Exactly. A simpler way of doing something which is already not that challenging, adding some functionality that is not so great.
It seems pretty unexciting overall and switching is not that compelling, since it requires more typing most of the times and the old formatting is not going anywhere any time soon.
Explicit is better than implicit. We have a lot of older format strings (from before .format()) that look like this:
"%s %s: Caught %s in %s (%s)"
As compared to:
"{date} {processname}: Caught {except_type} in {func} ({module})"
It's more typing, sure, but it's more typing once, and it makes it extremely obvious what the string is going to look like and what each field is without having to read the arguments.
Then using named parameters means you can easily see what's supposed to be what:
Lastly, it lets you make quick modifications to strings without having to deal with inserting it at the correct place in a format string of 10 items. You can add in a new field in the middle, at the start, or both, and be able to just add newfield=var at the end of the format() call without having to insert it the correct spot, or in multiple places. Also, removing variables from the format string and not from the parameter list which removes a class of subtle, annoying bugs that tend to be caught after deployment.
If you're looking for some major revolution as to why this is the demonstrably better choice and will revolutionize how you put strings together, you won't find it. What this offers is a lot of power, convenience, readability, and maintainability in exchange for a negligible increase in typing.
Out of that post I got the feeling of an unhealthy obsession with being promoted, being promoted quickly, being recognised as excellent, nothing less-than-excellent on his review, complaining burn-out (really?).
I probably would have had a hard time dealing with what seems to be a youth with a big ego, with a needing behaviour, no idea of how to behave himself and how to balance life and work.
I get it, he was young, still, not the type of person I'd ever want to hire.
unhealthy obsession with being promoted, being promoted quickly, being recognised as excellent, nothing less-than-excellent on his review
That is the mentality the Microsoft metrics-driven management is supposed to encourage. You have to get promoted to be recognised. You have to be seen as better than those around you to avoid being cut in the stack ranking.
Yes, absolutely. Once you stop getting promoted at Microsoft, management is conditioned to look at you as dead wood. I was there for nearly 10 years and had good coaching through 5 promotions. One of the things that was kind of nice about the system is that my managers were always really good at spelling out exactly what was going to be expected of me in order to reach the next level. Unfortunately, the requirements just keep ratcheting up, and I got to the point where what my manager laid out as the next set of requirements was simply never going to happen. I wasn't interested in putting in ever-increasing effort and taking on ever-increasing responsibilities. This is when he explained to me that if you just decide to be happy where you are, Microsoft basically starts to lose interest in you and you get the shaft in the stack-ranking. So I left.
"Up or out" makes sense for the military or a law firm or accounting firm. When a software company does it, then it's just needlessly churning employees.
Of course, Microsoft always has plenty of recent college graduates eagerly applying every year, so there always are replacements.
It blows my mind how you can enjoy the company of an animal and then not only eat them -- somewhat understandable as we need to eat to stay alive -- but... encouraging their ritual slaughtering? I'm speechless.
Not only "ritual" and "slaughtering" are words that should give goosebumps when used together, but even encouraging it, when you don't even believe in that barbaric procedure, it's frankly inhumane.
I don't think that the ritual slaughter of islam and conventional slaughter are different enough for the line between barbaric and non-barbaric to coincidentally somehow end up right between them.
As for slaughtering an animal that you've enjoyed the company of, I'm not sure how it is any worse than slaughtering an animal you didn't enjoy the company of. The former will give you a more intimate understanding of the impact your eating habits have, if anything.
My grandparents retired in Australia to a shoreside community with a golf course and Women's Circle. They stood it for about six months and then dropped out to become smallholders.
My grandmother was utterly sentimental; they always kept a calf, which was always called Bully, which was slaughtered after a year or so. She was quite capable of chomping though a steak while saying 'Bully was such a lovely calf that year'...
They did, however, tell stories (possibly true) about another couple of smallholders down the road who could never bear to slaughter their own pigs. So what they'd do was swap.
These days we are completely out of touch with where our food comes from.
The only civil reply to my comment above. We may not share the same opinion, but I appreciate your considerate response. My post above probably came out too harsh, that was unintended.
> I don't think that the ritual slaughter of islam and conventional slaughter are different enough for the line between barbaric and non-barbaric to coincidentally somehow end up right between them.
> As for slaughtering an animal that you've enjoyed the company of, I'm not sure how it is any worse than slaughtering an animal you didn't enjoy the company of.
If you actually believe that which you're saying, you'd have no problem slaughtering your dog.
Islamic ritual slaughter explicitly does not involve blunt force or death from falling. The animal is killed not by hacking, sawing or jumping at its throat, but by making a single clean cut at it with a non-serrated blade, which is not to be shown to the animal.
I'm really not trying to make a true scotsman argument here, but unnecessarily brutal treatment of animals is prevalent through the whole meat industry and sadly can't be pinned down to a particular religious practice or tradition.
I personally believe that this is an inherent problem of the industry. I think that repetitively performing these jobs hundreds of times a day requires that you have absolutely no emotional investment in the animals. Add to that otherwise stressful conditions, and you have to take care not to develop sadistic tendencies and loathing of the animals.
> If you actually believe that which you're saying, you'd have no problem slaughtering your dog.
I'd have a problem slaughtering my dog, but that's besides the point. I just don't believe that it would somehow be less humane than slaughtering some other animal. In fact, if I were to slaughter my dog, I'd probably take extra care to do it in the most humane way possible.
I totally hear your heart behind these posts. See my other response to you.
This isn't really a binary situation; we were friendly with our goats, but our dogs were practically members of the family.
Having said that, I'd have no trouble raising dogs for food if it made sense, and if we liked the way dog tastes, which we don't. Which has all kinds of cultural relevance.
I'll let the other responses to your comment, for the most part, speak for my thoughts as well. To that I will add:
I have always felt slightly conflicted about killing another living thing to eat it. But, if we are going to eat meat, I think there is some value in seeing where it comes from.
As far as the animals end, I always ensured the animal was eating some of its favourite feed, out by itself, when I shot it in the brain, top to bottom, with a .30-06. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1903_Springfield)
I'd argue that there's no easier way to die; the animal feels nothing. Though the shooter has something of a mess to deal with.
People often forget to mention that Venice is car-less. It was one of the most relaxing and unique things about the city to me and not a single person mentioned it to me before I visited.
I don't know about your country, but genetic screening / testing is something you need to ask for, not something that happens as a by-product of a CT scan.
If you worry that much about a false positive, I'm sorry for you, but you have no idea how much worse things may get. Many people don't get to complain about a false positive!
Stressing and worrying are both several orders of magnitude better than suffering and dying.
In the context of full body scanning: false positives include spots on the lung.
So now you have someone who thinks they have might lung cancer, when in fact they probably have almost harmless scars from chicken pox.
But what do you do if you think you have lung cancer? Do you go and get biopsies? The stress from that result is significant and shouldn't be dismissed as something trivial.
Of course you're right, but there's a misunderstanding there.
My point is people who went through the experience of having test results compatible with cancer and then discover it is just a false positive (which technically it's not even true, there's no cancer diagnosis before a biopsy, it just can't be excluded), well, these very people seem to speak out against screening, or adopting more extensive screening policies, because they had a "false positive", and "it's stressful".
I am pretty sure all the people whose lives were saved by screening find that pretty selfish.
I think you're misunderstanding something. This has nothing to do with selfishness -- you're only really considering the upside.
The harm/good ratio of screening depends crucially of the false positive/negative ratio vs. the actual prevalence of the condition or disease being screened for. (Plus, obviously the psychological/medical "cost" of a false negative/positive.) I would recommend the talk at [1]. This particular issue is brought up about midway through the video, but I recommend watching the whole thing.
Exactly. A simpler way of doing something which is already not that challenging, adding some functionality that is not so great.
It seems pretty unexciting overall and switching is not that compelling, since it requires more typing most of the times and the old formatting is not going anywhere any time soon.