Maybe the design is bad, then.

Javascript could throw an error to alert you that the input is supposed to be a string, like most languages would do.

Javascript is like Dungeons and dragons. It’s a mess, weighed down by legacy decisions, too heavy in some places and too light in others, and used in far more places than it should be. It also has some diehard fans, and some diehard fans who have never used anything else.

I guess riots break out all around the world?

I feel like this idea that people are just going to riot and do mass violence is some right wing fear.

Most people, most of the time, are pretty social cooperative creatures.

Parents often take time off from work to grieve. Classes are often disrupted when a student dies abruptly. This isn’t Skyrim where someone dies and forty seconds later it’s “Must be hearing things”. Plus, as I said, letting the kid die means the resources spend raising and educating them are wasted.

My point is that “oh if he dies it only affects the family” is stupid.

If I’m on my land I’m gonna do whatever I want. I’ll get drunk and do donuts on my lawn. Maybe I’ll set off 10 pounds of tannerite in my backyard because that’s what people do in the middle of nowhere.

[mean words] Edit: I take that back. I’m hangry. I don’t like rugged individualism but that was uncalled for

Should my mom not have allowed me to practice my drums in the barn because the audio was escaping the property and the neighbors could hear faint drumming in the middle of the day sometimes?

Non sequitur.

If it’s on private property who gives a shit. If your idiot son wants to build a structurally questionable tree house and the parents don’t do anything about it and he dies that’s on them.

it’s on all of us, because all the money and effort that went into educating and raising that kid is wasted. Plus the rippling effects outward from everyone who knew the kid grieving.

Also the more exceptions you have to rules, the more confusing it is and the more likely people are going to fuck it up.

“Always wear a hardhat on site” - easy. simple. minimal room for interpretation.

“Always wear a hardhat on site when any of the following conditions are true: [a, b, c, d] unless [e, f]” is going to lead to errors, and then people will get hurt.

People aren’t that smart. Especially when they’re not motivated, or distracted.

Reminds me of the fanclubwallet song “Solid Ground” https://fanclubwallet.bandcamp.com/album/you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me

“”"
sometimes you miss sleeping next to them even though if you don’t miss them anymore
sometimes the music’s different if you listen to it in your old bedroom
and if the friendship’s over you still remember the color of your shoelaces
“”"

Oblivion is the go-to example of how not to do level scaling. It’s impressive how badly they fucked it up. Like, they managed to make exploring pointless and unexciting.

You find a tomb, but you know that whatever’s inside will be “level appropriate”. If you’re low level it’ll be steel weapons, and if you’re high level it’ll be daedric. There’s not really any point in going in at low level. Might as well level up some other way and come back when the loot will be good.

On top of that, the gameplay is so bland and unresponsive that you can’t really punch above your weight class. The game is very much a levels game. It’s not like Dark Souls where someone can get really good and beat the whole thing while naked (and in the game, too). There’s a lot of “well, this guard is level 30 and you’re 10, so no matter how many times you hit him with your hammer he’s not going to flinch.” Knowing you’re always going to get kind of bland treasure wouldn’t be so bad if the act of getting it was fun. Like, sometimes a tomb or whatever in Elden Ring will have crap loot, but it’s still a solid core gameplay.

Morrowind had a lot of these problems, but it was also kind of wacky and heartfelt.

Idk, I’d be really upset by my partner knowingly doing this without talking to me about it

What is the “this” you’d be upset about exactly?

Software engineer.

Morning meeting that’s supposed to just be “what you did yesterday, what you’ll do today, and if you need help”. People fuck that up and go off on tangents. What should be a ten minute meeting takes 30.

Product owners at some point told you what the features to work on this month will be. For example, we need to add the ability for some reasons to bulk delete appointments.

Chat with product and other engineers about what that entails. Product probably won’t give complete, clear, requirements so you need to pull it out of them. (Hard delete or soft delete? Do you need an audit log? Are you sure with no take-backs you don’t need an undo? Do you want to notify anyone when it’s deleted? One email per request or per event? Do you have designs for that email? No? Of course not. And what do you want the UI to look like? If I “just put a button somewhere” we both know you won’t like it. Give me details or that blank check in writing.)

At some point sit down and make code changes to do the thing. Change the backend server code to accept your new request. Write automated tests. Change the frontend to make the request. Write more tests. Manually bang on it. Probably realize some requirements were missed (you guys know there’s a permissions system, right? I hooked this up to the existing can-delete permission. What do you mean CS doesn’t use permissions? You made them all superusers??)

Manually bang on it a little. Deploy it to dev or some non-production environment. Have product and other stakeholders look at it and sign off. Probably get feedback and either implement it, or convince them to do it “later” (or: never, because they’ll forget and it’s not actually important).

Get code approval from other engineers. Make changes as needed.

Merge and deploy. Verify in production.

Meanwhile, do code reviews for other people’s work. Context switch. Feels bad. Other guy is working on a progress report tool that’s in a whole other part of the code, so every time you look at it it’s a shifting of brain gears.

Also look at dependabot for libraries that need updating. Read release notes. Make changes if needed. Test. Pray.

Also periodic meetings to go over work in the backlog. A meeting to discuss how the team is doing that usually doesn’t produce results, but can be a vent session.

I imagine from the product owner it’s something like:

Get a mess of contradictory ideas from leadership. Try to figure out what they actually want and in what order. Manage their emotions because they have all the power and don’t like being told no or otherwise feeling bad.

Talk to customers and other users. Try to figure out what they want. They say things like “make it go faster” or “can you make the map bigger?”. There’s no map on the website.

Talk to engineering. They ask so many questions. Why can’t they just do the thing? They’re always going on about stuff that doesn’t seem important (like security and permissions and maintainability). This needs to go out Friday because the CEO wants it out.

Write tickets (a short document describing work to be done). People don’t read them. Or maybe don’t finish writing them, and leave a vague “as a user I want to be notified about changes to my project”, without specifying any details. (Notified how, Ryan??)

I don’t know what else they do.

Startups are a mess. Anyone who says they want to run the government like a startup should be banished from the land.

Oh maybe. I read that a long time ago but don’t remember the details anymore.

There was a book I read where the exorcism failed when the Christian guy tried to do it, but worked when the best friend sang their favorite song. It was corny but sweet. (I might be remembering it slightly wrong)

I don’t drive anymore because I live someplace with transit and sidewalks, but when I drove I always signalled turns. Low effort, high safety.

I had an argument about this with a friend once. I was saying if we just abolish the police, private enterprise will probably step in to fill the gap. I don’t want that. I don’t want amazon offering policing services (as part of Prime. vomit).

I think the police need to be split up into smaller institutions, and have a lot less murder powers.

Someone needs to address the “Someone broke into my house and stole my TV” problem, without a profit motive and with accountability.

There should be something to address “My neighbor is screaming at his wife and I think he’s hitting her” that doesn’t involve some low empathy assholes with guns rolling up to mock the woman.

I don’t know how to fix this.

The guys in those hypothetical lynch mobs are the cops today.

At least in this scenario you could get your buds and shoot back at the klan fuckers, maybe.

I looked it up, it’s $15 currently. Suburban NJ to Manhattan.

$15 is still kind of a lot when you’re a kid

Part of why I moved to the city was wanting to escape the car based nightmare of the suburbs. Couldn’t do much of anything without a car or an extremely risky walk.

I could have walked a mile to the train station with no sidewalks , and then paid $20 for a ticket into the city on a train that stops at like 10pm, but all of that sucks. I stayed inside and played a lot of video games.

Can also get an emulator and enjoy all the classics of yore. Chronotrigger holds up, for example

People are kind of stupid and lazy, and if there’s no immediate benefit for doing something or punishment for skipping it, they’ll do whatever’s easiest. We’re all like this to some degree, in some contexts or other.

It is a little funny to me that some people just don’t have professional standards. I would make a good faith effort to respond completely to a work email because that’s the job. But I don’t think that’s it for a lot of people.

There’s a lot of ADHD and friends in the world, and a lot of it is untreated. They’re not skipping questions out of malice. They’re probably trying their best. Still failing, but trying. That counts for something.

A lot of people also don’t read well. They won’t likely show up on a texty medium like this, but they’re out there. It may be uncomfortable and embarrassing for them to try to read your email, especially if the level of diction is high and the vocabulary extensive. Most people are emotionally kind of fragile, and won’t put up with that shame for very long. I think that’s why a lot of people want to hop on a call or have a meeting when it could’ve just been an email. They can talk fine, but communicating in written words is harder.