Yeah, they’re probably talking about nulls. In Java, object references (simplified pointers, really) can be null, pointing nowhere and throwing an exception if you try to access them, which is fine when you don’t have a value for that reference (for example, you asked for a thing that doesn’t exist, or you haven’t made the thing yet), but it means that every time you interact with an object, if it turns out to have been null, a null pointer exception is getting thrown and likely crashing your program. You can check first if you think a value might be null, but if you miss one, it explodes.

Kotlin has nulls too, but the type system helps track where they could be. If a variable can be null, it’ll have a type like String?, and if not, the type is String. With that distinction, a function can explicitly say “I need a non-null value here” and if your value could be null, the type system will make you check first before you can use it.

Kotlin also has some nice quality of life improvements over Java; it’s less verbose (not a hard task), doesn’t force everything to belong to a class, supports data classes which are automatically immutable and behave more like primitive values than objects, and other improvements.

They could organize protests, they could help workers unionize, they could put their necks out and disrupt things, they could do anything besides stand by and say “oh no, this is so bad.” They have a gigantic megaphone and the ears of almost half the country, their power isn’t limited to the votes they have or don’t have. I want them to be making plans that are bold, plans where they feel a need to account for “how do we make sure this doesn’t turn into an outright riot though,” the things you’d do if you actually believed the rhetoric about Trump being a threat to democracy.

I see this as an accessibility problem, computers have incredible power but taking advantage of it requires a very specific way of thinking and the drive to push through adversity (the computer constantly and correctly telling you “you’re doing it wrong”) that a lot of people can’t or don’t want to do. I don’t think they’re wrong or lazy to feel that way, and it’s a barrier to entry just like a set of stairs is to a wheelchair user.

The question is what to do about it, and there’s so much we as an industry should be doing before we even start to think about getting “normies” writing code or automating their phones. Using a computer sucks ass in so many ways for regular people, you buy something cheap and it’s slow as hell, it’s crapped up with adware and spyware out of the box, scammers are everywhere ready to cheat you out of your money… anyone here is likely immune to all that or knows how to navigate it but most people are just muddling by.

If we got past all that, I think it’d be a question of meeting users where they are. I have a car but I couldn’t replace the brakes, nor do I want to learn or try to learn, but that’s okay. My car is as accessible as I want it to be, and the parts that aren’t accessible, I go another route (bring it to a mechanic who can do the things I can’t). We can do this with computers too, make things easy for regular people but don’t try to make them all master programmers or tell them they aren’t “really” using it unless they’re coding. Bring the barrier down as low is it can go but don’t expect everyone to be trying to jump over it all the time, because they likely care about other things more.

I’m so confused that the same people can say “why does everyone get their undies in a bunch that we happily accept putting arbitrary data in columns regardless of type, that’s good, it’s flexible, but fine, we’ll put in a ‘strict’ keyword if you really want column types to mean something” and also “every other SQL says 1==‘1’ but this is madness, strings aren’t integers, what is everyone else thinking?!”

“Life without risk of poverty”?! That desperation and fear is the only way I can staff my sweatshops!

It’s all a stupid game. Israel killed some people, so Iran “had to” respond to save face, and then Israel had to do the same. Once everyone is satisfied that everyone knows both countries have very big and girthy missiles, they can finally back down from a war no one wants (hopefully).

I think that joke’s been around for a while, but there is the Terry Pratchett line about how if you had a button with a sign next to it saying “pressing this button will end the world, do not touch,” the ink wouldn’t even have time to dry.

How many do you think it is, and how much more acceptable is that number than this one?

“There was a particular bad guy near them” and “they all probably have bad opinions about Jews” are not sufficient justifications for indiscriminately bombing innocent people. What if there had been an Israeli leader at that rave? People in both refugee camps and at a music event should be able to exist without fear that they’ll die because they were near the wrong person. One seems to provoke a different reaction than the other for some reason though, and that might be worth thinking about.