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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • i would disagree that math problems only have one strategy for getting to the answer. there are many things, particularly in more abstract math, which can be understood in multiple different ways. the first example that comes to mind is the fundamental theorem of algebra. you can prove it using complex analysis, algebraic topology, or abstract algebra. all the proofs are quite different and rely on deep results from different fields of math.

    i think the same thing holds in the less abstract areas of math, it’s just that people are often only taught one strategy for solving a problem and so they believe that’s all there is.





  • i think you’re taking that quote out of context a bit. a few sentences later, the article says

    Even physicians have weighed in on the shortcomings of B.M.I. The American Medical Association warned last year that B.M.I. is an imperfect metric that doesn’t account for racial, ethnic, age, sex and gender diversity. It can’t differentiate between individuals who carry a lot of muscle and those with fat in all the wrong places.

    “Based on B.M.I., Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was a bodybuilder would have been categorized as obese and needing to lose weight,” said Dr. Wajahat Mehal, director of the Metabolic Health and Weight Loss Program at Yale University.

    so the point they seem to be making is that, while BMI is controversial partly because people like to shoot the messenger, it’s also just not a reliable measurement in a medical context, even as a heuristic. the article also goes into more detail on its other shortcomings as well. the article also indicates how BMI was never intended to be used in a medical context. so, there are plenty of valid reasons for wanting a new metric.

    but i do think the sentence you quoted isn’t really doing the author any favors in terms of trying to communicate the central point of the article.




  • i gave up on gentoo when the updates started making my laptop so hot that i had to point my bedroom fan at it in college. i was thinking of doing LFS but by that point gentoo was turning into such a headache and i wanted something simpler. i switched to arch afterwards, but now i mainly just use macos and let tim handle all that stuff for me. although i’m tempted to try arch again when im done with grad school and have more time






  • affiliate@lemmy.worldtoProgrammer Humor@programming.devLanguages
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    2 months ago

    i think it’s mainly people being cranky and set in their ways. they got used to working around all the footguns/bad design decisions of the C/C++ specifications and really don’t want to feel like it was all for nothing. they’re comfortable with C/C++, and rust is new and uncomfortable. i think for some people, being a C/C++ developer is also a big part of their identity, and it might be uncomfortable to let that go.

    i also think there’s a historical precedent for this kind of thing: when a new way of doing things emerges, many of the people who grew up doing it the old way get upset about it and refuse to accept that the new way might be an improvement.