If you don't want version control, then that's your choice, but admit it (ideally out loud for others to hear, but failing that then at least to yourself) that that's what you're about.

no

Maybe this is just a regional thing, but something I really began to notice several years ago is that (a) what Jamie is saying is true, but (b) it's evident that people actually love the unfalsifiability aspect of non-concrete claims—it's safe refuge that they actively seek out.

Two opposing examples from real life that particularly stuck out: * "Slow down. [You're going too fast.]" * "[...] since you always take so long"

(These were two different instances/contexts with, I think, a year+ in between them; it wasn't the contrast between them that made me notice the phenomenon. Rather, I recognized each one at the time as being part of this phenomenon. They just serve as good examples because of how easily they could be made concrete—and therefore falsified in light of the facts: "without defining exactly what 'too fast' means, what is an acceptable speed?", "without defining what it means to take too long, what is an acceptable amount of time to take?"—both arising from wholly disingenuous complaints that were forms of externalized gut reactions rather than anything that would hold up under scrutiny...)

Right. If there are two ways to take a statement, one which is absurd because it's inconsistent with actual fact and another which isn't, it's a bad idea to make an argument that hinges on it being the former—that would mean you're insisting on an absurdity.

Example of focusing on your weakest critics and choosing not to confront the strong arguments against your position.

contradicted later

In that case: great! no problem, then—just use the original wording, since by your own argument they are not significantly different; the original is sufficient.

Obnoxious.

As someone recently pointed out on HN, it's very common nowadays to encounter the no-one-knows-else-what-they're-doing-here refrain as cover—I don't have to feel insecure about not understanding this because not only am I not alone, nobody else understands it either.

Secondly, if your code is hard to understand regarding its use of this, then your code his hard to understand. this isn't super easy, but it's also not hard. Your code (or the code you're being made to wade into) probably just sucks. The this confusion is making you confront it, though, instead of letting it otherwise fly under the radar.* So fix it and stop going in for the low-effort, this-centric clapter.

* Not claiming here that this is unique; there are allowed to be other things that work as the same sort of indicator.

This directly contradicts the earlier claim that irreducible complexity is the culprit behind the size of the node_modules directory.

35 MB → "a couple hundred kilobytes"? Clear evidence of not just reducibility but a case of actual reduction...

Yeah, why has this become so normalized? It's gotten to the point where people will respond to something by posting nothing but an attempt at false attribution by rewording the other—typically in the most convenient, pithy, hackneyed, and strawmannish way—and then putting quotes around it while drowning in plaudits from those who already agree—often for reasons no better than shameless tribal affiliation.

The basic precondition to summarizing the other's position in order to refute it is that the other side actually agrees that it's an accurate summary of their position. If you don't have that, then you don't have anything.

Hey, look, it's an actually good example of the "steep learning curve".

(I never understood why people insist that referring to it as a steep curve is wrong; clearly the decisions about your axes are going to have an impact on the thing. It seems that everyone who brings this up is insisting on laying out their graph the wrong way and implicitly arguing that other people need to take responsibility for it.)

I know people are really fond of this talking point, but it doesn't hold up.

if you come to work at my sandwich shop, and you show up every day to make sandwiches, and then payday comes and I stiff you, then I have definitely stolen from you.

The strongest retort to this is that this would be an instance of fraud, since in the sandwich shop we probably came to an agreement beforehand that I would pay you e.g. $15 per hour, but in the case of IP, this is incomparable because we never agreed to anything. This is pretty straightforwardly addressed by the observation that we live in a society where IP laws are in effect, so regardless of how any one person feels about IP in the abstract, we're all bound by the rules that are known at the outset. Because your decision as the creator to move forward and create the thing was predicated on an understanding that the rules are such as they are, then I actually do have an obligation to observe them just the same as my obligation not to stiff you for making my sandwiches. I don't get to start a game of Parcheesi with you under the pretense that we're going to play fair and then reveal midway through that I won't be governed by all the rules on basis that I don't believe that they're entirely justified. Fairness cannot follow from false pretense.

The one way that it would be fair would be if I made my position known from the beginning and then everyone agreed to play anyway under my augmented ruleset, but it's important to observe that the obligation lies with me. What this doesn't mean, in a society with IP laws, is that it would be sufficient for me to declare (e.g. in a manifesto posted to my blog, or in an Internet message board comment, or whispered into the night) that I don't agree with IP and then proceed to fill up on all the stuff that I'd like. What proceeding with my augmented Parcheesi ruleset looks like is disengaging from the society where IP law is in effect and moving to Russia or Shenzhen or the habitat I've set up on the edge of Schiaparelli crater.

Case study in equivocation.

The quote that begins about halfway through this trailer in full is, "He tells a lie, and people go to track this down, and by the time you've responded to that, he's told three others. It's a sheer exercise in fatigue."

Speaker is Jelani Cobb.