Threads for krainboltgreene

It turns out that since the dictionary on the right hand side of the foo={} expression is mutable, it’s associated with the class, not an instance, so all instances share that dictionary. If it ever gets mutated, then it’s mutated for all instances.

Slight nit-pick, but one which hopefully makes things a little clearer: default arguments get ‘associated’ with the function itself (remember that functions are perfectly valid first-class objects in Python). Classes are also first-class objects, and methods are basically function objects stored inside a class object (plus a little “binding” magic).

That’s why all of the instances share the same value: they all invoke the same method object, by virtue of referencing the same class object. Also, it’s not just mutable objects, but those are the only times we actually notice!

IMHO remembering rules like ‘default method args associate with the class’ seem (a) very arbitrary and (b) like a bad idea, hence it’s difficult to understand or justify why it’s there.

If we think about the methods and classes as objects, then it seems (to me) to make more sense: the way default arguments are handled seems reasonable (although I don’t like it); and it has unfortunate interactions with the class/instance mechanism, like this one you mention.

One possible problem with this explanation is that it may be an unfamilar way of thinking, e.g. for those used to Java-like languages where things like methods and classes aren’t objects (I’ve argued many times when I’ve heard the phrase “everything’s an object” in reference to Java ;) )

Yep, installing a package from an unvetted rando would be about as dumb as installing a CA root certificate from an unvetted rando.

Part of the problem is allowing unvetted randos to publish to the repository,

Even if you vet every publisher and vet every publish, someone can still find a MITM weakness and then have libraries post-install hacks.

A significant mitigation is often reasonable, particularly when a total solution isn’t readily available. In this case, I would argue that there is literally nothing that can stop a determined enough individual with the right skills / resources / access from using the package manager against an adversary. But if we can make it more difficult, or just more of a pain, then we’ll still have improved the situation.

I wouldn’t know how signing would have helped there.

#1 is effectively a “no”. The hooks are run, but in a sandbox without access to the general application, operating environment, or the network.

EDIT: of course, the install time problem also impacts any package manager where you run the code it manages, assuming the running code ever interacts with sensitive internal data or environment. However, Nix very nicely protects against install-time trouble-makers.

Awesome!

Ehmke seems obsessed… It’s not healthy.

That’s not your call to make though, right? What is and isn’t helpful or healthy for her life? And even if it were, this thread certainly isn’t the place to talk about it. The article is clearly about Githhub having made promises and then breaking them.

Think about it this way: how many of Github’s actions would a recruiter told the author when she initially reached out, had she known?

Which is to say, if how Github acted were Github policy, then of course a recruiter would talk about it. It is the company policy of how they treat employees and Github should be proud of it, especially given how proud they are of their values.

Is it’s Github’s policy to be strict and unhelpful accommodating any mental health needs of their employees, including when family members die? Is their policy, “sorry, need you at your best regardless of your mental health provider’s advice, so you definitely need to go home.”

So really this article is about how Github acted, in light of how they lead the author to believe they would act, and how it runs contrary to their professed goals of inclusivity.

Which is all to say, why are so many people focusing on the often irrelevant supposed faults of the author, instead of the actual content and arguments she is providing? Especially for such a clearly structured and functional post. Say what you want about her points, they are clearly made and have well presented evidence and anecdote.

That’s not your call to make though, right?

What does that even mean?

If somebody was injecting heroin into his bloodstream, am I allowed to comment that it is unhealthy? Or is it not “my call to make’?

You can not divorce the fact that Caroline xirself has always pushed identity politics and been extremely toxic to every person that doesn’t kowtow to schmer ideological agenda from the fact that now paxer is complaining about supposed ‘injustice’ that occurred during xomer time at github, and the fact that it is likely that it is not injustice at all, but that the people at github didn’t want to completely kowtow to all of xober demands.

his rudeness, beyond being excusable, is actually extremely useful in discouraging time-sinks that would hurt Linux development if humoured

It also hurts Linux development when the likes of Alan Cox quit because Linus gets confused and decides to go on a half-cocked rant. And there is potentially people who would make good contributions but see what happened to the likes of Cox and decide they don’t want to be on the receiving end of that.

Not the person you are talking to but:

Are you seriously bringing that up as a point in your argument? You could’ve just as well used the argument that it’s more courteous to use genderless pronouns. Why put the form of an argument over its substance?

When you know someone’s gender identity it is polite to use their preferred pronouns. Personally, I wouldn’t have brought it up but my guess is that the author was deliberately using neutral pronouns because they don’t respect her gender identity but knew if they used male pronouns they’d get hell for it. But it can also just be a style of writing, so as said, I wouldn’t have brought it up.

Anyway, if you need an example of her taking her views to places where they’re not really relevant, you need look no further than here.

I, and she herself in https://medium.com/@coralineada/on-opalgate-2efd0fc1e0fd (ugh, I hate the trend of adding ‘gate’ to everything), acknowledge that the way she opened the issue (specifically the title) was overly inflammatory.

However, reaching out and letting people know that a member of their community is likely scaring people off from the project is a relevant view and needed in some cases. As said above, she did it in an overly inflammatory way but I don’t agree that it is not relevant.

After this whole thing I was: 1. Upset with how coraline handled starting it 2. Never ever going to touch opal (supported by the fact that the actual owner (NOT meh) implemented coraline’s Code of Conduct but now they are using ‘No Code of Conduct’).

I see people say this, but I have no idea exactly what they mean. So, stripping away the loaded terms, can you explain?

Do you believe that everyone in a project contributes to its success equally, or do you think that there are no ways to tell who is contributing to a project?

so what does work? meritocracy still sounds pretty nice to me even though i know it’s a dirty word now

My point is that there is a claim of meritocracy, but then the author states that they were not rewarded based upon merit. It’s confusing at best.

Even if meritocracies were possible, they would be bad for another reason. https://hbr.org/product/rethinking-rewards/an/93610-PDF-ENG

Well, not directly. But if you make a culture that pushes people out who don’t fit the mold, you reduce your ability to hire and retain people you would otherwise be able to hire and keep. Big successful businesses by and large try to maintain a welcoming and professional work environment because doing so makes them more competitive and capable.

Great insight.

Sources/further details please? I am concerned about the conflation of several different definitions of “diversity”. In particular, field-relevant experiential/educational diversity is drastically different from skin color diversity and neither is a good heuristic for the other.

If this was true then why would there need to be any governmental enforced diversity quota/incentive?

If group diversity is beneficial then we would already see organisations embrace it for its own productive benefits. Instead we see socially mandated diversity and after-the-facts rationalisation.

Hey! I think this argument is not a very good one to lead with. The reason being: if the evidence were not there, or changes over time as more studies happen, does that mean someone should not be for diversity? I think that one should still be for supporting diversity because the world I want to live in is based on equality.

Another problem is what we see in response to your comment: people asking for the studies and wanting to argue over the study rather than diversity.

Women are something like 50% of the population yet very underrepresented in IT.

Men are something like 50% of the population yet very underrepresented as mothers.

This reasoning is a rationalisation, because we only see it used to insert women into high-prestige jobs (ceos, senators) and the recently-cool tech jobs, but never see it used to insert women into low-prestige jobs like sanitation or garbage collection.

Men and women are different. They have different interests and priorities and they make different career choices. The idea that an industry has to be a cross-section of the society as a whole doesn’t really make sense.

However, isn’t turning a blind eye to implicit discrimination a sin of its own?

Of course not, because you have to discriminate. You brain is evolved to collect data of its surrounding then infer patterns from that data so you can discriminate against stuff in the future. You treat a tiger differently from a kitten because they are different even though in many ways they are similar. The only way to not discriminate is to treat everything the same, a non-sensible proposition.

Now if you refer to the modern sense of ‘discrimination’ meaning treating people differently based on their inherited properties, which is somehow an unforgivable sin in the modern age (even though everybody does it, but they will say “im not a racist” before they explain what they do), you still have to face the facts that people are not the same. Different sub groups have different abilities, and we see these abilities play out in different outcome.

Also, you’re assuming that hiring is a zero sum game,

That particular spot is a zero sum game.

Perhaps including and engaging with a wider more diverse group of people will actually increase the overall cake size

I could say the same about less diverse group. That by being entirely discriminatory, there would be so many jobs that every single minority-person is employed. So this argument by itself works both ways.

You sound set in your ways and not open to imagining or considering why diversity might be a good thing.

I am not at all.

What I am against in social, governmental and ideological push to insert whichever-subgroups into places via the logic that their lack of representation there is because of “oppression and xism” when the alternative explanation that they are not there either by choice or by lack of ability is more likely to be true.

The word diverse is now being used primarily by people that seek to make such a push so it can be used as a warning sign. But I am not against diversity at all, I am against government and ideological mandate, including mandate for ‘diversity’ especially when it is based on spurious claim that the dominant groups are in a conspiracy to oppress and discriminate against the other subgroups.

I think you should use a virtual machine for this, though. For instance, in the project I’m working on, I’m on Linux and the other two developers are on Macs so my understanding is that Docker won’t help.

Fire the dev and hire someone who knows integration testing.

local dev using SQLite and prod using Postgres

I was in a similar situation (but with MySQL instead of Postgres). We were getting failure in production that we couldn’t reproduce in development. It seemed as if the program was trying to insert data into a column of the wrong type. This is how I learnt that SQLite does dynamic typing which is code for “we don’t care about column types”.

I always laugh when I hear this crap

I actually told the interviewer that I didn’t think this was a good way to go, but pushed on anyway. I’m tempted to turn down their desire to move forward to an on-site interview because they’ve already proven they’re not good at it.

Not to mention that my work at Google, and the 9 years of work at my current company apparently don’t count for anything.

Yeah, but like that’s true of any language?

Hey, yeah I’ve made the same argument about RubyMotion (which has minor differences).

I believe that honestly if Crystal gets the ecosystem it should start ripping out the warts. It’ll be a long journey, it’ll have a lot of discomfort, but we’ve learned a lot since ‘91.

Agreed, I have the exact opposite opinion: too many languages are “inspired by X” but with some meaningless change (functions are defined with func instead of def for example). It is added cognitive load for no real gain.