• 4 Posts
  • 59 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Type hints are usually great, as long as they’re kept up to date and the IDE interprets them correctly. Recently I’ve had some problems with PyCharm acting up and insisting that matplotlib doesn’t accept numpy arrays, leading me to just disable the type checker altogether.

    All in all, I’m a bit divided on type hints, because I’m unsure whether I think the (huge) value added from correct type hints outweighs the frustration I’ve experienced from incorrect type hints. Per now I’m leaning towards “type hints are good, as long as you never blindly trust them and only treat them as a coarse indicator of what some dev thought at some point.”


  • I write a lot of Python. I hate it when people use “X is more pythonic” as some kind of argument for what is a better solution to a problem. I also have a hang up with people acting like python has any form of type safety, instead of just embracing duck typing.This lands us at the following:

    The article states that “you can check a list for emptiness in two ways: if not mylist or if len(mylist) == 0”. Already here, a fundamental mistake has been made: You don’t know (and shouldn’t care) whether mylist is a list. These two checks are not different ways of doing the same thing, but two different checks altogether. The first checks whether the object is “falsey” and the second checks whether the object has a well defined length that is zero. These are two completely different checks, which often (but far from always) overlap. Embrace the duck type- type safe python is a myth.



  • I don’t mean to say that C++ is in any way without faults. If performance is crucial, that can definitely be a reason to forgo some of the guard-rails, and then you’re on your own.

    I guess my issue with the “C++ is unsafe”-trope, is that it usually (in my experience) comes from people not having heard of all the guard-rails in the first place, or refusing to use them when appropriate. They write C++ as if they were writing C, and then complain that the language is unsafe when they’ve made a mistake that is easily avoided using stl-containers.



  • As I said: There are tools in place in modern C++ that are designed to catch the errors you make. If you are using a raw pointer when you could have used a reference, or accessing an array without range checking, those are choices you’ve made. They may be valid choices in your use-case, but don’t go complaining that the language is “unsafe” when it gives you the option to code with guard rails and you choose to forgo them.






  • I agree with the sentiment that different roles have different specific requirements- a tank driver doesn’t need to be as strong or fast as an infantryman. However, there are some base requirements that apply to all front-line troops. No matter your role, if you are expected to see combat, you need to be at a certain level with regards to weapons handling, but also physical strength and endurance. Even a tank driver, medic or radio operator may need to fire a gun, carry wounded, or help push a jeep upright.

    Still, I agree that there are different requirements for different specialities, and definitely think it is a good idea to have different requirements for these in the selection process. However, I can’t see a compelling argument saying that the base requirements for male and female tank drivers, medics, infantry, etc. should be different. I think the tank crew is an especially good example here, because research on Norwegian soldiers has indicated that women are (on average) better suited to this role, because they are often better at handling high cognitive load while exhausted. Putting the same requirements for everyone, with requirements tuned to the specialisation, could very well lead to more women in certain roles.

    Of course, for your second point, I think that falls under the category of “everything is bad if poorly implemented”. I definitely agree that it’s a bad idea to place very hard baseline physical requirements for all roles. That means the military will lose out on highly capable medics, tank crews, radio operators, etc. both male and female. But as you say, more of the capable people lost will be women, simply because of biology. However, I think that’s more a question about how requirements for the military should be implemented, and not really a question of “should we place the same requirements on men and women in the same role?” to which I think, on general grounds, the answer should be yes.

    To be clear - I have no doubts that the people pushing this in the current administration intend to leverage it to push highly capable women out of roles they are more than capable of filling, and that’s an unambiguously bad thing.


  • Ok, so this guy is a known misogynist, and is likely to twist this into something that gives women an objective disadvantage. With that said, I want to ask what makes people opposed to the idea of actually gender-neutral physical requirements for military positions.

    Personally, I served in the Norwegian army alongside a bunch of very capable women. I think women in the army bring a big positive contribution. There’s even research suggesting that women are better suited than men for certain combat roles. With that established, is it not fair to require that a woman in the infantry is capable of carrying the same kit, or wounded partner, as her male counterparts? I’ve done my fair share of ammo runs, and the women in my platoon carried just as heavy shells as the men. If they hadn’t been capable of that, I would say they simply weren’t qualified for the job.

    I don’t know what current requirements are in the US military. What I’m questioning is why so many people here seem opposed to the idea that anyone in a physically demanding role meets the same base criteria?


  • In general I agree with this sentiment, but let’s be honest and remember that a lot of jobs are of the type “you are responsible for X, regardless of what time of day it is”. In a reasonable place, that of course comes with the benefit that you can take time off whenever you want as long as X is handled, but I actually prefer the freedom/responsibility trade off of needing to handle shit in the weekends when required, but also being able to not come in to work when I know stuff is running as it should.


  • I use LinkedIn fire the sole purpose of promoting my research and the FOSS projects I work on, with the hope that if the right people see it, it can help what I do make a positive impact.

    In that case, high engagement means more people see my stuff, which means a higher likelihood of the right people seeing it.

    However, I’m sharing stuff that I actually hope is useful to someone out there. For people just circlejerking it’s just for the ego boost.


  • Not something I’ve thought about before, but if anything, the Kursk incursion showed russia that they have to respond seriously to Ukraine crossing the border and move in a lot of troops and equipment.

    This means that when Ukraine does something like this, russia is forced to respond in force, and move a lot of gear around. With the current state of russian equipment and the drone war, moving a lot of equipment is likely to result in quite a few losses, both because of wear and stuff breaking down on its own, and because concentrations of gear and troops on the move are prime targets for Ukrainian drones.