Without curly braces it is simpler to mess up if you revisit the code, maybe especially adding ambiguous else conditions.
I'm sure you and the GP would never forget to add curly braces when inserting an else, but the junior developer who comes afterwards might, and it's just not a huge deal to have the braces because it's two extra chars.
Quite frankly the Linux kernel coding style is wrong on this one in general, I guess we can assume they are experienced enough to put braces in when adding an else clause and so it's not going to cause them errors. But with junior devs it certainly could.
I definitely don't agree with everything in that style guide either, but I can respect it. I think what I like the most is that it's non-judgmental (or when it is judgmental it is clearly sarcasm). It has nice blurbs like "Please at least consider the points made here." - which is the right attitude for a style guide.
That is really interesting. If it's not too much trouble to write out, could you explain what causes the latency difference between kernel wake-up and other thread wake-up?
Paul Turner explained this really well at this year's Linux Plumbers Conference. The whole talk is fantastic, but the explanation of what pron is describing in particular (and how it could be improved) starts around 8:39: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXuZi9aeGTw#t=519
I honestly don't know :) I was simply reporting my results experimenting with this (I'll try to write a blog post about it some time in the near future), so I'll defer to those with a deeper knowledge of the Linux kernel.
I have read that the Linux scheduler exploits some heuristics if it can guess how soon a blocked thread will need to be woken up, so this might have something to do with that.
I am having an incredibly difficult time understanding why int-or-string cards are desirable also. You'd end up with multiple functions like heartsGameCardValue and euchreGameCardValue but with int cards you need to write the same thing and without a type system to catch errors. If it was truly simpler to reason in terms of int, you could also do a cardIntegerRepresentation function and it would add very little length to the codebase.
I once read an interesting article on how OkCupid was doing question weighting wrong because people would mark matching on factual questions (like, "What is the largest of these? A. Elephant B. Whale C. The Moon") as being absolutely vital to get correct. People would then end up with like 90%+ matches with others they would not really get along with, just because of the ridiculous weighting on those questions–it became a matching system more like, "who has answered the same questions as I?"
This is the first time I have seen it. I like it, I see it as an antonym to whatever we call those "top ten weird science facts" posts. It signals that here is an author who is trying to take me seriously.
If the free market ensured that all people were given a wage that adequately reflected their value, the bottom 40% of earners would be getting more than 10% of the income.
Bill Gates paid 30 cents of every dollar in exchange for access to an educated and healthy workforce, use of the interstates for shipping, use of the police and military for protection, and use of a contract law system. Microsoft then abused its wealth to "embrace, extend, extinguish;" which is sort of a perfect illustration of how consolidating lots of money gives totally unbalanced market advantages to a few entities.
> Bill Gates paid 30 cents of every dollar in exchange for access to an educated and healthy workforce, use of the interstates for shipping, use of the police and military for protection, and use of a contract law system.
You make it sound as though it's a willful transaction between two parties. Yes, taxes go to those things, but it's compulsory. If I don't like Microsoft I can choose not to buy their products. If I don't like the NSA or CIA torture tactics, I can't opt out of their services. BIG difference.
Right? But the GP was asserting minimum wage is a willful transaction also. Actually if the laborers don't like their minimum wage, they cannot opt out of it either, they need to eat, pay for housing, and get medical insurance from somewhere.
It's absurd to me that someone would assert that Bill Gates is being dominated by paying taxes whereas these other people are somehow not being dominated by accepting a low wage in the same system.
Also Bill Gates has the resources to change citizenship if he thinks there's a better deal elsewhere. Many of these other people would not be financially able to move to another country and work there legally. So it's definitely more willful for him than for the minimum wage workforce.
They can't opt out of minimum wage because there are laws, not because it's otherwise coerced.
There are compelling arguments in favor of abolishing the minimum wage, just as there are compelling arguments in favor of increasing it. Neither position is necessarily wrong, and each requires making trade-offs for the other, but either way, the imposition of a minimum wage is not voluntary to those upon which it is imposed.
> They can't opt out of minimum wage because there are laws, not because it's otherwise coerced.
You missed the point. Let's get rid of the minimum wage. Suppose Alex is looking for a job, but all the jobs they can find that will hire them pay less than what they think is fair. Does Alex have a choice? No; if they doesn't get a job they will starve and die.
The point I made was that workers can't opt out of it because that would be illegal. There are, I'm certainly, many who are starving that would otherwise be thrilled to earn $4 an hour, but they can't. There are also a myriad of scenarios wherein paying someone less than the minimum wage doesn't mean that they starve and die. The minimum wage prevents those earners from finding a place in the market. Even further, there are a myriad of people who are thriving while currently sell their work for less than minimum wage, but they simply disguise the tasks as 'firm fixed bids' or 'flat rate bids' against a projected contract.
I acknowledge that there are bad actors in the system, namely Wal-Mart, who I'm guessing would be happy to pay workers as little as they possibly could, regardless of the burdens it imposed on them (I say because I believe their union-busting activities were unethical, not because I in any way despise their pay practices as they currently exist), but for the most part, a free exchange helps small business compete against bigger business.
In summation, hamstringing employers and employees is unnecessary. It's a shame, because in the tech community, we've already seen the value of a less-regulated workforce with things like oDesk and such. Companies who just need a Wordpress site are free to hire from oDesk, and will likely receive bids in the sub-$50 range which, in a more traditional arrangement, would violate labor laws. Similarly, we've seen it illustrated that those bottom-end producers aren't necessarily cannibalizing sales from up-market producers, as they're able to better distinguish themselves through marketability, experience and references. The artificial pay barrier we've imposed prevents many of the existing low-skill earners from getting experience and/or transitioning into higher-skill earners.
I think you and the GP (or whatever) are talking past each other. Their original point was that it's essentially impossible for a person to opt out of the labor market, because without money they can't buy food and will starve to death. This is true regardless of any kind of minimum wage laws.
Holy cow. With that mentioned, my re-reading of the GP and your prior comments make me wonder how I missed it at all. I remember replying to you before, then editing my reply after realizing that we seemed to be in disagreement, while my original apply had assumed agreement, then editing again to just reiterate my point, with no idea whether we agreed or disagreed.
That clears things up completely. Thank you for the clarification, and apologies for the confusion.
Completely agree. To be fair, every government of major superpower also pursues the same policies of "embrace, extend, extinguish;", including ours, the US Government.
I just wanted to write that I like the iOS platform and devices when jailbroken, but I am also sick of their walled garden bullshit. So, cheers for standing up for your principles over your convenience, it takes a strong person to do so.
For many people the restrictions protect them from installing malware, and is a huge benefit. For the majority of us reading, I think we know enough to not install weird applications and the restrictions are incredibly burdensome.
I wish we'd collectively only buy things where the root exploit was like ticking an "I want root" checkbox. If buyers collectivized their buying power we wouldn't need to worry about "down the line" companies would release it with root or the product would fail.
Sigh. While I'm at it, I'd also like a sack full of hundreds and a unicorn.
I look at it this way: if enough people wanted that checkbox to move the needle in the market, then my skillset that a lot of employers find extremely valuable would probably be a lot more common and hence less valuable.
