What a colossal mistake.

It’s not a conspiracy. It’s not because they can’t.

It’s because all that they have built up from hard work has resulted in responsibilities to a lot of people that also now hold them back.

But I still don’t know how to put in useful words what “critical thinking” is because it’s not one thing.

It requires synthesizing a lot of information together in very specific and meticulous ways. And through feedback, collecting your previous thoughts and keeping track of how often you are correct or incorrect.

You can explain critical thinking in many ways but none of it will teach someone critical thinking.

I love Python but it has a terrible package ecosystem with mediocre tooling that has only gotten worse with time.

JavaScript has gotten better but it seems they are just re-learning things that were long figured out.

When I see new package managers, I just see a list of problems that they forgot to account for. Which I find strange when there have been many package managers that you can learn from. Why are you re-inventing the wheel?

There is no middle ground where you commit a mediocre amount of resources, end up with downtime and a mediocre experience, and then go “but we saved money.”

There would be a lot more dead.

Scale has increased but the techniques were figured out 20 years ago. There is not much left to invent in this space at the current moment so screwing up more than once is a bit unacceptable.

With the way that they are designed, you can even use a regular CDN.

You can get a single node Docker “cluster” going with Traefik in 15 seconds. There is no maintenance except updating occasionally. It doesn’t use much more resources. You do not need to install any third party tools. There is no onion of services. You literally just boot up Traefik plus your app.

This has been doable since at least 2019 by just installing Docker via your OS’ package manager.

I’ve started using containers before 99% of people and so got to see the fundamentals build up. You do not need to skip directly to “Kubernetes.” That’s like needing to wash your clothes so you skip directly to buying an industrial washing machine and then lamenting how all washing machines are overkill.

It was not about whether AI is useful or not.

The difference is that you can trust a good calculator. You currently can't trust AI to be right. If we get a point where the output of AI is trustworthy, that's a whole different kind of world altogether.

After reading OP’s article, I did not even feel “I want to like a Facebook post in support.”

You also need other people to work with, so even if you have an idea, it’s much easier when there are a lot of people in the area with the right skill set.

With a significant declining trend in population, especially in younger people, there just wouldn’t be as many opportunities.

Japanese software is not the only place where we are seeing a decline in innovation. This is the country that that provided us a lot of modern electronics as well.

35% of people are now over 65 in Japan. A much larger percentage of the economy now has to be dedicated to taking care of the elderly. The percentage of elderly in 1950 was tiny.

Even if you are right, you don’t ever win the hearts and minds of anyone when your argument comes off as entitled or deserving.

The mockery that OP refers to is the direct result of the tone that the author uses. Mocking the other side is how you get mockery back. Then you have to write an article about being mocked.

Don’t get me wrong: I will still absolutely f’ up a steak and cheese roller from 7-11 in the states and will continue to eat konbini food when I’m in Japan, but all of it is kind of mediocre. They hit the spot like (American) Denny’s at 2am.

It's extremely severe in Japan. Percentage aged 15-64 is now nearing 1950 levels.

And it's only going to get even worse. 12% are young kids today. In 1950, it was over 35%.

But let me clarify -- OP mentioned a contrast between consequentialism and virtual ethics and I think you can be "too much" consequentialism too. I'm wouldn't call myself a rule follower but I also follow rules 99% of the time too. It does create a sense of order and and predictability and I value that.

There is a right balance where you do follow rules but you also know when to break them. What I can't really stand are rigid people -- diehard rule followers or diehard "no one can tell me what to do." I find working with rigid people hard because you have to work around their "buttons."

I have friends who are very scary drivers but insist on backseat driving and telling you about best driving practices, and coworkers who are insistent on implementing excessive procedures at work but constantly are the ones breaking things.

I think following rules gives some people a sense of peace in a chaotic and unpredictable world. And I can't stand them.

But when I think about Backbone.js, Vagrant, AngularJS, or Dojo.js, I remember thinking how lame and ugly they were and hated how popular they had become. I thought “this is it? you got function but no form.” But in the end, those projects fell into disuse and I was happy again.