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCB19DRw_60)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o01QmYVluSw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o01QmYVluSw)

And the author from C++/WinRT is now working on Rust/WinRT.

[https://kennykerr.ca/2019/11/05/rust/](https://kennykerr.ca/2019/11/05/rust/)

So lets wait a bit before going to the castle with the pitchforks and torches.

<comment><USER44> As a big proponent of F# it annoys me how much one still needs to fight "but M$" arguments if I point out a thing that F# does well. The same thing seems to happen when discussing Haskell with people who know just enough to recognise the influence MSR employees have on it.

It almost makes me wonder how they/we can work around that sentiment now. Either hope for generational shift to eventually kill it, or perhaps have them make a point of landing projects outside of MS and hoping nobody notices(GitHub R++ or whatever).

Tips on how others approach these discussions with Microsoft haters greatly appreciated!

<comment><USER45> "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me"

I try to be objective as much as possible, but having witnessed almost all of Microsoft's behavior through history, we have been fooled 100s if not 1000s of times. How many times do you let the fox back into the hen house?

The only thing I think when I read recent "Microsoft is so great" comments is that the person is either too young to have any real knowledge, or they have simply not been paying attention for the past few decades.

For anyone who has seen what they have done through all of history, it will take _decades_ to believe they have truly changed.

<comment><USER46> All those people who worked at Microsoft in the 90's and 2000's now work for at hundreds of other companies throughout the industry. And a whole bunch of people who weren't even born in those times now work for Microsoft.

I don't think your opinion is objective at all. It's based on treating a collective as a single mind.

<comment><USER47> Collectives and companies can keep the same culture and habits even if all people who worked there left. Because people come and leave not in the one go - they do it gradually, so every new employee is "indoctrinated" into the company culture, then indoctrinating new people themselves, even if their mentors left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Argh, they couldn't just contribute to the existing project.

<comment><USER49> Microsoft already contributes to the Rust project; for example, Azure sponsors our CI.

<comment><USER39> Lol, they host our data so therefore they contribute. That is some next level Stockholm Syndrome.

<comment><USER50> They're not "hosting the data" they're donating hundreds of CPU cores and infrastructure.

<comment><USER39> So does GitLab and it actually has an open source version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> RScript.

</comment><comment><USER47> EEE strikes again? Why not just use and contribute into the Rust itself? Why creating one more copy? They could have extended C2Rust[1][2] to support C++[3] and C# to ease their migration instead.

[1] [https://c2rust.com](https://c2rust.com)

[2] [https://github.com/immunant/c2rust](https://github.com/immunant/c2rust)

[3] [https://github.com/immunant/c2rust/issues/162](https://github.com/immunant/c2rust/issues/162)

</comment><comment><USER52> Oh no, I bet it's gonna be a C# flavored Rust. None of Rust's terse syntax and functional influence. It's going to be full-blown Java-style OOP with plenty of Wnd handles to be thrown around. Yikes, I certainly hope I am not right.

<comment><USER53> Why not a F# flavored Rust?

> plenty of Wnd handles to be thrown around

That is not really a language issue, is it?</comment></comment>


Dark Souls 3 Character Builder Website. Yup You Read That Right - <AUTHOR> https://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls3 <comment><USER2> Current dev of Mugenmonkey here - didn't expect to see the site posted here of all places. The site has been around since 2012, but I took over in 2014 and added the DS2, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls 3 planners. It's been popular among the enthusiast Dark Souls players for years, but has gotten some more mainstream attention since the DS3 planner was released.

Let me know if you have any questions about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you mean Bloodborne 2.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, that's not out yet, there is a Bloodborne 1 builder on the same site ([https://mugenmonkey.com/bloodborne](https://mugenmonkey.com/bloodborne)).

<comment><USER4> Whoosh.</comment></comment></comment>