ThePadawan (u/ThePadawan)

ThePadawan commented on Snow shortage threatens Alps with wet winter season bbc.com/news/world-europe... · Posted by u/sdfgdfghj

kergonath · 3 years ago

> The chances of a white Christmas in the UK are around 10%, and depending where you are in the US [0], especially if you consider the population density not pictured in that chart, even lower.

Why do you assume the OP is in the UK or US? We’re discussing climate and weather in the Alps; there are plenty of places in Europe where a white Christmas really was not unusual.

ThePadawan · 3 years ago

The probabilities in Germany are around 12.5% and around 40% in Switzerland itself [0].

To live anywhere where to quote OP "it [would be] unusual not to have snow for Christmas and New Year" would basically mean living in a skiable country itself, so I did do a lot of assuming there.

But then I don't ski. I wouldn't know if skiers take vacations around the world to see different snow.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wei%C3%9Fe_Weihnachten_(Wetter...

ThePadawan commented on Snow shortage threatens Alps with wet winter season bbc.com/news/world-europe... · Posted by u/sdfgdfghj

sdfgdfghj · 3 years ago

For the first time ever I had to cancel my holidays due to climate change. I was planning on skiing in the first week of January, not gonna happen.

It was 14 degrees during the day on 31 Dec. 20 years ago it was unusual not to have snow for Christmas and New Year.

ThePadawan · 3 years ago

> 20 years ago it was unusual not to have snow for Christmas and New Year.

This is one of those widely spread Mandela effect-style misconceptions.

The chances of a white Christmas in the UK are around 10%, and depending where you are in the US [0], especially if you consider the population density not pictured in that chart, even lower.

Humans generally hugely overestimate how often a white Christmas actually happens due to selection bias.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(weather)#/med...

ThePadawan commented on Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity? · Posted by u/nassimsoftware

ASalazarMX · 3 years ago

> [..] the most popular state management framework for React [..]

Quoted from the comment they're replying to.

> [..] maybe “state management” is not something you need a framework for?

Quoted from their reply.

ThePadawan · 3 years ago

Ah I beg your pardon. I read the comment in completely the wrong tone of voice.

To me it seemed like the comment was attacking its parent for investigating state management frameworks in the first place - when it in fact called out "no framework" as a valid alternative to any number of frameworks.

(I hope that made sense)

ThePadawan commented on Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity? · Posted by u/nassimsoftware

meindnoch · 3 years ago

Has it occurred to you that maybe “state management” is not something you need a framework for?

ThePadawan · 3 years ago

This relates in no way to any statement from the comment you replied to.

Did you mean to reply to a different comment?

ThePadawan commented on Lessons Learned from the Book “Effective Remote Work” phauer.com/2022/book-remo... · Posted by u/0x54MUR41

tapanjk · 3 years ago

This is indeed a beautiful book and especially useful for those who are new to the industry. I have a nit to pick about one of the points listed in the article...

> Every meeting should create an artifact (ideally, a shared document or at least a record).

I have come across this sentiment often but there is no point in creating new artifacts just to record a meeting. What if the meeting was useless and nothing came out of it? Please do not create a document for this meeting. Such records only create an illusion that you are not leaving out those who could not attend the meeting, but creates mountains of documents or records which would be impossible to navigate in order to draw any conclusion later on.

ThePadawan · 3 years ago

> I have come across this sentiment often but there is no point in creating new artifacts just to record a meeting. What if the meeting was useless and nothing came out of it?

I might be a huge cynic, but that seems to me to be the #1 reason to create a post-mortem document to explore how to avoid another meeting that was a waste of time like that.

If the meeting was useless because the participants weren't prepared, make a note to hand out preparatory notes beforehand. If the meeting was useless because everybody shouted over each other, make a note for more moderation. If the meeting was useless because no one had political power to follow up on any decisions, cancel the meeting altogether.

Having a meeting that goes nowhere and then taking no time to publicly settle on actions as a consequence seems incredibly neglectful to me.

ThePadawan commented on Adding design-by-contract conditions to C++ via a GCC plugin gavinray97.github.io/blog... · Posted by u/gavinray

kgeist · 3 years ago

What's the advantage of invariants over unit testing? Seems like there must be lot of overhead at runtime.

>I was ending up with garbage, and not realizing it until I had visualized it with Graphviz!

>Imagine if we had invariants that we could assert after every property change to the tree.

Have you tried writing unit tests? What didn't work about them that you decided to try invariants?

ThePadawan · 3 years ago

> What's the advantage of invariants over unit testing?

I studied Eiffel in university under Bertrand Meyer, and here's his (probably unique) point of view.

If someone hands you their library code and their unit tests, you have to understand their unit tests - which involves understanding why they chose the values that they did. There's also nothing stopping someone from testing the internals of their library as opposed to the publicly exposed behavior.

With contracts, imagine that to understand their library, you only see the method declarations with accompanying contracts. You don't see how HashSet.Add(x) is implemented, but you do see "if this.Contains(x) old(this.Count) == this.Count".

You don't have to see a test where this is tested with 5 example values, on an empty set, on a large set, whatever. You can rid yourself of that cognitive load by thinking, as sibling points out really well, declaratively over imperatively.

ThePadawan commented on Haiti's Cherished Soup Joumou smithsonianmag.com/travel... · Posted by u/nafnlj

personjerry · 3 years ago

I have to say of all the online recipes I've seen, this one had the longest pre-amble

ThePadawan · 3 years ago

I do want to mention how we're now in Phase 3 of online recipes.

Phase 1 was just putting up a recipe online without a giant preamble.

Phase 2 was adding a giant preamble to get that SEO.

Phase 3 is now having a "jump to recipe" button at the top of the page (I assume because, once again, it uses microdata or something and helps SEO)... but making that button incredibly unobvious. It's literally the opposite problem of those 2005 era sketchy "find the correct download button" sites.

ThePadawan commented on The 5% Rule jonpauluritis.com/article... · Posted by u/jppope

cookie_monsta · 3 years ago

Fwiw, printers bring out the worst in me, too.

ThePadawan · 3 years ago

I am at the point in my life where I have a shitty broken printer that I'm still not getting rid of, because at least I am aware of all the ways it is broken and shitty and how to fix them or work around them.

ThePadawan commented on Get Running with Couch to 5K nhs.uk/live-well/exercise... · Posted by u/MonkeyClub

dartharva · 3 years ago

This app is region-locked, not available in India. Why?

ThePadawan · 3 years ago

The NHS is the National Health Service of the UK.

There might be licensing/taxation/legal reasons for the region lock, or maybe no one thought anyone outside the UK would care.

ThePadawan commented on Get Running with Couch to 5K nhs.uk/live-well/exercise... · Posted by u/MonkeyClub

potatochup · 3 years ago

Did this during pandemic lockdowns. Still running, did my first half marathon last year.

ThePadawan · 3 years ago

Very much in the same boat here - 60 lbs down, still running.

Congrats!