If no one checks their dependencies, the solution is to centralize this responsibility at the package repository. Something like left-pad should simply not be admitted to npm. Enforce a set of stricter rules which only allow non-trivial packages maintained by someone who is clearly accountable.

Another change one could make is develop bigger standard libraries with all the utilities which are useful. For example in Rust there are a few de facto standard packages one needs very often, which then also force you to pull in a bunch of transitive dependencies. Those could also be part of the standard library.

This all amounts to increasing the minimal scope of useful functionality a package has to have to be admitted and increasing accountability of the people maintaining them. This obviously comes with more effort on the maintainers part, but hey maybe we could even pay them for their labor.

I don't disagree.

I'm arguing that it ought not to be a polite lie if there are people whose mental makeup is better suited to a gender expression not corresponding to their sex, who then inhabit that different role in everyday life. I frankly don't get your assertion that this cannot happen, as there exist people for whom this is reality right now (in part because they are simply not easily identifyable as trans).

> young people are mutilating themselves and crippling themselves irreversibly by using hormones

My understanding is that the worst side-effect of using hormones is infertility, while surgery comes with more risks.

Anyway, it's about trading off mental anguish against possible complications of medical intervention. Where is the problem here? People do cosmetic surgeries for similar, if not more vain, reasons.

> when doctors try to treat these people correctly, according to their true nature (sex), trans activists have attacked the doctors calling it "misgendering"

Trying to ignore the reality that ones body is different in medical contexts would be indeed harmful. If this kind of activism exists, I do not condone it. I imagine that treating a trans person does not boil down to treating them like a cis person of their sex however, as hormone replacement causes a bunch of differences.

The trans-ness some people experience is extremely general and durable, far more consistent with the explanation that they innately are their gender somehow[^1], than with choice or psychosis. Some people feel pressured by this to, despite all the societal dis-incentives, medically transition. They then are not only their gender in behavior and reported experience, but also physically (with the exception of some hard-to-change stuff such as fertility).

We usually handle such general, durable "personal delusions" by accepting them. If I studied some math for years, can do said math and am employed at my local university doing mathematics, I am a mathematician. I do not have delusions of being a mathematician. If I move to, say Germany, and after years speak the language, have children there, participate in the local culture, and have a citicenship I am now German. Only the most backward people would say I have delusions of being German. Although, this cultural rigidity of course exists, I do not see it as desirable. An advanced society should accept and accomodate its outliers instead of steamrolling over them and making them suffer.

[^1]: Afaik currently a neuroscientific explanation is not forthcoming

Rather, I'm arguing the underlying motivation for creating these categories was and is a sociological one. Why carve out womens sports, as opposed to short peoples sports, low testosterone sports (or other categories which would be similarly disadvantaged)?

The only reason people pay attention to sex here is sociological, i.e. because of gender. This implies that the admissions criteria do not automatically have to follow these strict biological lines -- and I see little reason to enforce them this strictly now. Why exclude trans people and why make yourself a headache trying to classify e.g. intersex people?

More of an aside: a society which fully accepted trans women as women would think looking at the biological markers you're looking at is complete nonsense. Suggesting trans women should be banned would be as ludicrous as suggesting all women with a specific gene which might increase your chances of winning should be banned.

People caring about this issue in sports now and changing the objective admission criteria to exclude them is a political phenomenon more than anything else.

That the criteria for admission are altered now to exclude some of them is motivated by anti-trans politics. Usually such rule changes are made when it becomes obvious that the old rules cause outcomes which go against the spirit of the sport. You cannot argue this here in good faith. There are not a lot of trans women competing and none have even won anything afaik.

Helping the vulnerable should not involve that. If your only idea on how to help the vulnerable involves that, think of better ideas.

[0]: https://man.archlinux.org/man/tc-netem.8.en

In my mind, the internal perspective might be useful to jot down when doing the analysis, but is too noisy to be useful to disseminate.

Having a lot of specifics about a programming environment memorized for example used to be the difference between building something in a few hours and a week, but now is pretty unimportant. Same with being able to do some quick data wrangling on the command line. LLMs are also good at parsing a lot of code or even binary format quickly and explaining how it works. That used to be a skill. Knowing a toolbox of technologies to use is needed less. Et cetera.

They haven't come for the meat of what makes a good engineer yet. For example, the systems-level interfacing with external needs and solving those pragmatically is still hard. But the tide is rising.

The resources to learn how to construct software are already free. However learning requires effort, which made learning to build software an opportunity to climb the ladder and build a better life through skill. This is democratization.

Now the skill needed to build software is starting to approach zero. However as you say you can throw money at an AI corporation to get some amount of software built. So the differentiator is capital, which can buy software rather cheaply. The dependency on skill is lessened greatly and software is becoming worthless, so another avenue to escape poverty through skill closes.

Why go to the gym if you don't need physical strength? One needs to do something to not degenerate into a miserable state.