Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313693

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

We update our model(s) so that it keeps being consistent and predictable to us (that’s human nature), but no model can be probably correct and complete.

It definitely takes a bit of discipline. The key layers are somewhat easy to manage—middleware, context processors, views, template tags—but I’ve seen some hairy lasagne further obscuring where the queries happen on top of that. A well-documented abstraction can be useful, but if it is possible to keep it simple and obvious then that’s the way to go.

(Third-party dependencies can further complicate things, but at least you can expect a library using ORM to be in the installed apps list.)

In the end it depends on whether one considers technological progress or human flourishing to be the end goal. Surprise—they are not always aligned, and sometimes are at odds with each other.

Furthermore, when it does come to typing speed, good old non-LLM-powered autocomplete does still exist, and offers less opportunity for subtle errors within otherwise plausibly looking blocks of code.

> People who are chronically unemployed always sort of become broken

The causal link may be unclear but I recall there was research showing that at different ages people decline faster once they retire. Sense of purpose is a real thing.

People have jobs because this is an organised way for us to provide value to other humans and give our lives meaning; a way for us to express ourselves; to earn money that puts food on the table and helps raise our children.

I am not sure you provide a counter-argument, IMO offering more people a way to earn money and do something useful (as opposed to delegating these duties to [generally foreign-made] equipment) as a way of maintaining a healthy society still holds.

A bit later I thought that it makes sense: it improves customer experience and slightly reduces unemployment in local population—a doorman job is better than no job.

If you live in a town in New South Wales where the average humidity is less than 50% in the wettest (or, should I say, least dry) season, you might not understand what it feels like in London where the average doesn’t dip below 65% any time of year.

Today London will feel at least 4 degrees Celsius hotter than Hong Kong. The latter is already an extremely unpleasant place to be in these conditions (and had in fact its own very hot weather warning issued), and unlike London it has a very strong culture of air conditioning.

4 degrees might seem like not a lot, but heat extremes are a tricky beast. Once your body cannot evaporate heat fast enough, you’re literally toast.

You can publish a photo with default automatic JPEG processing, say by a phone, and it will certainly look flat. You could also present a masterful interpretation of raw sensor data that uses the most out of the available display space, and the impression might be different.

There is no objectively correct way to represent reality in a photo; even the concept of neutral grey is not a real thing as soon as perception is concerned. A default camera interpretation of light is baseline and safe to maximally avoid awkward edge cases. We all know that time we photograph a bright pink sunset but our phone renders it as pale yellow or orange. However, give the same shot human attention, and even though it may never be as pink as what you have perceived in reality it will pop enough that the viewer will have a similar response.

It is photographer’s job to work raw data in specific ways and make what impressed you stand out to your audience, arranging colours both relative to each other and in absolute display space, however limited it is. Human eyes are incredibly adaptive: we lower our relevant thresholds, adjust our idea of neutral grey—in short, we adapt to given display medium, to given photographic style, etc., and in the end perceive a true lush lagoon in a photo even if our eyes only receive a truly minuscule amount of colour range present in the scene.