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Ask HN: What's the best thing you've learnt in 2020?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the best thing you've learnt in 2020?

#4
I have closely followed the coronavirus sanitary crisis. I would like to share a quote from Didier Raoult that makes you think.

Didier Raoult is a French physician and microbiologist specialising in infectious diseases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult).

Original excerpt from: https://madeinmarseille.net/82251-mediterranee-du-futur-les-...

"les molécules chimiques sont éternelles. Nous avons un patrimoine de molécules chimiques absolument considérable, dont beaucoup d’entre elles sont d’origine naturelle et ont des actions multiples, qui n’ont pas été évaluées et qui ne pourront pas l’être, car elles ne sont pas rentables et parce que notre système est basé sur un brevet qui s’épuise au bout de 20 ans"

Translation (Google Translate):

"chemical molecules are eternal. We have an absolutely considerable heritage of chemical molecules, many of them of natural origin and have multiple actions, which have not been evaluated and which cannot be evaluated, because they are not profitable and because our system is based on a patent which expires after 20 years"

Re: Ask HN: What's the best thing you've learnt in 2020?

#6
That the legal system is severely messed up and full of incompetent people.

(Trooper made tons of mistakes, trooper lied to judge, trooper violated civil rights, original judge was arrested for gambling with campaign money, new judge doesn't understand the principle of dismissing with prejudice, and much more. All for an unleashed dog...)

Re: Ask HN: What's the best thing you've learnt in 2020?

#10
I discovered Julia. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I've learned it, but it hits all the pain points I've had with every other language. It honestly feels like a gift from the universe that shouldn't, by rights, exist; a fast, dynamic, elegant language that seems to do The Right Thing at every turn. I do believe it will gradually eat the world, in the way that Python did.

I've already replaced some little utilities I wrote in C with Julia equivalents. They were easier to write, handle errors more gracefully, and run several times faster (because free multithreading).

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