Doc Avid Mornington

Not actually a doctor.

  • 0 Posts
  • 149 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • At the (SQL) database level, if you are using null in any sane way, it means “this value exists but is unknown”. Conflating that with “this value does not exist” is very dangerous. JavaScript, the closest thing there is to a reference implementation for json serialization, drops attributes set to undefined, but preserves null. You seem to be insisting that null only means “explicit omission”, but that isn’t the case. Null means a variety of subtly different things in different contexts. It’s perfectly fine to explicitly define null and missing as equivalent in any given protocol, but assuming it is not.






  • It’s better to have useful comments. Long odds are that somebody who writes comments like this absolutely isn’t writing useful comments as well - in fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen it happen. Comments like this increase cognitive overhead when reading code. Sure, I’d be happy to accept ten BS useless comments in exchange for also getting one good one, but that’s not the tradeoff in reality - it’s always six hundred garbage lines of comment in exchange for nothing at all. This kind of commenting usually isn’t the dev’s fault, though - somebody has told a junior dev that they need to comment thoroughly, without any real guidelines, and they’re just trying not to get fired or whatever.



  • Pretty sure they meant to not have review. Dropping peer review in favor of pair programming is a trendy idea these days. Heh, you might call it “pairs over peers”. I don’t agree with it, though. Pair programming is great, but two people, heads together, can easily get on a wavelength and miss the same things. It’s always valuable to have people who have never seen the new changes take a look. Also, peer review helps keep the whole team up to date on their knowledge of the code base, a seriously underrated benefit. But I will concede that trading peer review for pair programming is less wrong than giving up version control. Still wrong, but a lot less wrong.








  • The UCC I went to every Sunday of my childhood (Dad was the minister, so kinda had to go) would have a loaf of really good fresh bread. Some was cut up in cubes, to take neatly, or you could pull a hunk off the loaf if you liked. One side of the drinks tray had grape juice, the other had wine, again, your choice, although obviously when I was young, I didn’t reach for the wine in front of my mom. Little tiny snack was the best part of church.


  • So, do you not think the principle of ensuring a justice doesn’t have to worry about their next gig is valuable, or do you think youthfulness is just more important?

    I think the court should be expanded, quite a lot. There is nothing magical or constitutional about the number nine. Congress could easily expand it to twenty, or fifty, or more while limiting justices by terms or age would require a constitutional amendment. Nothing says every justice has to sit on every case. A larger court would be significantly less prone to extremes, reducing the importance of individual nominations.



  • Democrats have pretty much been the same since Clinton, not really drifting right. Yes, Democratic centrism enables Republican extremism, but the neoliberal agenda of Democrats, regarding domestic economics and foreign affairs, has stayed pretty constant, while they have actually improved on social issues. Clinton or Obama would not have handled Israel’s recent actions differently, they might even have done worse. On domestic issues, Biden is probably the most progressive president since LBJ. Now, granted, that’s really a condemnation of American politics since then, more than it is praise of Biden - but still, we are finally moving in the right direction again, at least, and it’s important to acknowledge that, if we want it to continue.


  • STAR is ridiculously bad, it just has good marketing. It favors the preferences of voters who pick extremes, ranking everybody either a 1 or a 5 - likely the least informed and thoughtful voters - over voters who carefully weigh whether a candidate deserves 3 or 4 stars. Ranked choice is simple and effective, takes more granular voter preference into account, and provides runoff for each virtual round, rather than just the last. It also has a simple variant that works equally well for multi-seat elections.