I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end, which is enjoyable in its own right on top of the satisfaction of executing the technical challenge of playing it. A more akin analogy, in my opinion, would be “any musical instrument which has been artificially muted”—this could definitely still be fun, and indeed I’ve played my keyboard without sound before, but it really doesn’t compare.
A better analogy than music might be dance: The reward for dancing well is simply the feeling of dancing well. In a properly-designed game, the game feel of successfully completing the technical challenge is itself the reward. A dance that feels unpleasant probably won't be performed recreationally, and a game that doesn't feel fun to succeed at won't see much play.
> I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end...
You've clearly never heard me playing my horns!
I never found the end result of all that practice to be rewarding (as the kids seem to say these days), [0] and -brother- I tried for years and years. So, I switched hobbies to video games and have a leisure-time activity that I like a lot more.
[0] Those unfortunate enough to be within earshot were usually fairly unimpressed with the result, so this isn't just me shittalking myself.
I want to push back on this, because the Christian conception of God definitely includes the idea that God created all good and comforting things, and is indeed their ultimate source. Like, just because God is transcendent[0] does not mean He cannot create things that are perfectly approachable, understandable, and enjoyable.
[0] Jesus being human changes the calculus quite a lot, of course, as elaborated in e.g. Hebrews 4:14–16. God, who was fully transcendent, became human, hence why Jesus is also called Immanuel/Emmanuel (lit. “God with us”) in the Bible.
AFAIK it would take an infinite amount of time to measure something to infinite precision, at least by the usual ways we’d think to do so…. I suppose one could assume a universe where that somehow isn’t the case, but (to my knowledge) that’s firmly in science-fiction territory.
I don't think time and measurement precision are necessarily related in that way. You can measure weight with increased precision by using a more precise scale, without increasing the time it takes to do the measurement.
The real point is that it takes infinite energy to get infinite precision.
Let me add that we have no clue how to do a measurement that doesn't involve a photon somewhere, which means that it's pure science fiction to think of infinite precision for anything small enough to be disturbed by a low-energy photon.
I'm not making the case that it is possible to make measurements with infinite precision. I'm making the case that the argument "It is not possible to make measurements with infinite precision, therefore we cannot tell if we live in a rational or a real world." is begging the question. The conclusion follows logically from the premise. Unless the argument is just "we can't currently distinguish between a rational and a real world", but that seems trivial.
There are limits to precision there too. The amount of available matter to build something out of and the size you can build down to before quantum effects interfere.
I think the parent commenter was pointing out that, instead of installing Claude Code, they could just install actual malware. It's like that phrase Raymond Chen always uses: "you're already on the other side of the airtight hatchway."
Isn't the general advice that if malware has been installed specifically due to physical access, then the entire machine should be considered permanently compromised? That is to say, if someone has access to your unlocked machine, I've heard that it's way too late for MalwareBytes to be reliable....
That example isn’t a contradictory worldview though, just “people being people, and therefore failing to be as good as the ideal they claim to strive for.”
And don’t forget all the Sino-Japanese loanwords (kango, 漢語), which has made up a huge chunk of the vocabulary for centuries, long before the current influx of English loanwords.
It's interesting that whereas old kango are Chinese loanwords, many newer ones are made-up words, and some even got backported into the Chinese language!
The newer words were usually made up to explain Western philosophical and scientific concepts. A lot of this work was done in an academic context, so whoever came up with an appropriate translation first got to be cited by everyone else.
With the exception of one or two sentences, it sounded pretty neutral to me... maybe I just didn't read it closely enough? The "dogmatism" of the technical criticism (assuming the post is accurate) really does seem justified to me—e.g. if the book uses dynamic scoping without even a disclaimer like "this is a bad idea, but we're doing it for simplicity", that alone makes it a bad recommendation for beginners IMO.
To be fair, they could be entirely disjoint sets of people, but I’m surprised by the simultaneous 1) hate for JavaScript[0] and the “modern web” and 2) praise for all the Flash-based websites from the ‘90s–‘00s. To be fair, my first interactions with the web were largely after the “Flash for everything” era, so I might be out-of-the-loop: Did corporate Flash-based homepages get the same reaction then that SPAs do now?
[0] I do strongly dislike JavaScript myself, but specifically from the perspective of language design.
Oh, I remember a lot of developers hated Flash back in the olden days, especially those that focused their efforts on usability or who wanted to advance web standards. Case in point:
Heck, I'm sure at least some people celebrated when Adobe pulled support for Flash, just like some people probably would now if the likes of React went away forever.
