https://dl.acm.org/action/showFmPdf?doi=10.1145%2F1012443 for the original, or https://realmensch.org/2017/08/25/the-parable-of-the-two-pro... for a reprint.

I took a contrary position in a debate just to spark a deeper discussion. Which it has. I didn’t say I believed this.

I purposely took a contrary position in a debate just to spark a deeper discussion. Glad it has done that.

This is from the person who wrote the original article on Emacs.

We have such a huge mental / moral block on the idea of using nukes, but we're willing to do a lot of other very horrible things to others. Things like cluster bombs, mines, poison gas, biological weapons, drones, etc.

Is there really anything about them that's bad? Or any worse than other things?

If you get rid of the "It's really bad to use nukes of any kind" implied rule, is it really surprising it's considered a reasonable strategy?

You realize that someone who was 18 when the Mac was first released would be 60 now?

I started tracked the walks using the CityStrides website which made it into a fun challenge. CityStrides lets you mark off streets in a city as "completed" once you've hit all the points on the street according to OpenStreetMap data. The goal being, if you so choose, to visit every street in your town.

I did manage to make 100% of all streets in my town - 300 some miles total? It's a really nice way to get out and about while learning more about where you live.

[1] https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_11312...

I'm interpreting that bit from Railway's blog to mean it wasn't just them that was impacted.

The 1962 Columbus Day Storm [1] fell 11.2 billion board feet of timber, which flooded the market and initiated heavy overseas demand. Exports peaked in the 80's. But when the export levels fell and old growth timber became more scarce, local economies of exporting regions took a big hit. The port of Coos Bay for example had a big downturn with lumber being the primary cargo of ships. Coos Bay is the only deep-water coastal harbor in Oregon and the largest between San Francisco and the Puget Sound.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day_storm_of_1962

I like one of the introductory sentences where he says, "I am a strange person who has had a strange life, even relative to that of my strange and high achieving peers here."

To me it's a little bit like, "I love these new cellphones but I'm keeping it in airplane mode all the time because I don't want it online"

I mean what's the point of buying a new car if you're going to cripple features that are so much better because it's connected? Sure, use CarPlay or such, but to say forever end things like over the air software updates? Anything to prevent Kia from theoretically detecting sexual activity I suppose [1].

Just buy an old car. Or convert a classic into an EV [2].

There are A LOT of things in our lives that can be completely torn apart if one wants to. Glass is a vastly inferior window covering. Do you know how easy it breaks, and people can just look into it.

1 If you ask me, there's a whole whitepaper to be written about how to detect sexual activity in a Kia.

2 https://www.bugeyeguys.com/category/electric-bugeye/

There was unfortunately no Q&A in the lecture, as probably the one question I would have asked him was this: What if the Luddites had gotten their way? What do you imagine our society and world would be like right now?

It's not meant to be a trick question or a "gotcha" question. Society would indeed have been different. Maybe it would be all wonderfully Star Trek utopia and we'd have found a win-win for everyone. Or maybe we'd just be not nearly as technically advanced as a society as we are now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ6aiVg2qVk

But if it's a diversity of things (that use or leverage software development) then you probably have a lifetime career ahead of you.

I've been writing software for over 40 years but I've never seen myself as having a software engineering career. I've been a research assistant in geophysics, a marine technician on research ships, a game developer, an advisor to the UN, and a lot more. Yes all through that I used software, but I did a lot of other things in the process of using it.

Well now it works. I swear it didn't work before. Oh well anyway here's the link...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfa_lights