The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure - <AUTHOR> https://8020japanese.com/japanese-sentence-structure/ <comment><USER2> Hey all, on a topic related to this: here is another way to get some feeling for the different sentence structure.

I recently finished making English subs for a 45 minute Japanese rock concert video from the 1980's.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNqfX9nm- No](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNqfX9nm-No)

Here I introduce a concept in subtitling whereby a subtitle template with dashed ("\</comment><comment>") blanks appears for an entire English sentence, and the blanks convert to words and phrases as the corresponding concepts appear in the Japanese audio, in that order.

The viewer has a better idea of what is being sung at the moment it is sung, and which words are receiving the emotional emphasis in the song. Also, the revelation of meaning is delayed for the English viewer in the same way. The "kicker" phrase at the end of a verse or a meaning-altering particle (such as an entire sentence negation) isn't prematurely revealed in the translation.

<comment><USER3> "This video contains content from UMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds." :(

<comment><USER2> Somewhat ironically, this problem hinges on an excerpt of a studio album song which plays over the ending credits for less than a minute. Not around the actual video album itself. That's what the content ID system latched on to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article does a great job at presenting a gist of the Japanese sentence structure. Nevertheless, it makes me want to point out that it's not the whole story. If you take into account topics such as modality and conjugation, some of the information you add to a verb is placed _after_ the verb and _cannot_ be freely reordered.

Japanese verbs are "greater" than English verbs in the sense that you conjugate/suffixate a verb to express negation, conjunctions, conditional forms etc, making it longer and longer: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugation)

In contrast, English has a relatively simple set of inflections of verbs. Many of those Japanese verb forms and suffixated long verbs are translated into multi-word phrases. Compare:

Anata wa kyou _nemuru_. (You _sleep_ today.) -- verb is in normal form ("nemuru")

Anata wa kinou _nemurenakatta_. (You _were not able to sleep_ yesterday.) -- verb is in continuative form ("nemuru"→"nemu") + possibility suffix ("reru"→"re") + negation suffix ("nai"→"naka") + past suffix ("ta"→"tta")

<comment><USER5> For Japanese, you learn a handful of rules to conjugate a verb. Then those rules always apply with no exceptions. In English, there are not set rules. Every case is special.

What is the past tense form of 'shake'? 'see'? 'walk'? 'sleep'? 'eat'? 'speak'? 'sit'? 'seek'? 'work'?

There are no rules. You basically have to memorize every word and all the possible ways it can morph.

English possessive: 's or s' or ' or s, depending. Japanese possessive: no

English plural: different for every word. Japanese plural: same as singular, or throw on a -tachi

English past tense: different for every word. Japanese past tense: -mashita for verbs, deshita for adverbs/adjectives

In English, nothing is simple. In Japanese, a multi-word phrase may have more syllables, but at least it will always be the same rule.

<comment><USER6> You're forgetting that there are only 3 (three) verb conjugations in English, of which two are almost always the same. Only a finite number of verbs have irregular conjugations, so you just learn them along with vocabulary. In Japanese, the number of possible conjugations of all irregular verbs (copula, "suru", "kuru") is probably larger than the number of English irregular verbs that are commonly used. In fact, let's count the number of conjugations of "kuru" in my ICHIRAN [1] database:

        ICHIRAN/DICT> (length (get-kana-forms 1547720))
        186

Are English possessives considered difficult by anyone? Not sure what that demonstrates.

Plurals! Oh, that's my favorite topic that I'm working on right now. -tachi is mostly used with people, so can't be used in most context. For inanimate objects you just say the number of them. And that's where the ___counters_ __come in... At which point any sane person gives up learning Japanese for good.

Past tense, isn't that the same as conjugations? Also your rules don't really work. "tanoshii" => "tanoshiideshita"? Pretty sure that's not a word. The correct past tense is "tanoshikatta [desu]".

[1] [https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran](https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran)

<comment><USER3> You're somehow comparing 3 verb conjugations in English vs. 186 for "kuru". Well, I hate to break it to you, but there aren't 186 conjugations for "kuru". There are, exactly, 6. 9 if you count the formal/archaic forms[1]. There may be 186 forms you can build with auxiliaries, but then, you'd have to compare to all the variants you can have in english with may, can, shall, etc.

1\. [https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E8%A1%8C%E5%A4%89%E6...](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E8%A1%8C%E5%A4%89%E6%A0%BC%E6%B4%BB%E7%94%A8)

Edit:

> Past tense, isn't that the same as conjugations? Also your rules don't > really work. "tanoshii" => "tanoshiideshita"? Pretty sure that's not a word. > The correct past tense is "tanoshikatta [desu]".

'tanishiideshita' is the kind of mistake you make when you're not taught that, in japanese, adjectives conjugate. Sadly, a lot of material glosses over that fact.

Similarly, most material for non-natives like to talk about the -masu form, then describe things as "-masu form without masu" (sigh).

Cumulating "knowledge" from such material, you end up with simplified rules like in GP, which work in some cases, but don't in many others.

Then when you dive more into the language, you either encounter new forms and consider them as such, and are crushed under the sheer number of forms, or have to basically start over, deconstruct what you learned and realize that, in fact, it's all much simpler and structured than what you thought, and what made it all more complex is all the learning material for beginners.

In some ways, it's like maths.

Coming back to the 186 forms for "kuru", I'm sure you only end up with that because of that same learning material "limitations". So you probably end up counting "konai", "konakatta", "konakute", "konakereba", and many other forms as forms of "kuru", when, in fact, they are one form of "kuru" with variants of "nai".

The same material will e.g. also tell you about "-kunai" for the negative form of "-i adjectives", but fail to mention that it's actually "-ku+nai", which explains why you will find forms like "-ku ha nai" or "-ku mo nai". I've never seen those explained in textbooks, but that I'm sure it's not pretty.

<comment><USER7> >Also your rules don't really work. "tanoshii" => "tanoshiideshita"?

I learned this quite early on, but I'm still a little confused for exactly when to conjugate desu instead.

<comment><USER8> The main problem beginning Japanese learners often face is that they are taught polite form before plain form. Polite form is a natural extension of plain form, but if you start with that, it's actually quite mind bending to back track to plain form. The secret is to abandon polite form entirely until you are relatively fluent with plain form and then add polite form back in.

For example, "tanoshii" is present/future tense. "tanoshikatta" is past tense. If you want to make it polite, then you just add "desu". Super easy.

While it is grammatically incorrect, it is completely acceptable in normal conversation to do the same with the negation. "tanoshikunai" is the negation. Past tense negation is "tanoshikunakatta" (ye gods, I can't read romaji...). You can do exactly the same thing to make it polite -- just jam "desu" on the end. That's what every child will do. The wrong bit is that "tanoshikunai desu" should really be "tanoshiku arimasen".

For "na" adjectives, it works differently. "suki" is present tense. To make it polite: "suki desu". Past tense is "suki datta". To make it polite "suki deshita". Negation is "suki de wa nai" (seriously, romaji makes me cringe...). Polite negation is "suki de wa arimasen" (though you can very much get away with the mistake of saying "suki de wa nai desu" \-- again, every single child speaks this way).

Past tense negation is "suki de wa nakatta". Polite is "suki de wa arimasen deshita" (but again, the easy way is "suki de wa nakatta desu").

So, why is it like this? The reason is that "i" adjectives were originally verbs that had a different set of inflections/conjugations. Very obscure piece of trivia (that most Japanese people don't even know) is that "ohayou gozaimasu" is actually one of those conjugations -- it's actually "(honourific) o hayai de gozaru" in polite form. The "i" ending mixes with "de" to produce the "ou" ending. Anyway, the point is that you have to inflect it because it is literally a verb that is modifying a noun.

"na" adjectives on the other hand are actually adjectives. They are called "na" adjectives because you have to add "na" when modifying the noun. For example, "suki na hito". The "na" is actually a contraction of "ni aru" \-- because in Japanese you can only modify nouns with verb phrases.

So this is why there is a difference between the negation of "i" adjectives and "na" adjectives. "ku" is the verb combining form of the old style "i" verbs (like "te" is on modern verbs). So "tanoshikunai" is really "tanoshiku nai" \-- you are combining the "tanoshi" verb with the "nai" verb. On the other hand "suki" is actually an adjective, not a verb, so you have to say "suki de wa nai" \-- you can't combine them.

Past tense is exactly the same. In "tanoshikunakatta", it's really combining 2 verbs and conjugating the last one (as per the rules" \-- "tanoshiku nakatta"). If you want to make it polite, the polite past tense of "nai" is "arimasen deshita" (but you can get away with "nakatta desu" in virtually every situation).

With "na" adjectives -- "suki de wa nakatta", we've conjugated the only verb. Again to make it polite you can say "suki de wa arimasen deshita" (or "suki de wa nakatta desu" if you want to sound like an uneducated bumpkin like me).

Hope this helps! Avoid polite form until you can handle plain form and it's almost all completely logical ;-)

Edit: Fix past tense in the examples of incorrect, but acceptable polite forms.

<comment><USER3> > The wrong bit is that "tanoshikunai desu" should really be "tanoshiku > arimasen".

While it should technically be -ku arimasen, it's actually rarely used, and -kunai desu is more "mainstream".

> Past tense is "suki datta". To make it polite "suki deshita". Negation is > "suki de wa nai" (seriously, romaji makes me cringe...). Polite negation is > "suki de wa arimasen"

Trivia: all these forms are really variations of "suki de aru". "datta" comes from "de atta", "de ha nai" is really "de nai" with a "ha" for emphasis. "de ha arimasen" is really "de aru", with the "ha" for emphasis, and "aru" conjugated with the "masu" auxiliary at the negative form.

> Very obscure piece of trivia (that most Japanese people don't even know) is > that "ohayou gozaimasu" is actually one of those conjugations -- it's > actually "(honourific) o hayai de gozaru" in polite form. The "i" ending > mixes with "de" to produce the "ou" ending.

Technically speaking, the -i and the de are not combining at all. The -u form (ウ音便) comes from the -ku form (連用形), where the k is removed. Then the preceding sound also changes (like in arigataku -> arigatou ; oishiku -> oishuu, etc.). The typical forms used in keigo are -u gozaimasu and -u zonjimasu (where there is no "de" to combine in the latter ;) )

I think the Japanese learn the ウ音便 in 国語 or 古文, so I don't think it's some obscure trivia that few people know. In fact, you can hear it in e.g. 時代劇 dramas.

Also, the form is pretty common in Kansai dialect (without gozaimasu). In fact, wikipedia claims[1] it comes from there and the gozaimasu was added in Kantou.

1\. [https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9F%B3%E4%BE%BF#.E5.BD.A2.E...](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9F%B3%E4%BE%BF#.E5.BD.A2.E5.AE.B9.E8.A9.9E.E3.81.AE.E9.80.A3.E7.94.A8.E5.BD.A2)

<comment><USER8> Thank you for that. That makes a lot more sense. I admit my source for the combining was 言葉マン on NHK and I may have misunderstood some things :-).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I learned Japanese very much the same way I learn programming languages and found it to be very easy to learn spoken Japanese.

As far as languages go, Japanese is structured a lot like a programming language. If you learn five or six "bunpo" or grammar rules, you can go a very long ways. Then, to improve, just add rules to your mastery.

When I first learn any programming language I start with basics: variable binding/assignment, types, conditionals, looping, etc. Japanese fits very nicely into the same learning method.

Does a language have if/then? is it 'if (<expression>) { expression }'? Or 'if <expression> then <expression> end if'? Is there an 'unless' form? What about 'else'?

For Japanese, it's <expression> naraba <expression>. That's it. Unless? <expression> nakeriba <expression>.

How about while? <expression> nagara <expression>

For people who can learn the gist of a programming language in a week, you could learn the gist of Japanese in a week or two. That doesn't mean you would be fluent. You'd still need to learn thousands of vocabulary words. But the basic mechanics can be mastered in days or weeks. More mechanics can be layered as needed.

<comment><USER9> _" For Japanese, it's <expression> naraba <expression>. That's it. Unless? <expression> nakeriba <expression>."_

There are actually a number of ways to say "if" in japanese, and the one you mention can only be used in certain contexts.

People might get your gist if you use the conditional tense for everything, but you'll be wrong a lot. The -tara/nara grammar is at least as commonly used, if not more so.

I bring this up to illustrate only that the "programming language" metaphor doesn't go very far. Japanese, like any human language, is loaded with weird, illogical exceptions.

<comment><USER5> What? You mean there's a ternary operator?

I bring this up to illustrate that the metaphor isn't perfect, but it has some legs. I meant that BNF diagrams would be easier to create and understand for Japanese than for English.

You are right that there are more forms for saying 'if'.

Then again, I've seen programmers who spell 'if' 'f-o-r'.

<comment><USER9> No, I mean that there are at least a half a dozen different ways to express "if", and they all have specific semantic uses. It is way, way more complicated than syntax.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. This [0] and the subsequent lessons go onto explain that if clauses change depending on whether something is a fact, whether it is an invitation, whether it is volitional, etc.

I've been studying Japanese for years and I am at a basic intermediate level. I still find grammar hard to read, and even harder to produce naturally. I may just be particularly thick but I think saying "you can master Japanese grammar in a matter of weeks" is pretty misleading.

[0] [http://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/japanese- conditional...](http://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/japanese-conditional- form-to.html)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, anyone who suggests that is either exaggerating, or doesn't know as much as they think they do.

Japanese grammar is simpler than English in some ways, harder in others. Overall though, it's really, really hard.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, all things considered, if you have to learn either language from scratch from a native language that has no link[1] whatsoever to it, I think English is harder than Japanese.

1\. by which I mean, in the case of English, for example, if your native language is not french, german, etc.

In fact, I think English is harder to learn for Japanese native speakers than Japanese for English native speakers.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I can't really speculate. It seems to me that the #1 biggest obstacle for Japanese speakers of English is getting past the Japanese education system, and actually _speaking_. Beyond that, I don't know.

But as a general principle, I believe that learning any new language is really, really hard. The people who claim to master languages in a few weeks are usually full of it (and by "usually", I mean "essentially always".)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One minor quibble with the author's example sentences: They use "watashi wa hito desu" to mean "I am a person."

I'm not a native Japanese speaker, but I'm pretty sure that "hito" is only used to refer to other people, never to oneself (source: the excellent "Nihongo Notes" series by the Mizutanis).

Maybe _watashi ha ningen desu_ 私は人間です (I am a human) would be a better example that still illustrates the grammar pattern.

</comment><comment><USER12> So I am sitting in Ebisu in Tokyo right now. I spend about 3-4 months a year here and have for about 8 years. My understanding of spoken Japanese is pretty decent. However it is by pure memorization over time. This just sorted a whole bunch of things out in my head as to the why. Very good stuff. Thank you.

<comment><USER13> Oh cool. I'm in Koenji.

If you would like more of this kind of thing, I highly recommend Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar. It's a lot like OP's article, but much more thorough, organized by topic, and provides auxillary resources so you can dig in as much as you please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love how precise and detailed this article is written. If only more documentation were like this.

It was always my assumption that grammar is the most important thing to learn about a language. Vocabulary accumulates almost automatically over time, with practise (and a dictionary). Interesting to see how that holds in this case.

<comment><USER15> > It was always my assumption that grammar is the most important thing to > learn about a language

I think it depends on what your goals are. If you just want to communicate, vocabulary is the most important thing to get started, since even with poor grammar people can infer what you mean (gestures help too!). I've seen too many people here in Japan who have crammed English grammar all their school years but are paralyzed when trying to communicate because they're just focused on getting the grammar right.

<comment><USER5> I think you should learn a handful of grammar rules right up front.

Obviously, * Desu/deshita/de arimasen/de arimasen deshita * Masu/masen/mashita/masen deshita

Then add a few more * if * while * want to <verb> * passive * honorific * etc.

You can learn one a week or one a month. There aren't very many to learn. But having just four or five up your sleeve (in addition to verb conjugation) can really improve your comfort.

<comment><USER15> Absolutely! You're not going to get anywhere in any language with _only_ either grammar or vocabulary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone actually recommend the book from which the article is taken? I also tried to read the wa v. ga blog post on the site to get a further sense of the author's approach, but the server returns an out of memory error (from a blog post?!).

I've been in Tokyo now 18 months, took private lessons twice costing about $2,000, and feel I learned 10 words. That's $200/word. I joke with people I stopped taking lessons because learning Kanji would bankrupt me. Japanese just doesn't stick in my older and very Western brain. It doesn't help that my office does business in English and one can get by in Tokyo with minimal Japanese and a lot of pointing and gesturing. The glacial progress becomes discouraging.

I tried Rosetta Stone. It takes the same phrasebook approach as the first textbook I was given, Nihongo Fun & Easy, which was neither. The textbook at least had short sidebar discussions of grammar and somewhat useful phrases. I had no idea where I'd get to use the phrase "The children are swimming," that Rosetta offers.

The 8020 article was the first discussion of particles that actually made sense. When I'd asked teachers about particles before the answer was usually something like "Don't worry about that yet, just memorize the phrases." If the remainder of the book is in the same vein I'd pay twice the asking price. I flipped through parts of Nihongo Fun & Easy after reading this article and it suddenly made much more sense. I wasn't staring at a list of phrases I was supposed to memorize and slowly reverse engineer the language, but could deconstruct the basic sentences.

It's much easier for me to learn construction, and use the break down of other sentences to construct my own, even if the rules fail sometimes and lead me to construct sentences no native speaker would utter. That's the other 80% of language idiosyncrasies that takes time.

I don't expect to be fluent in Japanese any time soon, however moving past "sumimasen kore onegeihshimasu" while pointing at a menu item would be awesome.

<comment><USER17> I really recommend the Japanese For Busy People books, I learned tons from them quickly. They start off very basic (obviously), but they explain the grammar in a really good way, and progress into more advanced topics as you go along. Make sure to get the kana versions, not romaji!

For learning Kanji, the most efficient option I've found is Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig. It's a bit of a long-term investment, in that it takes a while for them to really pay off (you don't learn the readings/sounds until book two, the first one is completely focused on the meaning and writing of the characters), but in the long run I think it's a much better option than for example the books trying to teach you the characters by showing you their similarity to the things the represent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This article resembles two different ways of designing protocols. In tcp [0], information are encoded in position, e.g. the first 16 bits are for source port and the next 16 bits are for dst ports. While in, say, FIX [1], information are encoding be delimiters and position doesn't matter.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER19> Using particles in this way almost sounds like using flags to specify parameters when calling a function. This allows them to be placed in any order. A Powershell-like example:

      Construct-Sentence -subject Taro -object Noriko -verb to_see -time Past
      > "Taro saw Noriko."

      Construct-Sentence -object Noriko -time Past -verb to_see -subject Taro
      > "Taro saw Noriko."

The original sentence is "Tarō wa Noriko wo mimashita." And "masu" appears to be the root verb "to see".

      Construct-Sentence -wa Taro -wo Noriko -verb masu -time Past
      > "Tarō wa Noriko wo mimashita."

Something more Bash-like:

      csent wa:Taro wo:Noriko masu -past_affirmative
      # "Tarō wa Noriko wo mimashita."

Meanwhile, subject-object-verb (SVO) and similar patterns depend on the order of inputs:

      Construct-Sentence Taro Norkio to_see Past
      > "Taro saw Noriko"

      Construct-Sentence Norkio Taro to_see Past
      > "Noriko saw Taro"

This allows for invalid outputs:

      Construct-Sentence Taro to_see Norkio Past
      > "Taro Noriko'ed see"

<comment><USER20> I've made the analogy of function calls before, it's a pretty cool way to think about it. But I think your example is slightly off. The verb is the head of the phrase, and would thus be the function (or command) itself:

        miru --topic=Taro --object=Noriko # Taro sees Noriko

This uses "miru", the plain non-past form of "to see". Conjugating the verb is a little trickier to translate, but I think it would be analogous to higher- order functions, functions that modify the verb to create a new verb. Using a Python-like syntax:

        formal(past(miru))(topic="Taro", object="Noriko")
        # Taro wa Noriko wo mimashita

I'm trying to think of a way to include relative clauses in this analogy, but it's a little harder. A relative clause is of the form "[verb-phrase] [noun]", e.g. "doresu wo kiru Noriko" (Noriko who wears a dress). Maybe we could use positional arguments for this:

        formal(past(miru))(topic="Taro", object=kiru(object="doresu", "Noriko"))
        # Taro wa doresu wo kiru Noriko wo mimashita ??

EDIT: or maybe currying would be a nice way to solve this. So each verb would be a function that takes arguments, and returns a new function that takes a noun to apply that verb to:

        formal(past(miru))(topic="Taro", object=kiru(object="doresu")("Noriko"))
        # Taro wa doresu wo kiru Noriko wo mimashita

<comment><USER19> Could this situation be described by nesting sentences?

      "Taro saw (Noriko wears a dress)."

To extend your example:

      formal(past(miru))(topic="Taro", object="Noriko")
      "Taro saw Noriko."

      formal(present(kiru))(topic="Noriko", object="doresu")
      "Noriko wears a dress."

Nested:

      formal(past(miru))(topic="Taro", object=(formal(present(kiru))(topic="Noriko", object="doresu")) )

      "Taro saw (Noriko wears a dress)."
      "Taro saw Noriko wear a dress."

      "Taro wa (doresu wo kiru Noriko wa(?)) wo mimashita"
      "Taro wa doresu wo kiru Noriko wo mimashita"

Does that make sense?

*Please help correct any errors, as I have never formally studied the Japanese language.

<comment><USER20> It wouldn't type-check, since `object` is expected to be a noun and not a verb. :)

<comment><USER19> It's a difficulty inherent in describing one unfamiliar language with another unfamiliar language. :)

This could work in Powershell. The function would have to be written to expect nested recursive calls, to remove the omitted particle.

      Construct-Sentence -verb miru -Formal -Past -Topic Taro -Object (
      Construct-Sentence -verb kiru -Formal -Present -Topic Noriko -Object doresu
      )

      "Taro saw (Noriko wears a dress)."
      "Taro saw Noriko wear a dress."

      "Taro wa (doresu wo kiru Noriko wa(?)) wo mimashita"
      "Taro wa doresu wo kiru Noriko wo mimashita"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Filipino is really similar in terms of the use of particles/markers! For example, to say: "The cat is eating the fish", we say: "Kumakain ng isda ang pusa". The verb (is eating, kumakain) always comes first. The subject (cat, pusa) is identified by the "ang" marker, while the object (fish, isda) is identified by the "ng" marker. We could also say "Kumakain ang pusa ng isda", although that's rarely used.

The "-um-" affix in "kumakain" makes the verb active ("is eating"). If we instead used the "-in-" affix (as in "kinakain"), it would make the verb passive ("is being eaten by"). So we could alternatively say: "Kinakain ng pusa ang isda" to mean: "The fish is being eaten by the cat".

</comment><comment><USER22> I quite like the headlining diagram. It's a simplified view that shows the schematic approach of the languages - Japanese relies on case particles rather than ordering (unlike English). Of course, there's a lot of complexity that goes on under the hood when you start to figure out the appropriate verb conjugations to use (which aren't shown in the figure).

Small side comment, if anyone's learning Japanese and wants to ask or answer questions about it, you're welcome to join a little Discord chat group (including native speakers and advanced learners) at [https://discord.gg/6sjr3UY](https://discord.gg/6sjr3UY)

</comment><comment><USER6> Yeah it's "logical", except in casual language the rules are broken all the time. A lot of things can follow the verb.

The article doesn't mention subclauses at all, but it's where things become hairy. There's particle "ga" which is similar to "wa" except it works as a subject of subclause, except sometimes it means "but". There are dozens of ways to incorporate subclauses into main sentence, using different particles. It's very common for the entire sentence to be a subclause ([something] no/n desu).

</comment><comment><USER23> Interestingly, many Indic [2] languages follow similar verb-centric grammars. In the canonical Vyakarana tradition (of Panini), sentences are seen as revolving around the verb [1].

The "noun-cases" or कारक (karaka) are generally equivalent to the "particles" in Japanese. The genitive (eqv. の) is not a karaka, since it has no relation to the verb. Of course, since there is technically no syntactic difference between adjectives and nouns in Sanskrit, the semantics of the genitive in particular can be very undeterministic. This is not the case in others though.

I wish there were more studies on how Indic traditions affected East/SE Asia [3]. Sadly, most academics/people here don't believe there exists a world outside N. America & W.Europe (often no India either!).

[1] There is a competing tradition of semantics called "Nyaya" where sentences are seen to be Noun-centric. These discourses are generally not easily accessible.

[2] Dividing the languages based on presence/absence of noun inflections would appear not to have much discriminative power to claim anything about historical origins. Historical Linguistics, I believe, is mostly a politicized pseudoscience.

[3] This documentary highlights the kind of things I mean.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WaenzbSJwk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WaenzbSJwk)

It is also fascinating to look at the Thai/Khmer scripts and realize these are related to current day Telugu/Kannada scripts.

<comment><USER24> Since you brought up Sanskrit and topic of discussion is sentence structure I will provide one more data point. Because Sanskrit is a highly inflected language there is a lot of flexibility in sentence structure in Sanskrit. In fact one can put the words in pretty much any order in a Sanskrit sentence. This flexibility comes at a very high price though - there are tens of ways in which a noun can transform and theoretically thousands of ways in which a verb can transform. The good thing though is that Panini and later grammarians gave us rules to go by so it is not as bad as it sounds.

<comment><USER25> > In fact one can put the words in pretty much any order in a Sanskrit > sentence.

But will all of those variants still be considered the "same" sentence? I'm asking because it's popular to make the same claim about Hungarian, but it's not really true. You can switch things around a lot and still get fully grammatical sentences that all relate to the same event. But due to Hungarian's topic/focus structure, the actual meanings expressed by the variants are so different that Hungarian speakers wouldn't consider them "the same sentence expressed a bit differently". Some examples: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_grammar#Emphasis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_grammar#Emphasis)

In contrast, I believe Latin is _really_ liberal in its sentence structure, especially in poetry.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, and reading Latin is complicated by the fact that Latin authors like to put the adjective and its noun on oppposite ends of a phrase and then stuff other things in between. So, instead of "the yellow car in my driveway that belongs to my brother" they'll say "the yellow in my driveway that belongs to my brother car". Because an adjective must match its noun in number, gender and case, the authors think of the noun and adjective as holding the phrase together. And this is only the beginning: in poetry there are even fewer patterns because the words are generally ordered to fit the meter: the only thing you can really count on is that certain particles must be the second word in a sentence (important because the manuscripts didn't have punctuation) and that a preposition always precedes its object.

<comment><USER24> Pretty much everything you said about Latin holds for Sanskrit too. Sanskrit has additional complication 'Sandhi' \- euphonic combination [1]. There are many rules which are used to combine words depending on the ending sound of the first word and the beginning sound of the second. And you can keep on combining words as long as the rules are applicable. So you can get very long words without a break. Newbies often struggle with this.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm wondering if the main factor is one's ability to learn a new language - itself affected by many factors such as age, for example?

I've been married to a native Japanese for going on 19 years now.

I have tried to learn the language. I have lived in Japan for 6 years, hoping that full immersion would help. I even embarked in the Kumon Japanese course whilst in Japan, from beginner level to more advanced. I have piles and piles of the work books cluttering my home.

I ended up being able to read katakana, hiragana, and learned some 250 Kanji.

What I didn't end up managing was being able to have decent conversation in Japanese. Sure, I could ask for a beer, directions, talk about the weather, but that was about it. I had reached some plateau and could go no further.

In the end I gave up. It was basically something I couldn't do. I tried many different ways of learning, found none which could not prevent my sheer frustration at not being able to take the knowledge in.

Are some people simply 'wired' to learn language more than others? Is there an age limit, for example? Was it my low tolerance for frustration? Was it my perfectionist tendencies? Probably a 'yes' to most of those.

But I stopped after more than a decade of trying.

</comment><comment><USER5> Remember those English diagramming classes everyone hated? I'm not very familiar with the education system in Japan, but I doubt they have diagramming classes. In Japanese, the diagramming is built into the language. You tag the subject, the direct object, the indirect object, etc. Everything gets markup.

Which part of the sentence is the direct object? Uh... the part with the direct object tag hanging off it? Correct!

Have you ever heard a programming language described as "designed for teaching"? Japanese is a language designed to be as simple as possible to learn.

Coming from English, the idea that a natural language could actually be designed was a shock to me. I thought they just evolved sloppily and haphazardly. Well, Japanese is proof that it doesn't have to be that way. Clear rules and not too many of them. No exceptions. Rigidly consistent. It's like a language created in a lab that never got dirtied up by real world usage. Except, oh wait, it's a real language used by millions of people every day.

<comment><USER28> I never had the pleasure of taking them myself, butI'm pretty sure Japanese grammar classes are not so fun as you imagine.

Putting aside that the norm in Japanese school is rote memorization and pedantic attention to details (e.g. you'd memorize dates of historical events), the Japanese grammar that is taught in class is traditional Japanese grammar. It's pretty streamlined compared to the abomination that is medieval Latin grammar (which remains the basis for English grammar taught in class), but it still targets Classical Japanese and uses rather obscure terms where clear diagrams would suffice.

I'll have to ask, but I think that instead of diagrams, Japanese students mainly need to memorize the difference between Izenkei, Mizenkei, Renyoukei, Rentaikei and Shuushikei, even though the last one is irrelevant for modern Japanese.

And of course Japanese wasn't "designed" any more than English was. There are dialects with widely varying grammar and vocabulary, and there some aspects which are very hard to learn even if you ignore the writing system (e.g. the proper use of Wa vs Ga, the proper use of emphatic sentence endings like no/n'da or yo). Inflection is way more regular than English, and syntax is pretty streamlined, which is a boon.

<comment><USER5> Wa/Ga aren't that hard. Mostly just subject vs topic. Just like objective and subjective isn't that hard in English. Of course, most Americans can't master objective/subjective.

The trick for wa/ga is often just to remember that subjects are often implied in Japanese and missing from the actual text/speech. So, "Nekko ga suki desu" because the "watakushi wa" was implied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The article says:

> What this means is that the sentences, "This is a car", and, "This is the > car", would both be, 「これは車です」. There is no differentiation.

This is not always true. The latter could be 「これが車です」. The は and が particles are very similar but are still different. Fully grasping this small difference is one of the biggest problems Japanese learners encounter when studying grammar.

Closer to the beginning, the article also mentions:

> The topic of a Japanese sentence is very similar to what other languages > refer to as the subject. The subject of a sentence is the person or thing > that does the action described by the main verb in the sentence. These are, > in fact, slightly different concepts, but for now, we will treat them as > being the same so as to keep things simple.

It turns out that は marks the topic and が marks the subject. I feel that many times the confusion between は and が in Japanese learners happens because the learning material tries to make this simplification in the beginning. When it's time to learn が, it's hard to retrain the brain.

<comment><USER30> This isn't quite true.

は has two distinct usages. One is to mark the topic of the sentence. The other is to mark the subject of the sentence with a contrastive connotation.

<comment><USER31> And what does 'contrastive connotation' mean?

<comment><USER3> See the examples on [http://www.jgram.org/pages/viewOne.php?tagE=ha-2](http://www.jgram.org/pages/viewOne.php?tagE=ha-2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Anyone that would benefit from this style of learning (rapid, focused on structure and rules) may actually be hurt by the rush to cover many topics without treating any precisely. I'm by no means an expert but here are some issues in just the first section.

* example that glosses over the difference between a topic and a subject is frustrating because, in fact, the similarity is fairly superficial.

* there is no "a", "an", or "the" in Japanese, however to specify "this is the car" (implying that it is in answer to some question about which car) one would say これが車です。Using the が particle instead of は.

I'm always on the lookout for useful resources. So far, Tae Kim's guide [1] has been the best I've found. Kim doesn't assume much about the reader's pre- existing knowledge yet he is able to remain succinct.

[1] [http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar](http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar)

</comment><comment><USER33> Cached link:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:R3iCWi...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:R3iCWiY9nHgJ:https://8020japanese.com/japanese- sentence-structure/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I have to enter a caveat here though. Spoken Japanese is a little bit different, and in some cases, arguments will follow the verb. It's pretty rare, but I did hear things like "Dou sureba ii ore" or "nani yatteru omae"?

This is VERY rough and informal though, and not Japan being very polite, it's not something that I'd hear everyday. Maybe on TV or from really close friends, and even then I'm not sure if everyone would say that.

But it just goes to show that natural languages are very complex creatures, and even the tidiest rules have exceptions sometimes.

<comment><USER34> I wouldn't describe that pattern as incredibly rough or even particularly informal. It's common to at the subject after the sentence when speaking quickly. You use it when you think the listener may have to quite picked up what you were saying etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Something I like about the whole "verb at the end of the sentence" thing is that you can totally flip over the meaning of what you're saying, right at the end. In English, you can achieve the same effect with awkward forms (like "not" at the end of the sentence), but in Japanese, it's just the natural form.

Try to imagine the kind of snarks you could do if you could put things like "I don't reckon" on hold until the end of the sentence.

Sadly (ironically?), that tends not to be the kind of language subtlety/humor the Japanese go for.

<comment><USER35> _> Try to imagine the kind of snarks you could do if you could put things like "I don't reckon" on hold until the end of the sentence. Sadly (ironically?), that tends not to be the kind of language subtlety/humor the Japanese go for._

If that's true, I think it might be more that such kind of humor is seen as too basic, or childish, and not particularly subtle for adults. Akin to simple puns or "ghost jokes" and the like in English (What do ghosts like for dessert? I Scream!) that kids — or foreigners — may enjoy, but native speakers don't really count as witty.

You can still see what you're talking about in some of their comedy skits, though: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nW4jhqPbd0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nW4jhqPbd0)

<comment><USER26> As much as people claim to despise puns, the major English authors show very little reluctance to use them: they are everywhere in Shakespeare, for example, and you can also find them in more recent authors like TS Eliot (for example, in Ash Wednesday, he puns on dissembled/disassembled)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Beginner question: In casual, spoken Japanese, I've been taught that I can drop the particles (including pronouns). Hence "watashi wa tabemasu" can be colloquially shortened to "tabemasu".

Thanks to this article, I've come to understand particles much better and why they're important, but does it change in casual spoken Japanese? Are some particles okay to drop whereas others are kept? Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER37> > I can drop the particles (including pronouns)

Sure. "piza wo taberu?" can be "piza taberu?" and that's fine, even normal.

> (including pronouns)

This is different and I think there are a few misconceptions bundled up in this assumption.

1\. Particles don't exist on their own; they're permanently linked to the word that precedes them; if you've ever studied a Romance language, you can think of them as a way of declining nouns.

So "watashi wa" is the nominative, "watashi wo" is the accusative.

2\. Pronoun dropping is done in the sense that the pronoun is not essential to the sentence and can be inferred from context.

For example, if you and your friend are eating and you ask "motto taberu [gonna eat more?]," nobody's going to be confused about whether the subject of that sentence is "watashi wa" or "anata wa."

It happens in English, too, but people overthink it a lot when presented with it consciously in Japanese.

<comment><USER36> Thanks. Sorry for the confusion; I have a decent understanding of when pronouns can be dropped, but my question was moreso about when particles can be dropped. For instance, from the linked article, this sentence:

Tarō wa Noriko wo toshokan de mimashita.

In casual spoken Japanese, can any of these particles (wa, wo, de) be dropped?

<comment><USER33> None in that case. I don't know of any general rules for when particles can be dropped, but sitting here thinking of examples, it's usually done for simple, direct sentences where the particle would be tying together two words whose relationship is already obvious:

> eiga miru?

> ano hon, suki?

> ame futte kita.

> okaasan iru?

And so on. But I don't think that's a rule you can work backwards from, it just describes all the cases that occur to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> A interesting property of Japanese is that a sentence is also a subordinate clause. For example

Tarou wa Noriko wo toshokan de mimashita. (Tarou saw Noriko at the library.)

Tarou wa Noriko wo mimashita. (Tarou saw Noriko.)

Tarou wa Noriko wo mimashita toshokan (The library where Tarou saw Noriko)

Generally "<sentence> <noun>" means "the <noun> such that <noun> <particle> <sentence> is true for some choice of <particle>".

<comment><USER39> Your third example isn't valid. It needs a bit of tweak.

Tarou ga Noriko wo mita toshokan

The particle "ga" and "wa" both introduce a topic. But in a phrase to explain a noun, we use "ga" exclusively. Your main point still holds, in a sense that "Tarou ga Noriko wo mita" is a valid sentence. But to be precise, "mita" in those two sentences are different conjugated forms; it just happens that two conjugated forms are the same in the verb "miru" (to see).

<comment><USER40> > The particle "ga" and "wa" both introduce a topic

Forgive me for saying this, since you seem to be a native speaker, but don't you mean that they both introduce the _subject_ , not topic (using 'topic' as a linguistic term)?

"Wa" would be the topicalising subject marker, denoting known information:

Tanaka wa nihon ni itta.

Tanaka went to Japan. -> As for Tanaka, he went to Japan. Tanaka = known information (i.e. Tanaka is familiar to the listener)

"Ga", while also a subject marker could denote/introduce new information:

Tanaka ga nihon ni itta.

Tanaka went to Japan. -> e.g. It was Tanaka who went to Japan.

Tanaka = new information (e.g. the listener is did not not Tanaka was the one going to Japan.)

(Note: I realise there are other constructions for my interpretation of the ga-sentence)

<comment><USER39> My knowledge of Japanese grammar is in Japanese, so I'm not certain about the English term of 主語, to be honest. We use the same term to describe 'subject' in English grammar. I used 'topic' just because the original article used it.

Your explanation of 'ga'/'wa' is spot on as far as I can understand as a layman of native speaker with standard Japanese grammar education in Japan but no advanced linguistic degree.

I'd say that, because 'wa' emphasizes the introduced subject as the center of interest, it isn't used in the subordinate clause.

Tanaka ga nihon ni itta hi. (The day Tanaka went to Japan) ; ok - the interest is on 'hi'

Tanaka wa nihon ni itta hi. ; invalid

<comment><USER40> Thanks for your reply. I believe 主語 covers both subject and topic. Since an English sentence such as "John loves Mary." can be understood as e.g. "It is John (not James) who loves Mary." or "John loves Mary (not Lisa)", it might have several formal representations in Japanese via e.g. the use of wa/ga.

Also, see user gizmo686's excellent explanation for one approach below.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I feel like this is being shilled too much. I see it everywhere on facebook, reddit japan topics and general.

Of course, generally speaking I am learning Japanese.

</comment><comment><USER42> Learning Japanese, it's been hard to realize that the most important part of a sentence is always at the end.

</comment><comment><USER43> Japanese structure is very reminiscent of Forth.

<comment><USER44> so ? How

<comment><USER43> Subject, object, etc -- all of the "arguments" \-- come before the verb.

<comment><USER44> Hey, it was a joke - though maybe not a good one, Forth-syntax-wise. Just something I quickly came up with. I actually know Forth a bit. Had played around with it some earlier.

<comment><USER43> Oh, I see. Sorry. Dense very I was being. :-)

<comment><USER44> Anyway, good joke or not, I'm glad I made it, because it made me look at your profile and then your blog. Checking out a few of the articles, like Why Lisp? and Lisping at JPL, looks interesting ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> For anyone interested in learning the logical rules that dictate the more confusing parts of Japanese grammar (which were, as others have pointed out, dramatically over-simplified in this article), this is a decent starting point: [https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/kobun-reading- introduction/](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/kobun-reading-introduction/)

I've personally been happy with the following books as well: Bungo Manual: Selected Reference Materials for Students of Classical Japanese Classical Japanese Reader and Essential Dictionary Classical Japanese: A Grammar

Many of the confusing rules we have today (i-adjectives vs na-adjectives, different verb conjugation classes, etc.) are subsets of much larger rule-sets from early in the language's written history. Bound particles are probably the most confusing of these rules, which were too convoluted to survive over time, but still inform common usage patterns today.

The Japanese language (particularly its written form) is very young, so it's actually feasible to gain an in-depth understanding of the language's entire history without spending a decade on a doctorate.</comment>


Fart Blamed for Causing a Fire During Surgery at a Tokyo Hospital - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/fart-blamed-for-causing-a-fire-during-surgery-at-a-toky-1788414929 <comment><USER2> The surgeon must have been a 'Quack'.</comment>


Show HN: Google Calendar Appointment Scheduling - <AUTHOR> https://www.bespeak.io/

<comment><USER2> No freaking way this is worth $10/mo, especially when creating your own by embedding your Google Calendar in a web page (or in the case of my example, a Google Site page) and sharing the link is free.

[https://sites.google.com/site/elliottally/](https://sites.google.com/site/elliottally/)

I've included a link to that in my email signature for the last couple of years to solve specifically this problem and it works great. It's not particularly beautiful, but it solved the problem. There are a plethora of other apps providing the same service (here's one: [http://www.scheduleonce.com/pricing](http://www.scheduleonce.com/pricing)), so you're going to have to differentiate yourself somehow.

You really need a free tier.

<comment><USER3> _No freaking way this is worth $10 /mo, especially when creating your own by embedding your Google Calendar in a web page (or in the case of my example, a Google Site page) and sharing the link is free._

The link you provided doesn't accomplish the same thing as their product.

Your link is just a read-only view of your calendar (unless I've missed something). The real utility comes when people can actually schedule something on your calendar without your help.

I've been wishing for exactly this recently, and am excited to try the app.

Also, since I'd use this for work (saving me real time) on a company credit card, $10/month is without question a completely negligible amount.

In summary: I disagree with everything you've said. :)

<comment><USER4> > The real utility comes when people can actually schedule something on your > calendar without your help.

Sounds like a nightmare.

<comment><USER2> No kidding. Besides that, the people scheduling the appointment will probably want to schedule it from their calendar, not some third party app. The most valuable use case is determining when someone is available, not creating the appointment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is my first product release. The whole thing took about a week to design, develop, and release. I'd love some feedback.

<comment><USER5> I'd have liked to see some sort of screenshot tour (or a product video as there is presumably a real-time component) before signing in - there's very little detail available, which might be good for conversion, but it meant I didn't click the button.

(When I did, I was given a "sign in with Google" chooser - did you consider telling people what is going to happen before they do that? It might seem obvious, but it might put people off too.)

Also, have you considered per-domain pricing? With the demise of Appointment Slots, this could be something you could sell to a Google Apps for Business customer for all their users.

<comment><AUTHOR> My first priority is working on a better marketing site, which means a product tour; I realize this is lacking.

Per-domain pricing seems very interesting, I will look in to it, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had this idea in my mind as well.

Could you support a feature that hides all information on the calendar except times? I don't want my appointment makers to know my life story.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not clear from the marketing materials, but it does do this currently. That is something I should change.

You can see an example here: [https://www.bespeak.io/book/demo](https://www.bespeak.io/book/demo)

<comment><USER5> As a Google Calendar user, I'm used to being able to drag down on a time period to book an event, and then enter event details. I can't do that on your demo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes but we found that the calendar owner want's to restrict the length of appointment, rather than let the contact select an arbitrary length.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That seems really interesting, however a working demo would be great, especially because you are asking the credit card before anything else (not saying it's bad, just that I'm not comfortable with giving my payment information after one screenshot only)

</comment><comment><USER8> As another commenter noted, your site doesn't really give much away, I too would need to see screenshots or a product video.

Also when I click on the Pricing link at the top it's not immediately obvious I just jumped past your product feature blurb to a #anchor. It says "All this for only $10 a month. Checkmate." and I thought, "All what?", then realised I needed to scroll up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have added a smooth scroll effect that should fix this, thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have this pain point. I was hoping for API docs and a live chat or contact us section...

In my case, I'd like to allow customer service candidates who have passed initial skills test screeners to be prompted to select a primary and secondary scheduling slot and have those selections pushed to gcal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we could help you with that, there is nothing preventing you from embedding your booking page in an iframe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this just a replacement for the gap left when Tungle.Me was bought by blackberry? [http://www.crunchbase.com/company/tungle](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/tungle) Am I missing a key difference?

</comment><comment><USER6> The confirmation email went to Junk w/ outlook.

Just letting you know.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks great! Simple, clean, and highly usable.

</comment><comment><USER12> Keep getting 500 after a few tries.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I see that. I will fix that asap.

BTW it is because your email is > 30 characters long.

edit: fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Passive income hack...rising</comment>


U.S. Women Are Dying Younger Than Their Mothers, and No One Knows Why - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/us-women-are-dying-younger-than-their-mothers-and-no-one-knows-why/280259/ <comment><USER2> Why people say "obese" they either mean the everyday use of the word "really fat", or they mean (as here) the formal definition of "BMI > 30". There are problems with BMI - we hear about the trained athlete with high muscle mass and very little body fat who has a BMI of 38. Luckily most people are nothing like that trained athlete so BMI is handy for this kind of mass population stuff.

As Mikeb85 says, the map posted by elwell starts at 13.7%, and that lowest band goes up to nearly a quarter of the population at 23.3%!

NHBLI have a nice chart here. [http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/bmi_tbl.htm](http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/bmi_tbl.htm)

The average American man is 69 inches tall. He'd have to be 203 pounds to have a BMI of 30. The average American woman is 64 inches. She'd weigh 174 pounds.

Fat shaming is bad, and stupid, and shouldn't be tolerated. But there is a problem with people's shifting perceptions of what "fat" and "obese" mean. People who would have been called fat are now called "shapely" or "curvy".

People do not recognise obesity any more.

<comment><USER3> >fat shaming is bad, and stupid

No, it's not. Obesity is unhealthy and usually the result of bad habits. All the ex-fatties I know think this "fat acceptance" crusade is bad and stupid.

<comment><USER4> Fat shaming actually increases risk of becoming or staying obese. So although obesity is unhealthy, fat shaming is still bad and stupid since it does not help, and actually hurts.

There are better ways to help people become healthy.

>The present research demonstrates that, in addition to poorer mental health outcomes, weight discrimination has implications for obesity. Rather than motivating individuals to lose weight, weight discrimination increases risk for obesity.

Source: [http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0070048)

<comment><USER5> 1) You cant say that unilaterally - Fat shaming may very well also prevent skinny people from becoming fat. You can't just look at already fat people. 2) These self reported "weight discrimination" studies have so many biases you really shouldn't take them as fact. 3) The usual correlation =/= causation speech. It could very well be that amount of discrimination also varies with weight (duh) and that those that get a lot of discrimination are already past the point of motivation to change (just one of many alternative theories. This specific example isn't the best by any stretch).

All in all, it just does not make as much intuitive sense that fat jokes (among other things) encourage people to stay fat and this little study is definitely not enough to override occams razor in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> Did you bother to read the abstract of the source provided? It directly refutes pretty much all of your points including a control group. For your convenience, I've italicized the relevant text:

>Participants were drawn from the Health and Retirement Study, a _nationally representative_ longitudinal survey of community-dwelling US residents. A total of 6,157 participants (58.6% female) completed the discrimination measure and had weight and height available from the 2006 and 2010 assessments. Participants who experienced weight discrimination were approximately 2.5 times _more likely_ to _become obese_ by follow-up (OR = 2.54, 95% CI = 1.58–4.08) and participants _who were obese at baseline_ were three times more likely to remain obese at follow up (OR = 3.20, 95% CI = 2.06–4.97) _than those who had not experienced such discrimination_. These effects held when _controlling for demographic factors (age, sex, ethnicity, education) and when baseline BMI was included as a covariate._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Obesity and lack of activity. It's easy to see for us outsiders that are used to other sizes. Where I am in Europe, a typical woman has a body not that far from the fashion world's ideals which Americans often call skinny bitches, "anorectic" or similar derogatory terms. Look at pictures of Americans 40 years ago. Most were slender. Now, many if not most could use different eating habits.

<comment><USER7> Apparently you are not in northern Europe.

<comment><USER6> No, but used to be. There we have the same obesity problems, though still on a smaller scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Title: "No one knows why" Article: "female obesity and drug abuse have risen dramatically over the past two decades"

<comment><USER9> 1 in 4 women die of heart disease. 1 in 36 die of breast cancer. Which one receives more attention?

<comment><USER10> You need years of life lost stats not just lifetime frequency. My grandmother's heart didn't get her until she was in her 80s. If she had a miracle perfect heart well maybe she would have made a couple more years at most till the kidneys, or the liver, or something else got her. Unfortunately I know of too many women, practically girls really, who get cancer in their 20s or maybe 30s. Without the cancer they'd probably have had another 50 healthy years before the heart disease got em.

Edited to add you hear a lot about people dying of heart disease when they're 30 because its shockingly unusual, usually heart problems kill bluehairs. But cancer always seems to strike someone like my kids friends mom who's only 30something, that unfortunately seems normal for cancer?

<comment><USER9> Good points. Though I'm thinking the 80 year old dying of heart disease is less common than the 30 year old obese person who is buying death on installment plan

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At the risk of losing some of the karma I've built up every time I deconstruct Google's hiring practices, here goes:

High Fructose corn syrup and subsidizing horrible nutritional choices is at least partially to blame for the obesity epidemic. However, there is an element of personal choice and free will here. Ironically, one side of the political fence here will not acknowledge the former and the other side refuses to acknowledge the latter.

If you choose to squander what little free time you have from your minimum wage job on sitting in front of a TV instead of burning an extra 500-1000 calories per day, you will get fat, and you will most likely die young, and that's the cost of watching TV instead of exercising. For god's sake, at least squander that time on Khan Academy or coursera.

That said, this is a valid choice IMO. It's easy to forget how much life sucks for the bottom 80% when you're earning a salary in the top 5%. I can completely understand why someone with no perceived prospects for life ever getting any better would choose to numb themselves with food, TV, and alcohol. And that is a national disgrace.

But from my perspective, I always had a burning motivation to prove myself and stand out from the people who dismissed me as not worth the effort. Similarly, I am regularly astounded at the different outcomes I see from immigrants who arrive here with nothing, and become millionaires within a generation. The solution IMO (and there may not be one) is to figure out how to instill that kind of passion in a higher proportion of the population (and that may not be what the corporatocracy really wants because then they might start asking some really uncomfortable questions).

<comment><USER12> You are greatly oversimplifying people's decisions about how to spend their time.

I am not trying to defend laziness. I am just drawing to draw your attention to some of the factors you are not considering here.

People often watch TV while doing things like cooking dinner or housework, which aren't compatible with serious exercise.

People often watch TV at hours of the day where outdoor exercise is impractical or at least inconvenient.

The decision of how to spend time isn't binary: TV or exercise. People with many family responsibilities have less free time. People who can't afford to buy time by paying for their oil changes, plumbing, etc. have less free time.

It should be telling that many people who do get regular exercise get up very early to exercise before starting their normal daily activities. Even people who make exercise a priority have a hard time fitting it into a normal schedule.

<comment><USER10> You two are going to get really confused at the net results of my treadmill being in front of the TV, just far enough back to not affect the use of the kinect. Although I acknowledge that's probably so weird it makes "standing desks" look mainstream. Do I want to watch Dr Phil today? Well, is it Really worth a 3 mile walk? It certainly cuts down on casual TV watching.

One datapoint that might help you both is minimum wage jobs are often physically exhausting. While I was a starving student I stacked 80 pound bags of water softener salt on pallets... four hours per day. Even for a big weightlifter dude thats pretty rough. When I went home to do homework I (correctly) felt no need for further exercise. But even a retail clerk drone is at least standing 8 hours per day, even if not lifting much. At another drone job I figured I walked (pretty fast) at 4 mph about half the 8 hour shift, that's 16 miles of walking every day.

There probably are minimum wage jobs where you sit all day, but stereotypically sitting around is a problem for highly paid workers. At this instant the only minimum wage / entry level job I can think of involving sitting all day is call center, and those are organized around churn and burn them to get an annual turnover ratio exceeding 1.0 to keep labor costs low (fire everyone before annual review day, and not only do you get to skip giving reviews, but you never have to pay over starting wage).

<comment><USER11> Confused? Not at all. I personally watch really godawful action movies on my spin bike on a regular basis. And if you're on your feet all day, by all means, eat what you want, you're going to need it! But don't lump yourself in with the couch potatoes. Physics doesn't lie.

I wear a fitbit and I can burn ~3,000 calories a day just walking around the office and doing household chores. If I exercise on top of that, it's 3,500 to 4,500 calories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That map looks remarkably like this one: [http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/data/facts.html](http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/data/facts.html)

<comment><USER14> And kind of like this map! [http://www.startribune.com/177786361.html](http://www.startribune.com/177786361.html) There's a government conspiracy to kill Republicans!

I'm not saying that exercise isn't the cause of shorter life-spans, and there is certainly data to support it, but comparing maps alone is kind of silly. There are a lot of maps that look like that.

<comment><USER13> Comparing maps is no sillier than looking for correlations between any two data sets.

And indeed, I suspect the resemblance between your map and mine is not a coincidence either.

<comment><USER14> "Silly" was perhaps a strong word. My point was that there are a lot of heat maps of the US that have a similar distribution, and those similarities could very well be due to a spurious relationship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The most shocking study, published in August 2012 by the journal Health > Affairs, found that life expectancy for white female high-school dropouts > has fallen dramatically over the past 18 years. These women are now expected > to die five years earlier than the generation before them—a radical decline > that is virtually unheard of in the world of modern medicine.

High school graduation rates are up substantially over that time period, especially for women, so the category of "high school dropouts" probably represents a narrower pool of women today than 18 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER16> As some suggested a correlation with obesity, I'd like to highlight another correlation.

Recent findings showed that obesity can be an side-effect of stress. [There is a genetic component to it, such that people who can compensate detrimental effects of stress to the brain, become obese as a side-effect. People who can't, don't become obese but have detrimental effects to their brain. They're fucked both ways. :-( But this is merely a second hand recitation of what I heard a scientist say. Grain of salt, blah blah.]

Nevertheless, the biggest source of stress is socio-economic stress. It's way more stressful than any "direct" stress.

Trying to find some of the relevant resources:

* [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db50.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db50.htm) shows correlation between socio-economic status and obesity

* [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831158/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831158/)

Linkage between obesity and some dopamine pathways are also known since 2001.

My own speculation: The location where mortality of women is highest produce the highest socio-economic stress to women.

Additional speculation: This ought to happen in high or in low income areas and may be linked with income inequality within the community.

</comment><comment><USER17> Because they're more obese.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, overlay that map with this one: [http://www.stratasan.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/04/Obese_po...](http://www.stratasan.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/04/Obese_population_by_county.png)

<comment><USER19> The correlation seems to break down in Appalachia -- low obesity; high mortality rate.

(Aside -- the stark contrast in obesity between Colorado and Kansas is surprising.)

<comment><USER20> I'd love to have access to the raw data to feed it into R. I'm fairly positive even with Appalachia included there is still going to be a strong positive correlation.

<comment><USER21> That's not really how averages work, though. You can't just smash two modes of a bimodal distribution together and treat it like a unimodal distribution. I mean, you can, but it generates garbage results.

<comment><USER20> It's hard to draw that conclusion without knowing what's in either data set. I'm fairly certain that the obesity data would have gender as one of its attributes, and it's also probable that any death statistics would include other vital stats such as height and weight at time of death.

But you're right, it's certainly possible that all of the women in those states are of normal weight and it's only the men who are obese. I'm being a little glib though, it's hard to know without seeing the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Perhaps dying younger is simply that being educated and joining the workforce entails _thinking_ more. Low grade, high-volume thinking requires persistent states of arousal, not dissimilar from stress, and ultimately causing stress. The symptoms are reduced immune activity, increased blood pressure, poor digestion, etc. The health risks of chronic overwork (heart attack, stroke) do seem to be the same as those of excess hedonism (heart attack, stroke). The double whammy is that people who work too hard tend to 'play hard' during their off-duty hours. They think of it as necessary and well-earned _relaxation_ , which is why they do it, but it isn't quite the same thing. Drinking, smoking and other drugs merely produce more arousal, though it is interpreted as being pleasant because the ego is not threatened. I think the foregoing ideas are why some religious traditions have specified a day of complete rest, which breaks the cycle somewhat

</comment><comment><USER23> Yes we know.

Ladies now smoke as much as men do. In my country young women smoke now more than men. You don't smoke to be a man anymore(stupid male reason), now you smoke for getting slim, or looking "sophisticated" or any other stupid female reason.

Females now work as hard as men. In the past they had to raise the family only, now they raise the family and work with all the crap of working(stress), they eat the same fast food shit that males do(obesity), they sleep as bad as men do.

Females now use hormones for not getting pregnant, breast and ovary's cancer incidence has gone up.(they survive more years through).

<comment><USER24> > Females now use hormones for not getting pregnant, breast and ovary's cancer > incidence has gone up.

It seems that hormonal birth control slightly elevates the risk of breast cancer, but _reduces_ the risk of ovarian cancer by a larger percentage ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormonal_contraception#Effects...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormonal_contraception#Effects_on_rates_of_cancers)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> My own opinion on things like diet, weight, exercise, is pretty simple.

1) Eat relative to your activity level. If you're sedentary, eat less. If you're active or an athlete, eat more.

2) Eat good food. If you don't recognize it as something that comes out of the ground or directly from an animal, don't eat it. There are a few exceptions (oils, vinegar, fermented products). Either way, you should know where it's coming from and how it's handled.

If you do these two things, you should be alright. And IMO, the only things you should be drinking are: water (lots), beer (slightly less), wine (even less), milk (a little), juice (a little less).

Any time I see people drinking pop as a 'beverage' and not a treat I just shake my head...

</comment><comment><USER26> I read somewhere (long ago and I can't remember where) that the rate of heart disease increased in women the same time more women worked outside their homes. Add that to obesity, education and all the other options the article and commenters have mentioned. Issues like this isn't often one or two things, its many that build up.

</comment><comment><USER27> "And No One Knows Why" Nauseating..

Health is a mess, and we're further advanced than ever in history. Education is a mess, and every person has all the knowledge of the world literally in their pocket.

Personal responsibility.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can someone correlate this data with red-blue voting distribution at the same level (counties)? Because, by my eye, they are in lock step.

<comment><USER10> The hard statistical challenge is your voting theory is pretty much a proxy for urban/rural. So you'd need some sneaky statistics to find the rare areas where you can separate the two closely matched data sources. Rephrased, I bet if you ran correlation coeff for urban/rural ratio vs both voting and death rates I bet they'd match up about the same and the coeff between urban/rural and death would be higher. Or I could be totally wrong and you're right. But what I am pretty sure I'm correct about, is this experiment would be the logical second step after your theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is it just me or are areas of the map that show "improvements" where you would more likely find immigration?

Just a very casual observation, may be completely wrong.

<comment><USER10> Looks closer to percent urbanization. Migrant farm worker land not looking very blue. My pasty white state matches pretty well with urbanization, not so well with racial variation. This explanation doesn't seem to hold in other areas.

I wonder how well it corresponds to grain related pesticide and insecticide use per county. This seems to work, Los Vegas is not exactly a legendary wheatfield. CA has a lot of agribusiness but not as much grain as Iowa or Montana. Ahh the waving cornfields of Manhattan Island NYC. It seems to match up...

<comment><USER29> Agriculture is far from the only immigration job.

Everything from construction to tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> No one knows why....

Obesity is up. As we move away from a labor economy fewer people work on farms and factory, we eat the same number of calories, or more, and do less.

More women are in the work place, and that's stressful... Job related stress shortens lives. Sure in the old nuclear family where mom stayed home and raised the kids that was stressful too, but with nannies and day care we still have people in that role, and now you have more single moms doing work and home on their own.

Ethnic diversity due to an increase in the number of immigrants from developing nations. We have a lot more people from countries that had much shorter life spans than the US. Enough to move the numbers. Like it or not while Asia has people who live the longest the average is much shorter than those from Europe, and Mexico and Central America are much shorter still.

<comment><USER10> There's a chronological problem with your theoretically logical idea where the farm worker collapse started near the turn of the last century (1900) and smoothly over the decades pretty much anyone who was leaving the farm had left by 1970 but fatness indicators like number of diagnosed diabetes patients didn't start expanding (sorry for pun) until late 1990s (about 20 years after an explosion in corn syrup consumption in the USA, surely just a coincidence). So there is a 90 to 20 year gap depending how you want to run the numbers to explain, why the workers are already gone but not sick yet.

There's also a numerical hole where at peak we're talking about 10 million or so american farm workers leaving the farm over the 1900s, but 1/3 or so of 400 million aka over 100 million getting fat. If 10 million changed jobs and 10 million got fat, even if we don't have data to prove its the same 10 mil my spidey sense would tingle, but you're off by a factor of ten.

Also the point of the article graph is rural Montana is not the place to be if you're a woman aspiring to be old, but rural Montana never had quite the same industrial production as NYC or the WWII aircraft plants in WA. So thats a geographic issue.

The problem with your theory about short lived Mexicans is my general lifetime knowledge about where you'll find illegals living maps pretty decently with where people are actually living longer. Its as though immigrants were not exposed to certain industrial or agricultural toxins in the 3rd world that we expose our own kids to. For example no one in New Mexico (well, there's an accurate name) can speak English anymore, but the article map show's they're ridiculously healthy compared to, say, pasty white rural northern Wisconsin where I'm pretty sure they have a hunting season for illegals. Which is interesting.

(edited to add, I liked your post a lot, because it used logical thinking to come up with apparently reasonable falsifiable hypothesis, which is awesome, keep on doing it. Problems need theoreticians and experimentalists to solve them, just one isn't going to do it alone. Theoreticians do need thick skin since 90% of their theories aren't going to work and its nothing personal)

<comment><USER30> I said farm and Factory. We also drive more and walk less, we are a much less active people than we were.

I didn't say illegals, but people of Indo and Asian descent have shorter lives for the most part compared to Caucasians.

I'm not saying my presentation of facts was perfect, but I can dig around there are plenty of studies (and I hate studies as opposed to experiments) that these observations were pulled from.

My point was really that there are lots of reasons, and likely it isn't "just one", but they aren't "unknown".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is a flaw in their statistics. Just eyeball the map, and you can see the red counties are in areas of remote/economic depravation. Over the course of 100 years, you are getting "the thin end of the gene pool" as others move out. So, your baseline samples are not the same. Also the gene-pool will be more startified by education as time goes on (ie, its more "common" to have edu degrees), so as the weaker become educated again only the weakest do not. So their is instability in the relationship between the proxy variables for "class" and success and the genetic ones. This article is a good example why researchers (and reporters) need to be boots on the ground and understand what they are dealing with. None of this would be surprising to anyone who hase been to many of the remote rural areas flagged in red here.</comment>


Small Multiple Maps with D3 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webkid.io/multiple-maps-d3/

<comment><USER2> That should be "multiple small maps". In English, adjectives are generally placed in this order,

      1. Quantity
      2. Value/Opinion
      3. Size
      4. Temperature
      5. Age
      6. Shape
      7. Color
      8. Origin
      9. Material

[http://www.edufind.com/english-grammar/ordering-multiple- adj...](http://www.edufind.com/english-grammar/ordering-multiple-adjectives/)

Hence, "multiple" (quantity, 1) precedes "small" (size, 3).

<comment><USER3> Nah, "small multiples" is a well-established term in visualisation. Multiple same-style visualisations of the same type showing different aspects of data or different data sets. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_multiple](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_multiple)

<comment><USER2> Very interesting! I stand corrected, but I still think the original grammar is lacking,

      Small multiple designs -> Multiple small designs</comment></comment></comment>


Google's Steve Jobs tribute - <AUTHOR> http://google.com/

<comment><USER2> They are linking to the home page of Android's competitor. Google's statement says this event transcends money, transcends business, transcends all rational thought.

Observe a moment of silence and reflect. We all lost a great man whose vision changed everything - I just smile a little at the comments from people who say Steve Jobs didn't affect their life, because they don't carry an iPhone, or because they are a DIY guy, or because anything else. You didn't have to own an iDevice to have been touched by Steve Jobs - you lived in a world in which he tinted every facet of technology with his genius.

Truly my hero of heroes.

<comment><USER3> Also unheard of, Microsoft.com has a link on their homepage. Amazon, normally squeezing money out of every pixel has reserved a block for him (and it doesn't link to a book). Oddly, Pixar has nothing.

<comment><USER4> Pixar has a big tribute up now:

<http://imgur.com/IH2nl>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For all of the catty infighting we, as an industry, engage in at times I have been pleasantly surprised with how sincere and heartfelt a lot of the responses to this event have been. We are in danger of over-using the adjective "classy", but it seems apropos in most cases and this is yet another example.

<comment><USER6> This is not the end of a company or the failure of a product. It's the end of a human life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think we sometimes forget while we're bickering about this vs that how much mutual respect there is in the tech industry.

I strongly suspect that there are Android and iPhone fans who dislike each other massively more than those working at and running Google and Apple do. Reasonable people don't undertake these feats of engineering without admiring and respecting those who've been on similar journeys.

</comment><comment><USER8> Minimalist, I think Steve would like it. Linking to apple.com was classy.

</comment><comment><USER9> A screenshot, for when it's gone:

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/390716/google.com-20111006-redacted....](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/390716/google.com-20111006-redacted.png)

The anchor text (Steve Jobs) links to <http://www.apple.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I know they did a similar tribute for Edsgar Dijkstra in 2002. Are there any other times Google has done a home page tribute for a single person, like this?

<comment><USER11> Another one they linked to was Randy Pausch's last lecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Steve Jobs influenced the designer of Gmail 1.0, Google Calendar 1.0, and Google Reader 2.0: [http://fury.com/2011/10/i-work-in-technology-because-of- stev...](http://fury.com/2011/10/i-work-in-technology-because-of-steve/)

Quote: _While designing Gmail, the Apple mentality led me to approach design decisions from the standpoint of 'what can I remove' rather than 'what can I add'._

</comment><comment><USER13> Very, very classy.

</comment><comment><USER14> ahh .. I didn't see it at first. Good.

</comment><comment><USER15> Subtle. I was expecting a doodle. Didn't see the link.

<comment><USER16> Hopefully it's not a doodle. A doodle is something you have to prepare, design, draw, it's not made overnight.

The added text is an instant, unprepared change.

Having a doodle would be creepy, like "oh, we had that prepared already!" (well, a bit like boing-boing, I guess)

<comment><USER17> Newspapers and the press in general normally have an obituary team who write and update obituaries for noteworthy people who are still alive. That way if anything happens, they can be quick off the mark and publish a well researched article about the person. Occasionally these are published in error when the person in question is still alive.

<comment><USER18> This actually happened to Jobs a few years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Perhaps they'll make a Doodle of him tomorrow.

<comment><USER20> More likely on his birthday.</comment></comment>


Introduction to Capybara – free online course - <AUTHOR> https://testautomationu.applitools.com/capybara-ruby/ <comment><AUTHOR> Test Automation U. just released a new online course today: Introduction to Capybara. Here's the link:

[https://testautomationu.applitools.com/capybara- ruby/](https://testautomationu.applitools.com/capybara-ruby/)

For those not familiar, Capybara works with Ruby and is a domain-specific language (DSL) that comes with built-in methods that allow you to visit a page, fill in a textbox, click a button, click a link, check a checkbox, choose a radio button, or select an item from a dropdown and search within a section of the page.

The instructor is T.J. Maher. You can read more about his background here:

[http://www.tjmaher.com/](http://www.tjmaher.com/)

Hope you like it!

(Disclosure: my company sponsored the creation of this course, and has a small link to our site at the bottom. That said, Capybara is free open-source software that is unconnected to my company. The instructor is not an employee of my company.)</comment>


Microsoft's Ready to Contribute to OpenJDK - <AUTHOR> https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/discuss/2019-October/005173.html <comment><USER2> Please MS, increase development resources behind net and c# instead. It will benefit Java more than direct Java development - competition will give Java more motivation to grow.

<comment><USER3> You say that as if they are somehow being sparing in their support of C# and .NET, which is clearly not true. What specifically do you see as lacking on that front?

<comment><USER2> The speed of development, the scope and quality of new language features has dropped significantly ever since Hejlsberg left C#.

C# with .Net should compete with Go and rust these days, fight for the mindshare of developers.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand your concern.

I think Mads Torgersen & co. are doing a wonderful job.

We've had a new version of C# with each new (recent at least) release of Visual Studio.

Did you have issues with the quality of new features? I'm really puzzled by your comment.

<comment><USER2> What I meant is that most of the recent C# additions are merely syntactic sugar that does not increase developer productivity in a significant way, does not boost the expressiveness of the language, sometimes even decreases the readability of the code. That's in contrast to things like generics and li q.

Besides apart from C# there's also CLR and Jit that could use more love. It is well known that jvm is a better vm than CLR. Most of the CLR speed comes from using references to value types but somewhat as an afterthought and without tools that C++ provides (readonly gives you muh less power that const reference).

<comment><USER5> This is somewhat a strange take.

Apart from Borrow Checker which is a recent invention, all programming languages features, as far as I am concern has been done previously in one way or another. There is only so many language features you can fit in on a languages like C# which is soon to be 20 years old. It is a sign of maturity. And C# in itself is already very modern compared to Java.

Most of the JVM performance improvement came from many Enterprise customers absolutely pushing the limit to a point where performance of JVM today would be unthinkable 10 - 20 years ago. It is the work a hundreds of millions if not billions over the past two decade. And it is not like Microsoft are not doing research on how to speed it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the direction the "new" Microsoft is going! Hopefully they'll behave themselves this time (re: Visual J++, etc)

<comment><USER3> J++ might get a bad rap in hindsight, but back in the day, it was amazing. The editor was liquid smooth, performance wise, and the compiler was at least a dozen times faster than the JDK Java compiler. It was like the Jikes compiler before Jikes.

I recall using Visual J++ and its compiler to do "pure Java" development back then and it was a delight. I only moved to Eclipse later because Eclipse had a deeper understanding of the Java language and was able to do fancy things like traverse a call stack from static code analysis. Eclipse was considerably slower in UI and responsiveness, especially on hardware of the time, but that utility made up for it.

<comment><USER7> I think Eclipse is probably still slower on modern hardware than Visual J++ was in 1999-2000, which was the last time I used it.

The first commercial Java project I worked on we used Visual J++. It was a great environment at the time, there was very little else available if I remember correctly. Sun had something which was horrible.

Eclipse is so bad I think those of us who have been in the Java camp for years/decades/whole career have lost sight of just how much better the MS tools were/are.

I don't even remember feeling as much frustration towards VC++ in the 1990s as I do with Eclipse today.

It's too easy to forget Mac wasn't even an option back then. OSX didn't start to become viable till 2003-2004.

I've officially been doing Java 20 years now... part of me really wants to jump the fence and go work on Windows stuff. I jumped the fence to work on Python 6 years ago. But it was "Python being used for stuff Java is 10x better for" and got tired of it after a year. Python is 10x better than Java for lots of things.. but not for giant enterprise systems IMO.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. It may be true that Eclipse on a Ryzen 9 doesn't feel as responsive as Visual J++ on a Pentium III. J++ was just that much faster than Eclipse. Then again, for my usage, the J++ environment was not much more than a syntax- colored text editor with project files and a method and field browser.

Like I said, when Eclipse arrived a few years later, it provided a lot of utility that J++ did not, and obviously that utility has value. But I think both of us look back fondly on J++ because we know that had it not been cut short, it could have evolved into something different and possibly even better than what we know as Java today. It seems plausible that in an alternate history where J++ kept evolving, I'd be more satisfied with the state of the art.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >> As many of you may know, Microsoft and its subsidiaries are heavily dependent on Java in many aspects, and also offers Java runtimes in its Microsoft Azure cloud to its customers.

Anyone know details on how MS uses Java outside of hosted runtimes?

<comment><USER9> I'm mystified as well. I worked at Microsoft for seven years and never once heard any mention of Java. Maybe it's in the acquisitions? (GitHub, LinkedIn, etc.)

<comment><USER10> It is for azure to ensure java runs smoothly there. Similar to how they pushed code to the linux kernel years ago so linux and hyper-v would play nice together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Microsoft's apparently not ready to use line breaks.

Seriously, people that write lines like that... just... why. What email client is even allowing it?

<comment><USER12> Why put in hard breaks when pretty much any email client should support soft/flexible line wrapping?

Seems more like an issue with the linked site to me.

<comment><USER13> format=flowed is a reasonable middle-ground: [https://joeclark.org/ffaq.html](https://joeclark.org/ffaq.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool, looks according to post submission this actually happened end of October.

How did it go so far? Anyone know more?

<comment><USER15> So far we have submitted couple patches [1][2] that we felt were good opportunities to learn how contributions flow into OpenJDK, and we are now starting to experiment with JFR and other GCs like Shenandoah. As we progress, we may find other fixes and enhancements that we aim at upstreaming as well.

If you have further questions, I'd be happy to take them.

Best,

Bruno Borges,

PM for Java at Microsoft

[1] [https://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk/jdk/rev/aebd72de84b0](https://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk/jdk/rev/aebd72de84b0)

[2] [https://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk/jdk/rev/c6e474ae266b](https://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk/jdk/rev/c6e474ae266b)

[3] [https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/shenandoah- dev/2019-...](https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/shenandoah- dev/2019-December/011230.html) (still under review)

[4] [https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/hotspot-compiler- dev...](https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/hotspot-compiler- dev/2019-November/036171.html) (ongoing discussion)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sic transit gloria mundi :^)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine)

</comment><comment><USER17> Is it safe to assume this doesn't include Graal because while it is shipped with OpenJDK, AFAIK it's not a part of the project?

</comment><comment><USER18> Hypothetical Question: Is it at all possible to eventually merge Java and C# back into a single language? Say in 2030 ?

<comment><USER19> Funnily enough I was thinking an almost identical thing this morning. We had IKVM [0] for.NET, which if I understood it correctly allowed Java to run on the CLR (I probably misunderstood this).

I'm not entirely sure why Microsoft don't build something official to run Java code on the CLR/.NET, is it a technical or legal limitation, or simply that there's no business need?

[0]: [https://www.ikvm.net/](https://www.ikvm.net/)

<comment><USER20> It would be huge if they implemented a way to run java libraries from .NET. Be it ikvm or something else. This would immediately open up huge amounts of very interesting libraries to .NET. For example Bouncy Castle or Lucene. Years ago I worked on a document search app. Wrote it in .NET but then almost all interesting libraries were in Java exclusively or with an outdated .NET port. Being able to use the up to date java libraries would have been huge. This experience alone makes me reluctant to use .NET. The Java ecosystem is just much broader.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What would they contribute?

</comment><comment><USER22> cool

</comment><comment><USER23> If Anders Hejlsberg is not a part of this effort, then meh. If he is, then wow.

<comment><USER5> What is he working on now? Wiki still list him working on C#.

<comment><USER23> TypeScript and C#. Both are grade AAA language efforts IMO.</comment></comment></comment>


GL4ES, a GL 1.5 to GL ES 1.1 translation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ptitSeb/gl4es <comment><USER2> Amazing the things that the OpenPandora/Pyra projects have motivated ..

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand why this is a fork of glshim instead of a collaboration :/.</comment>


Dissecting OpenBSD's divert(4) - <AUTHOR> http://lteo.net/blog/2015/01/06/dissecting-openbsds-divert-4-part-1-introduction/ <comment><USER2> Check pf-diverters [1]. We are using them in our openbsd firewalls in order to block unwanted connections.

[1] [https://github.com/echothrust/pf- diverters](https://github.com/echothrust/pf-diverters)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a similar feature in Linux which I've used a number of times over the years to simulate various network problems, and to modify packets flowing through my router in interesting ways.

You can select packets to be sent to userspace with the "-j QUEUE" iptables target handler, and then read those packets using libnetfilter.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool, I run a pf firewall but this was news to me.

Anyone have any idea of the performance overhead? (Not that it really matters for me, just curious)</comment>