ccc @ccc@qoto.org

@freemo @cy I'll admit, I probably use C++ in rather more places than it is strictly best in - simply because I tend to default to it. C++ isn't always the best language, mainly because it takes more development time than certain other languages (like, say, Python) - and more developer *care*, as well. This is because it gives you a lot of control over things that are abstracted away by high-level scripting languages; which is both a strength and a weakness (strength: you can handle the situation correctly even in odd circumstances weaknes: you *need* to handle the situation correctly in *all* circumstances).

So it takes a bit longer to write; but if you do it correctly, and do some very thorough testing-and-debugging, you end up with very solid, reliable code.

@sotolf@fosstodon.org How do you tell when it's got too sloppy? I find that my ability to tell how sloppy my code is becoming declines faster with sleepiness than my ability to not leave the bugs there in the first place...

@sotolf@fosstodon.org In my experience, writing code while tired means you'll lose more time to debugging than you spent writing tired code.

@freemo Though there are a lot of issues with python in many situations, I find I actually like its strictness on whitespace. It means that when I glance at the code, it's super easy to tell how far loops go, and where loops end. In C++ (which is what I use when I want to do something serious) it's quite trivial to create code such that what *looks* like a loop is actually *outside* the loop, which has potential implications for maintainability. (Now, I can get exactly the same effect by telling emacs to auto-indent the entire C program; so python's whitespace strictness only really saves a couple of keystrokes. It's still nice, though.)

@sotolf@fosstodon.org @brandon

That's okay, I'm not in the US.

@brandon Oh.

...would sending you the title work? Because I've just finished reading a book, but it's *not* an ebook (it's actually physical ink-on-paper).

Even in the case of ebooks, though, surely it's legal to send you the title and the name of the author. Even a summary of the major argument(s) and an opinion of how good it is.

@brandon I think that depends on exactly what you purchased when you purchased the book in question.

...if you need reading material, though, it *is* legal for me to point you in the direction of Project Gutenberg.

@ElfLord There's a lot of people doing evil with computer-genius abilities. You'd fit right in.

@freemo Oh, yeah; and that popularity comes, I suspect, from the fact that it is *super* good at the sort of quick demonstration problems that one can use to show off the capabilities of a language.

But I think that the recent sunsetting of Python 2 is also important to bear in mind when developing for the language. Some languages have long-term stability - the sort of language that you can write software in and then expect that software to continue to work over multiple decades (after which a developer the age of your grandchildren, chuckling at the quaintness of your code, will probably go to a lot of trouble to rewrite it such that it takes proper advantage of quantum computing or similar). Python is not one of those languages. Python is a language for the short term; a language of quick results and instant gratification, to be used in situations where it can be maintained on-the-fly by in-house (or on-contract) programming staff.

Which is an important niche. But not, by a very long shot, the *only* niche.

@freemo Python is used in a lot of places that it is not really all that well suited for. This seems to be largely because someone discovers how great it is with short, quickly coded, demonstration problems - which is where it is at its best - and then starts trying to use it for everything.

Now, it can *do* just about everything; and having a shorter development time is a solid advantage in a large slice of 'everything'. It's just that, once you get away from simple demonstration problems and into large, serious projects, then there are usually other languages that work out better; but even there, there's a very large category of problems where the difference might be fairly marginal.

So it gets used in a lot of places where it's not the best choice - because in some of those places, it's still a *decent* choice, just not the *best* choice.

@freemo I think that python is optimised for reducing *development* time. It's good for when you need to do something quick-and-dirty, the sort of thing where you need to only ever run it once or twice and you're really not going to be stretching the processing or memory bounds of the computer. The sort of thing where it's important that the code be readable, because there's a good chance that if you ever want to run it again, you'll need to tweak it a bit, first.

And in that narrow domain, it's really very good. But outside of that domain, it's probably not the best choice...

Happy new year, everyone. And may this year be better for you than last year was!

@freemo

...I'm personally in favour of getting the vaccine as soon as I reasonably can. However, I'm reasonably young and healthy but living in a country whose economy was in a poor enough state even before COVID... I would be quite surprised if I get an opportunity to get the vaccine before June at all.

So I might very well end up waiting at least a year whether I want to or not.

> I do agree people might get so paranoid they may avoid going to the doctor all together. But I'd argue that is likely to be a small minority of the population.

Before talking with you, I would have simply assumed that every doctor who *could* get the vaccine *would* get the vaccine, as quickly as possible, as a simple matter of course and good sense. Now? Now I'm a lot less certain of that.

It's a common failing among people of every stripe to make one simple assumption: that deep down, most people are *just like me*. This is closely related to the idea that if Person X is in any way different from me, then Person X must surely be a minority of the population...

I was implicitly assuming that most doctors would get the vaccine immediately. You are assuming that most people would be fine with going to a doctor who had not been COVID-vaccinated. Each of us thinks that the other is probably wrong in these stances. I'm pretty sure that in taking said stances, at least one of us (and possibly both) are falling foul of the above-mentioned "just like me" fallacy at some point.

Which doesn't mean you're wrong. It just means that unless you have evidence, you should be assigning a very low confidence interval.

> Moreover because, as I stated, doctors are able to successfully see and treat immunicompromized patients in clean rooms.

Yes... that requires that the doctor be very careful and keep concentrating on the matter at hand. (And also have a freshly sterilised full-body cloth suit). This is a level of care above and beyond the care a doctor will give to a routine consultation.

> As a side note remember being vaccinated doesnt prevent you from transmitting the disease, it only prevents you from getting sick. So any reasonable person would be focused on the doctors safety precautions and not their vaccination status anyway.

Noted. Preventing you from getting sick does prevent you from generating vast new supplies of the virus, though... so it does *reduce* the odds of passing it on rather significantly. (I know I'd still be happier if the doctor was wearing a mask, vaccinated or not).

@freemo

> If someone is, for example homophobic they would almost certainly only go to doctors who answer "no" and any other answer would be treated, whether true or not, as an admission to engaging in same-sex intervourse

Yes; and people paranoid about HIV would only go to doctors who answer 'yes'. So whether a doctor answers 'yes' or 'no', there is some subcategory of patients who would prefer going to him over going to a doctor who does not give any answer (all else being equal).

> Similarly with a covid vaccine the end result is just as damaging, the vast majority of the public, even those who think the vaccine is too risky to take it for themselves would likely ask their doctor if their vaccinated and only go to doctors who say yes.

Hmmm. You present a convincing argument.

However. It looks like you are proposing a scenario wherein the patient is not permitted to ask whether or not the doctor has had the vaccine. (If this is not correct, then please let me know how you think this should be handled instead). I put it to you that this scenario is *also* not healthy, for the following reason: if I am not allowed to know whether or not a given doctor has had the vaccine, and if I know that some doctors have not had the vaccine, then I will immediately assume that *all* doctors have not had the vaccine. Therefore, I would not visit *any* doctor for any reason unless I become convinced that there is at least a point-six percent chance that whatever complaint I have might be lethal. Doubtless this will have negative consequences for my health (and the health of people like me). And the health of anyone who does get close enough to me to pick up whatever I have (despite the COVID precautions).

I suppose that this option is fair - in the sense that *everyone's* health is equally affected - but it's certainly not healthy.

Or did you have some other preferred strategy in mind?

@freemo ...huh. I did know that there were such things as antiretroviral treatments, but I somehow thought they were more complex than pills.

Okay. Under that hypothetical, yes I would, but only so long as it was very well understood that answers like "I don't want to tell you" or suchlike would also be permitted; the only answer prohibited would be a direct lie.

@freemo Yeah. You can ask the doctor whether or not he's received an HIV vaccine, and the doctor can truthfully reply that there's no such thing as an HIV vaccine, and that's about that. You learn nothing about the doctor's HIV status.

@freemo Ah. I thought I had resolved that potential pitfall by limiting the question to not a question of whether or not they had the disease; but rather to a question of whether or not they had taken a vaccine for the disease. So you can't ask whether they *have* HIV. Just whether they've been vaccinated for it.

@freemo Hmmm. An interesting question, touching on and leading into all sorts of thorny ethical questions.

Let me propose a practical and straightforward way of dealing with this situation that seems, to me, to avoid at least most of the ethical pitfalls:

I propose that I should be allowed to ask the doctor whether or not he has received an HIV vaccine, and that the doctor's reply to that question is required to be truthful. To protect the doctor's privacy, the doctor's reply is permitted to be something along the lines of "I don't want to tell you" (or "I don't *have* to tell you", or similar); it must be truthful, but it is not *required* to be a direct yes-or-no.

In the case of an HIV vaccine, I expect the answer from most doctors would be "There is no such thing as an HIV vaccine". COVID is different, inasmuch as there *is* now a COVID vaccine. If I restrict myself to visiting doctors who both have received the COVID vaccine and are willing to tell people that they have, then I can be sure that I am visiting doctors who have been vaccinated, satisfying my concerns for my personal well-being; at the same time, any individual doctor has the option of keeping his own vaccination status secret.

@freemo I certainly wouldn't want to force anyone to get the vaccine in the face of their own estimate as to the safety thereof.

But, by the same token, when I visit the doctor I wish to choose a doctor such that I minimise my own personal chances of dying as a result of visiting the doctor.

For the reasons I have given in my previous posts, I have concluded that my best chance of surviving the doctor's visit is to visit a doctor who has taken the vaccination (at least, until such a time as I myself am vaccinated).

So, then comes the question: should I be able to know, before visiting the doctor, whether or not the doctor has been vaccinated?

I would *want* to know, so that I can select a doctor who has been vaccinated. But merely knowing that therefore does exert an indirect pressure on doctors to not only get the vaccination, but moreover to advertise that they have got the vaccination. Is this indirect pressure on doctors more or less important than my desire to improve my odds of survival by avoiding the unvaccinated doctors?