Solving shtoopid problems

There is a kind of programming trap I occasionally fall into that is so damn irritating that it needs a name. The task is easy to specify and apparently easy to write tests for. The code can be instrumented so that you can see exactly what is going on during every run. You think you… Continue reading Solving shtoopid problems

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Hacker culture and the politics of process defense

In my last two blog posts, on the attempted hijack of the Lerna license and speech suppression in the Python documentation, I have both urged the hacker culture to stay out of political issues and urged what some people will interpret as “political” stance with regard to political correctness and “diversity”-driven speech demands. The expected… Continue reading Hacker culture and the politics of process defense

Slaves to speech suppression are masters of nothing

Comes the news that the Python project has merged a request to partially eliminate the terms “master” and “slave” from its documentation on “diversity” grounds. Sensibly, Guido van Rossum at least refused to sever the project from uses of those terms in documentation of the underlying Unix APIs. I wish Guido had gone further and… Continue reading Slaves to speech suppression are masters of nothing