One of my old teachers would send documents to the class with various pieces of information. They were a few years away from retirement and never really got word processors. They would start by putting important stuff in bold. But some important things were more important than others. They got put in bold all caps. Sometimes, information was so critical it got put in bold, underline, all caps and red font colour. At the time we made fun of the teacher, but I don’t think I could blame them. They were doing the best they could with the knowledge of the tools they had at the time.

Now, in the files linked above I saw the word “never” in all caps, bold all caps, in italics and in a normal font. Apparently, one step in the process is mandatory. Are the others optional? This is supposed to be a procedure to be followed to the letter with each step being there for a reason. These are supposed computer-savvy people

CRITICAL RULE: You can ONLY run release_steps.py for a repository if release_checklist.py explicitly says to do so […] The checklist output will say “Run script/release_steps.py {version} {repo_name} to create it”

I’ll admit I did not read the scripts in detail but this is a solved problem. The solution is a script with structured output as part of a pipeline. Why give up one of the only good thing computers can do: executing a well-defined task in a deterministic way. Reading this is so exhausting…

Lots of stuff to think about.

I’d recommend stepping outside of the Algol world for a little bit. […] Instead, deliberately force yourself to use a Smalltalk, a Forth, a Lisp, an ML, or a Prolog; solve one or two problems in them over a period of about one month per language.

A few years ago I messed around with Racket and I forgot I had some fun with that. Thanks for the reminder. On some level I feel like Lisp should mesh well with my brain but I never got anything of substance done. Maybe time to try again. Possibly another dialect or something else entirely from your list. Thanks for the paper. It looks interesting!

This is your call. Personally I’ve found that I can be blunt with evidence and technical claims while empathizing with the difficulty of understanding those claims, and this still allows for fruitful technical discussions.

This is something I often need to remind myself of. Sensitivity is something that comes easily to me and although throughout the years I have found a kind of strength within it, it has its drawbacks. Generally, the less “in real time” a discussion takes place, the better I can manage it.

Yeah, Blow in some way deserves his own thread.

The Dutch part was a bit of hyperbole on my part. It’s something I have seen a few times on the orange and red sites. Someone is a dick and others defend them by gesturing vaguely to different cultural norms. Almost every time a variant appears on “Did you know that, for example, the Dutch are very direct”. My Dutch colleagues and in-laws have taught me that Dutch directness is more like not being afraid to call out assholes in public. Either that or making a sale. They are excellent salespeople.