Code style is one thing - formatting that is - but there's others like how features are implemented tend to change over time and with different developers as well, which is difficult to automatically test and hard to keep in line except with good code reviews, but for that to work you already need to install a culture of consistency, which also means that innovation may be stifled and developers demotivated (e.g. because the better solution requires the 100 existing solutions to be rewritten, which is too expensive or requires a whole team to be blocked until it's done).

Consistency trumps a lot of things IMO, but not everyone is on board with that... myself included, I'm guilty of breaking with my own consistency all the time.

I mean on paper they're a good idea and well implemented etc. However, the main two flaws with exceptions are that one, most exceptions are not exceptional situations, and two, exceptions are too expensive for dealing with issues that aren't exceptional like that.

I'm reading in it that experienced developers (be it overall or in a specific codebase) "know" all the ins and outs, types, conventions etc, whereas less experienced people cannot yet know all of that; being able to lean on good types and / or other types of automated checks helps them make more confident changes.

Less experienced devs iterate on something until it looks like it works, not realizing the footguns they may have embedded. Static typing removes some footguns and provides documentation for the next unfortunate soul to look at this code.

Thing is, you can care for the craft, but let the code style and linting tools do what they do best and don't stress over them. Code reviews are better now that there's tooling that automatically checks for, fixes, or marks common issues like code style so the reviewer doesn't have to do anything with them.

That is, I'd argue the "stressing" is not about what these tools check, but about the tools and their configuration itself. Just go with all the defaults and focus on bigger issues.

This is a truth that's easily overlooked; most languages are several levels beyond basic types to the point that people forget about the low level constructs involved. This is one reason why I like Go, it exposes and educates on fairly low-level mechanisms that are not unfamiliar to anyone who's studied computer science, but at the same time you don't have to worry too much about the lower level stuff like memory, pointers, zeroing, etc. I think it's a good tradeoff.

HN is not primarily a news site though, despite the name.

Supposed to, but the consequences for not doing so are... overly complicated, see the various impeachments and court cases he's already had and defeated.

The bounds and laws should have been finetuned long ago, reducing the power of the President on the one side, and reforming the government to be more representative instead of a two party Us vs Them system. But that is also a democratic process and neither side has had a majority or incentive to do so.

Totally agree that there have been several past failures to reinforce the system and make it less of a good faith / handshake agreement to keep it on the rails.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't speak up and call bullshit on what's happening. It's important to call it what it is. It's important to speak up.

From someone who has seen banana republics - you are not speaking up with the self awareness required.

The way things are going, speaking up can EASILY mean going to jail within a few months.

You should STILL speak up. Acknowledge that potetnial risk, respect people, and ask of it all the same.

Probably should tell people to clean their HN accounts if they elect not to risk themselves.

Yep. As stated elsewhere in this thread, I understand that I am taking on risk by speaking up.

It's the right thing to do. Every one of us that does creates opportunities for others to do the same.

We're running towards fascism. We must fight back.

In which case I take back what I said. My bad.

Nobody is denying that the US budget / finances are in dire need of cleaning up, but the approach taken is a hostile and forced takeover of essentials like foreign aid, education, medicaid, etc. People will die because of this approach and its short sightedness will have a bigger negative impact on the US economy and international relationships than it will gain them from reduced costs.

> In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That's all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had was...right this way! Into the internment camps.

> Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most...their government took them away. and rights aren't rights if someone can take em away. They're priveledges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY priviledges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list get's shorter, and shorter, and shorter.

George Carlin, years ago. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1242679-boy-everyone-in-thi...

I don't know if there was intent behind it, but during and after WW2 the nazis and ww2-era Germans were depicted as textbook villains, in media, documentaries, school books, etc, but they did so in a dehumanizing fashion, as in, there were only a few named individuals (Hitler, Goebels, Göring, etc), but a generalised and unified "Them". Which made them completely unrelatable to those that weren't "them", which also opened people up for sleepwalking into facism - as long as they don't look too much like "them", and only when "they" got into power did their true colours reveal, including the caricature of Musk doing a nazi salute. I mean he didn't need to do that, and for the facist takeover it would've been better if he didn't because there's now a strong correlation between the two, but he did at the moment it was too late.

I mean it wasn't and isn't too late of course, that's defeatism, people can quickly be removed from power once people get their act together. Jan 6 proved that, and that was a fairly unorganized mob with only a handful actually prepared to arrest / kidnap or do worse to the congresspeople (thinking of the one guy with the tie wraps).