I understand where you're coming from, but I stand by my previous posts.

Full disclosure, I never got professionally employed as a programmer / coder / software engineer. However, my Bachelors Degree was in CS, and I have many friends working in the field.

In the show Silicon Valley, Richard Hendriks is working for a large corporate entity but has an idea / personal project that he ends up spinning into a new company. He is trained as a software engineer (CS), NOT with any business or management background (MIS), yet he becomes sort of the de-facto boss / CEO (at least early in the show). He hires a small team to help him develop his product.

Given that scenario, I think the show portrays things very accurately or at least completely plausibly. He's a coder, not a manager. Programmers may understand the importance of formatting and style standards, but at least tend to not have the correct personality type to be comfortable with formally dictating those standards to a team (an activity which would generally be more in line with an MIS background).

Also, his company is small -- just a few other programmers. They are all specializing on different components of the product. So they generally aren't working on each other's code. Standards for function arguments / helper functions / etc. would have to be agreed upon to get their individual components to interact, but that is a separate issue from tabs vs spaces. It would be wise to set a style and naming convention standard and have everyone conform to it, I agree completely. But Richard isn't built for the manager / CEO position, so he either fails to recognize that or doesn't feel comfortable dictating standards to his team.

One more thing to consider is that he (Richard) essentially is the product. He's the keystone piece, the central figure. He's John Carmack, Linus Torvalds, or Steve Wozniak. Even in a very large team / corporate environment, I'd wager that more often than not the style standards that end up getting set tend to fall in line with whatever those key guys want them to be. Don't touch an id Software graphics engine without conforming to Carmack's way, or the Linux kernel without conforming to Torvald's standards. Especially if they are building something new from scratch -- which is again true in the Silicon Valley show scenario.

The show isn't a documentary on how to properly run a startup company in the real Silicon Valley, but it is generally accurate enough that it has a lot of nuances that people with a programming background can pick up on and be entertained by (even people that don't actually work professionally in the field like me). And more important, the general feel of the show can be entertaining even for people that know absolutely nothing about programming.

@lucky760 -
I still think Judge is actually presenting the situation pretty accurately. If you look up online forum posts about tabs vs spaces, the file size thing is brought up as a pro for tabs very regularly.

While it is technically true, you're right that it doesn't make much sense because the difference is *tiny*, so conforming to the standard of wherever you are working is vastly more important.

BUT, that doesn't stop individual programmers from being (irrationally) passionate in their preferences.

Another dynamic that is (correctly) displayed in the show in my opinion is the difference between a big corporate environment, working as an individual in a large team of programmers as compared with having a project that starts out as a the brainchild of one person and grows into a small team.

The show is about the latter. In that scenario, a programmer / software engineer ends up trying to also be a manager of a team, in spite of the fact that he isn't really built for it. In a big corporate environment, they are well aware that style issue conflicts can turn into big time wasters unless they set out guidelines clearly at the outset. But that sort of micro-managing is NOT what a pure engineer type is comfortable doing.

Basically, I think that tabs vs spaces is completely a personal preference issue if you're working alone OR on a small team that don't interact with each other's code much. And even on a large team, either choice is fine BUT it becomes important to conform to the standards of the team as a whole.

@Diogenes

I'm not sure I'm following what you're saying. Why should a reasonable person be pissed off at a third party calling out offensive language use? To use a hypothetical:

I jokingly call my brother a "retard" because he locks his keys in the car. We grew up in the 80s, so this this pejorative is something we are comfortable with and feel no inhibitions about using. My brother laughs it off.

Now let's assume this happens in a parking lot as we're standing outside my brother's car and a woman passing by overhears my comment and chastises me for equating stupid actions with people who have mental disabilities.

Should reasonable bystanders watching all this be pissed off, since my comment wasn't directed at the woman? On the one hand, my brother and I weren't offended by the use of the word "retard" to mean stupid. On the other hand, our very usage of the word "retard" in that particular way promotes and sustains a culture that already heavily looks down on mental illness and mental disabilities.

I'm genuinely curious about your answer to this. If I'm reading your comment correctly, the primary negative of PC language that you see is that some people feel smug when they call out other people on their language usage. But does the fact that some people are smug about it make them wrong in pointing out the offender?

Thanks for the link, Eric. That's comforting.

And I'm very glad his monster of a mother was prosecuted.

I'm always reminded of my oldest boy when he was about 2 and we were in the 1.5-foot-deep tiny kiddie pool standing right next to him. He seemingly bent down to touch the drain by his feet, but as his face went into the water he just left it there and didn't move. There was no jumping or waving or losing control; in fact, he was still standing up on his feet, just in a bending-over position with his face in the water and his arms not moving.

I guess his body immediately went into some kind of paralysis when he was probably still breathing in as he stuck his face in the water.

I'll never forget that horror.

Skimming through things there, things start becoming fishy. He's a social media specialist, and certainly mis-represents the lawsuit in his videos, and given he had a ghostbed email address at one point, seems to indicate a rather comfortable relationship with GB (who carefully worded the point on the email issue, leaving it open to admit that the guy did have an email with them, just doesn't presently).

At the same time, I think there is some valid concern over the powder, which I'd guess is to help release it from the mold and aid in keeping it from sticking while rolled. It'll be interesting to see some more independent lab reports than the ones we've seen so far. Also, how much of said powder actually gets out if you, like most people, don't rip off the sock and cover (aside to occasionally wash the cover)? I understand micro-beads can be unsafe to inhale, but in typical use, how much gets from the bed into the air compared to other items used on a daily basis gets in the air?

Also, not sure the Streisand Effect is going on, as Purple was really well known before. Almost every mattress commercial I've seen on the Internet has been for Purple. So I don't think this is spreading their brand... unless this about spreading his brand, in which case it could be.

Okay, so I started going on about the Streisand Effect and jumped subjects to some comments in the Reddit thread about people who've never heard of Purple, then back to the effect. I'll blame that on the fact I was running late for work.

Anyhow, as to said effect, given that Purple isn't suing because he asked about the safety issues, but is instead being sued for not disclosing his relationship with a competitor, I don't know if it applies. Now it probably is bringing far more attention to the plastic beads than otherwise would be there. Now he however is being exposed for his relationships with GhostBed, and lots of questions are being raised about him, which is why I said it might apply to him.

Meanwhile, as I noted in the original paragraph, some people are saying they never heard of Purple, so I was doubting this spreads the brand, nor improves GhostBed's standing.

I had more, but I can't recall all I was going to say as the comment system crashed beyond the point I could come back and edit.

I voted 3rd party (Stein, but Johnson would still have been a better option than Trump or Clinton in my opinion). I'm comfortable and happy with my decision.

Hillary would have gotten some good-on-the-surface stuff done, compared to Trump's bad-on-the-surface stuff. But I simply don't/didn't trust her to not do dangerous and terrible stuff on the sly. She's a corrupt weasel. Trump is an incompetent blowhard that has been and will continue to be under a massive amount of scrutiny. I think the long-term damage he can do will be limited.


...Except for the Supreme Court. If there's one "lesser of two evils" argument that gives me pause in favor of Hillary, that's it. But even including that, I'm still comfortable with the way I cast my vote.

Basically, things have to get worse before they get better. Revolution, upheaval, something's gotta give. Trump has the "advantage" of making that more obvious, more quickly than Hillary would have. So, uh ... yay Trump?

Educated younger people want to be where the action is, meaning places where they can advance quickly in a career they are passionate about while having a high take-home pay. They also want what their parent's generation had, which was often a home in the suburbs or at least a condo or townhouse they owned outright, to comfortably start a family.

The two things are mostly incompatible, because the work they are passionate about is typically around the cities and their parent's generation is still occupying any and all affordable dwellings in the area, including the surrounding suburbs. This wouldn't be a problem except property owners feel an incentive to actively prevent new developments which might lower their home price plus make the area more crowded/disrupted. This is partly a result of the sprawl in areas like Silicon Valley reaching its physical boundaries, so the price of land just keeps increasing to these crazy numbers like '$2mil median home sale in 2016'.

These young people can afford to rent in these areas, so they see how comfortable it is, but don't see how they could own there without a windfall of money. So they are kind of stuck hoping to make it big, but in reality just putting off either buying property where they can't follow the career they want or choosing to follow their career but watching their rent increase. This isn't a new problem, its just become more exaggerated in the last decade, and is pushing a lot of younger people to not have kids and to carry a lot of anxiety about their place in the world.

There are a lot of potential ways forward, like massively increasing government investment in transportation infrastructure to move people more efficiently by bus/train/etc., and massively scaling up internet speeds to make telecommuting more commonplace.

Anyhow, its really just younger people wanting what their parent's had, struggling really hard towards it, settling for much less, and complaining a bit to each other about it. Its just a newer problem for Americans (and places like Australia as well), where there very recently was all this space, and now its all old people's investment properties, available for rent at 400% what their mortgage is.

LOL, East Palo Alto. I volunteered at the Boys and Girls Club there for a year when I lived in Mountain View. Two cops got shot and East Palo Alto had the highest murder rate ever that year. It's utterly insane how on one side of the 101 you have these multi-million dollar mansions and Stanford University and on the other side you have gangland.

Meanwhile, back on topic, when I moved to Mountain View in 2002 my rent was $800 a month for a studio apartment. The rent went up by $100 a year every year until I finally called it quits in 2007 when they wanted to charge me $1300 a month. I gave up ever actually being able to own a home in the Bay Area (let alone rent) and left in 2009.

In Japan now, and things aren't quite as bad as the Bay Area, but we've been house hunting recently and we're shocked at the disparity between what we want versus what we can actually afford, even with both us being full-time professionals. I know that 2nd place he goes to is supposed to be a joke but it's not that far off from the truth, at least as far as our experiences go. While the places we've been shown by the real estate agent are certainly habitable, they aren't particularly nice. So we're going to have to decide whether we want to live someplace not so great with the advantage being the mortgage will be paid off by the time we retire or just rent in a place we're comfortable with and wind up having to really budget hard after retirement since rent will consume a sizable portion of our pensions/social security.

One thing I don't like about this safety announcement is that it makes it seem like rips as these underwater murder machines just lurking out there trying to kill you.

There is nothing inherently dangerous about a rip current per se. Surfers use them all the time to get out quickly into the lineup quickly without having to duck dive the heavier sets.

The real danger of rips is to inexperienced or poor ocean swimmers. The rip can carry you out to water that is too deep to stand in very quickly, so if you're not comfortable floating or treading water for long periods that's going to be a big problem.

Most people drown because they panic when they realize they can't touch the bottom and try to swim back against the current to get to a place where they can stand again. In their panicked state they forget about floating or treading water and exhaust themselves. As long as you swim perpendicular to the current you should be fine. The number one mistake people make is that they forget to stay calm and take breaks by doing the side-stroke or treading water until they're ready to do the crawl stroke again.

All that said, lateral rips (rips that run parallel to the shore rather than out to sea) are some scary shit, as they can move basically as fast as a river. During lifeguard training in my younger days I got caught in one while doing a training rescue and was swept in literally seconds into a wooden jetty. Thankfully I was able to ride the crest of a wave up to the top of the jetty, pull myself up, and then sprint down back to the shore before the next set of waves washed me back into the ocean and carried me even further down the shoreline. After getting back, I took a lot of shit from my instructors and peers for nearly having to be actually rescued during a training rescue.

Yeah. Also one thing awesome about this is the atheletes often dress in whatever is comfortable for them, and will wear glasses that sometimes have sighting lenses. So couple that with the super-customized guns and you get great photos of shooters looking like the pirate captains of some future space ships - http://images.indianexpress.com/2016/07/prakash-nanjappa-759.jpg - Here is the current world champ with his amazing looking pistol- http://www.trbimg.com/img-57ab598f/turbine/la-sp-sn-shooting-oly-2016-rio-20160810/600 - 10 meter air rifle competition is similar, but they wear some protective gear - http://accurateshooter.net/pix/ginwin1601.jpg

Been doing some research; story gets stranger; that is apparently a well known racing boat on the Southern California seen. How odd. They should have known better. That might explain somethings though: No motor, that's added weight and no anchor to toss out while they are still in a salvageable if not comfortable situation outside the impact/breaker zone so they could sort stuff out.

Scary video for me; I respect the water.

Would have liked to see somebody with more wit and intellect than I deconstruct Peterson's argument.

Just...don't be Edgelords k? I read Peterson's words for like, half an hour and my toes never stopped curling. and now I have cramp. I'm trying to get more comfortable at being made uncomfortable but, you know, don't be an abrasive jerk just for sake of it.

and don't hate on princesses - they were born that way.

also it's "Her Royal Highness, Princess of Videosift" to you plebs. lol compelled speech.

Wasn't there, but I'm sympathetic to their cause.

I would say, like the people quoted in the article linked by Scud, these people aren't against "stepping out of their comfort zone" to learn. But there are certain norms and boundaries to ideas we hold in both every day discourse and academic discourse.

Some of that is how we don't entertain the idea of bringing back phrenology or that the earth is flat in serious discussion. But, unlike those antiquated ideas, other sorts of ideas lead to real and harmful consequences to marginalized groups. Ideas like entire classes of people either not being worth basic human rights or specifically targeting them for dehumanization/harassment.

I think people who shut down events like that or ones where Milo Yiounappolos specifically singled out trans individuals are weighing whether giving a larger audience to ideas like "these people aren't normal/don't deserve basic rights" is worth the real harm and harassment that follows. People see it as essentially saying, "Hey now, lets hear what these National Socialist fellows have to say about Jewish people without all the whining, ok?"

And these things aren't really as cut and dry "they don't want to hear differences of opinion" when every single trans person, person of color, gay person, etc has had these "differing opinions" yelled at them or forced into their life on a daily basis.

You know, I'd love to hear from one of the people who shut down these events.

'cos in general, I'm pretty much on their side. I consider myself a feminist, I think most people arguing against "PC" are just looking for an excuse to be racist or sexist and I fully support their right to protest against speakers they find objectionable.

But shutting down debate is completely counter to the point of a university. "Safe spaces" are fine, but you learn NOTHING until you step outside your comfort zone.

So please, if there's anyone reading this who participated in these events, I genuinely want to hear your side.

Reminds me of making text adventures with my dad when i was a kid. ahhh, this is comforting. omg those tape backups for the c64...