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Simple Revision Control

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Re: Simple Revision Control

#111

Post by custardcream »

tptacek wrote: post #69
sigzero wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is from 2002. Does he still hold those views?

Here's ESR in 2013 arguing that transexuality and gender identity issues are disorders comparable to schizophrenia. http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5015

My sister is a psychiatrist and has the same opinion on the subject.

There's nothing wrong with postulating and analysing it, even if the views are perhaps unpopular. Nothing should be beyond discussion even if it's uncomfortable for some people. Without making a judgement (I have no opinion on this myself), all arguments need contrast.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#112

Post by coolsunglasses »

tptacek wrote: post #107
angersock wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Core question (and a fair one) is raised here: "So, why do we not treat self-reported transsexuals as insane and in need of treatment for a delusional disorder? I can anticipate a lot of possible replies; the trouble is that all of them apply just as well (or just as poorly) to the case of BIID or delusional paranoia." ESR is a blowhard conservative, but he does tend to at least have nuance in his position, which you…

You really think it's fair to consider whether everyone with gender identity issues might simply be delusional?

This is a hostile environment, nobody can have a rational conversation about this without burning a lot karma (of which you have more to spare).

Nobody here except those that have those experiences has anything useful to say about non-cis gender identity. Possibly also psychiatrists/psychologists not married to a particular ideology on the topic. From my admittedly few conversations with transgendered people, it's complicated and there are no easy answers to what precisely it is.

Part of the problem is you're using "delusional" stigmatically, which damns you and poisons the conversation.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#113

Post by w_t_payne »

encoderer wrote: post #103
npsimons wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually a good idea. People often don't bother version-controlling simple stuff because it's a hassle. Here's the thing that's funny to me: git is easy . Everyone (especially mercurial users) goes on about how horrible the UI is, but when I think of git, I think of how similar it is to RCS: easy, quick, and simple. With both, I can diff things and check in changes very quickly. I have a bunch of single files in…

I love git. I'm a git power user. I've used git as the datastore for a CRM I built. But I respectfully disagree. Git is not "easy." You've been conditioned. You and I know that it's very very hard to lose work or lose commits with Git. I'd say it's nearly impossible to do on accident. But in my first month with Git I rewrote several things because I messed up somehow and couldn't figure it out. I would hose my checko…

I agree. Git is powerful, flexible, and (once you grok it) quite simple to understand ... but it baffles new users, and is a complete turn off for people who happen not to be software engineers, even those who are otherwise highly intelligent.

I work trying to bridge the gap between a team of mathematicians and algorithms engineers, and a team of embedded software engineers. Most of the embedded software engineers "grok" git (after some practice), and are (fairly) happy using it on a day to day basis.

The Mathematicians and Algorithms engineers, on the other hand, aren't really interested in getting to grips with Git (or any version control system for that matter). They'd rather spend their time thinking about mathematics and statistics. (Quite rightly).

The decision to use git, whilst justifiable for many valid technical reasons, has definitely thrown up some additional challenges for me and for our organization.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#114

Post by npsimons »

encoderer wrote: post #103
npsimons wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually a good idea. People often don't bother version-controlling simple stuff because it's a hassle. Here's the thing that's funny to me: git is easy . Everyone (especially mercurial users) goes on about how horrible the UI is, but when I think of git, I think of how similar it is to RCS: easy, quick, and simple. With both, I can diff things and check in changes very quickly. I have a bunch of single files in…

I love git. I'm a git power user. I've used git as the datastore for a CRM I built. But I respectfully disagree. Git is not "easy." You've been conditioned. You and I know that it's very very hard to lose work or lose commits with Git. I'd say it's nearly impossible to do on accident. But in my first month with Git I rewrote several things because I messed up somehow and couldn't figure it out. I would hose my checko…

$ [git init|mkdir RCS]

$ $EDITOR somefile

$ [git add somefile && git commit|ci -u somefile]

Not that hard to use git as a replacement for RCS. A few extra commands (not going to quibble over the fact that RCS requires checkout before edit), but that's about it. The one thing I can see going for RCS is its granularity (in only tracking single files), but that can be as much a burden as managing whole git repos, ie it depends on the use case.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#115

Post by edwintorok »

icebraining wrote: post #97
edwintorok wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all it would take too much time to find out all the authors of all the software that I routinely use, and then keep up with what their current views are on various topics. But I think the main reason is that most software has more than one author, and it would be unfair to judge the usefulness of that software based on the (non-technical) views of just one of its authors. Your reasoning would apply only for…

Your reasoning would apply only for single-author software But doesn't that fit SRC itself? But again for me those are all technical reasons, I wouldn't factor an author's/company's political views into that decision, unless it was something really horrible. Ah! But then you're not arguing whether it makes sense to factor the political views in the decision - what you're actually arguing is that ESR's views are not r…

Maybe, although I don't think I made technical decisions based on unrelated events. The closest that comes to mind is as described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8602582 I did use ReiserFS in the past, and I did switch to something else but the reason was purely technical: XFS became quite good on a HDD, an ext4 very nice on an SSD, and also there didn't seem to be much development done upstream once the original author was gone.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#116

Post by IshKebab »

npsimons wrote: post #95
muyuu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually a good idea. People often don't bother version-controlling simple stuff because it's a hassle. I routinely use my own rdiff/rsync scripts but this is not something you find in every system and also not something most people would use. A barebones, simple, no-install, easy, not-necessarily-for-experienced-developers VCS is a good thing to have. BTW it's going at 1 release per day. Heh :-)

It's actually a good idea. People often don't bother version-controlling simple stuff because it's a hassle. Here's the thing that's funny to me: git is easy . Everyone (especially mercurial users) goes on about how horrible the UI is, but when I think of git, I think of how similar it is to RCS: easy, quick, and simple. With both, I can diff things and check in changes very quickly. I have a bunch of single files in…

Are you serious? Git is by far the least user-friendly version control system I've used (Mercurial being the best).

Here are some longer articles explaining why git sucks so much (from a convenience / user friendliness point of view):

http://reprog.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/git-is-a-harrier-jump...

http://merrigrove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/why-heck-is-git-so-...

http://stevebennett.me/2012/02/24/10-things-i-hate-about-git...

Version control is one of those annoying admin tasks that you have to do and what to think about as little as possible. Git makes you think about it a lot.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#117

Post by sampo »

edwintorok wrote: post #63
pothibo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of you brave souls who downvote me. I'm wondering which part of my statement you disagree with. - You think homosexual are pedophiles? - It's not important what he thinks about homosexuals. You're going to support him by using his software. If he had held the same hate speech about women in 2014, everyone would be here talking how imbecile this guy is.

People can have different political, religious, etc. views than you, but why should that influence whether you use his software or not? Do you check the political views of all authors of each software before you decide to use it? What if those views (or your own) change over time and you disagree with them?

> People can have different political, religious, etc. views than you, but why should that influence whether you use his software or not?

It would be difficult to use software written by a person who openly had a political view that supports owning slaves.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#118

Post by angersock »

tptacek wrote: post #107
angersock wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Core question (and a fair one) is raised here: "So, why do we not treat self-reported transsexuals as insane and in need of treatment for a delusional disorder? I can anticipate a lot of possible replies; the trouble is that all of them apply just as well (or just as poorly) to the case of BIID or delusional paranoia." ESR is a blowhard conservative, but he does tend to at least have nuance in his position, which you…

You really think it's fair to consider whether everyone with gender identity issues might simply be delusional?

Let's assume you mean "fair" in the sense of "reasonable", not "equitable here".

Let's assume you mean "delusional" to mean "maintaining beliefs not supported by evidence and refusing to change said beliefs once presented with evidence". I'm going to leave off a stronger clause that would include non-falsifiable beliefs, because that way lies all manner of distraction.

Let's also assume that you mean "gender identity issues" to comprise a spectrum, ranging from "I am trapped in a body which feels wrong, I must take drastic action" all the way to "I tend to think more similarly to members of the opposite sex." Note that this range is supplied only by way of example: human gender and sexuality, as well as subjective experience of same, is wide and varied and I will not claim authority on what is and is not a valid experience there (as coolsunglasses has rightly pointed out).

With that understanding in place:

Is it fair to consider everyone with gender identity issues as delusional? Hell no--such issues may manifest with a completely normal and sane person, no delusions required.

Is it fair to consider everyone with gender identity issues as perhaps being delusional? Yes, but only insofar as they may exist in the subset of (delusional && GII) instead of merely (GII). It's the "perhaps" or "may" that turns it into a logically reasonable statement. Whether it's a likely membership is something else entirely, and I suspect that that likelihood is quite low--I don't think that possessing GII correlates strongly with delusional thinking.

Your statement of the question made it very easy to answer in a way that looks bad unless a lot of specific context is brought in--context which you did not supply.

~

At any rate, ESR's statement there was not posing the same question you were: he was asking first "Why do we not treat these as mental health issues?" (a stronger statement than your "might simply be delusional") and "Why do the (predicted) explanations for why we do not also hold up for, say, paranoid delusions?".

For the record, he screwed up by not enumerating the expected explanations. He also screwed up by not explaining how he might consider the application of one of the explanations to paranoid delusions.

I disagree that we ought treat the transgendered as insane, but he didn't make that claim: he simply asked a question. If you read it rhetorically, then I can see your grievance; that said, I think it was meant in earnest.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#119

Post by sampo »

pothibo wrote: post #52
pothibo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link. He actually compares homosexual with pedophiles. I want to have absolutely nothing to do with such a degenerate.

For those of you brave souls who downvote me. I'm wondering which part of my statement you disagree with. - You think homosexual are pedophiles? - It's not important what he thinks about homosexuals. You're going to support him by using his software. If he had held the same hate speech about women in 2014, everyone would be here talking how imbecile this guy is.

> If he had held the same hate speech about women in 2014

The same hate speech about gays in 2014, in Western Europe, would also be widely condemned.

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