> This whole notion of "documentation can get out of sync with the code, so it's better not to write it at all" is so nonsensical.
I do believe that in a lot of case an outdated, wrong or plain erroneous documentation does more harm than no documentation. And while the correct solution is obviously "update the doc when we update the code", it has been empirically proven not to work across a range of projects.
What 'has' been proven then? No comments or docs? Long variable and method names?
I just had a semi-interview the other day, and was talking with someone about the docs and testing stuff I've done in the past. One of the biggest 'lessons' I picked up, after having adopted doc/testing as "part of the process" was... test/doc hygiene. It wasn't always that stuff was 'out of date', but even just realizing that "hey, we don't use XYZ anymore - let's remove it and the tests", or "let's spend some time revisiting the docs and tests and cull or consolidate stuff now that we know about the problem". Test optimization, or doc optimization, perhaps. It was always something I had to fight for time for, or... 'sneak' it in to commits. Someone reviewing would inevitably question a PR with "why are you changing all this unrelated stuff - the ticket says FOO, not FOO and BAR and BAZ".
Getting 'permission' to keep tests and docs current/relevant was, itself, somewhat of a challenge. It was exacerbated by people who themselves weren't writing tests or code, meaning more 'drift' was introduced between existing code/tests and reality. But blocking someone's PR because it had no tests or docs was "being negative", but blocking my PR because I included 'unnecessary doc changes' was somehow valid.
You might have some success selling this "technology" to wedding invitation printers and similar websites. They always have trouble demonstrating the various paper options / partial glossy / metalic cut out options
Bad design. Would you ever put something into production that couldn't tell if two people were trying to write the same object at the same time and roll one back?
You seem to only conceive of the web as "html+JS frontend communicating in real time to some server"
We have decades of distributed systems without a central server. Such as git, bit-torrent, Mastodon, Matrix, and the whole web3 mess. It's for these use-case that CRDT helps solve real problems.
You are complaining that the allergens information takes room on your restaurant menu.
We the people, through our democratic processes, have asked companies for transparency of their tracking process, the industry have decided as a whole to say fuck off and made the process as painful as possible.
Yes, the companies are evil/stupid villains on this case.
Not everything needs bloody philosophy.
Who is "we" though? I certainly had no part in a European democratic process that led to these laws but I still have to get nagged by popups every day.
Practically everyone tracks. Not practically everyone prepares food in a facility that also handles shellfish, etc. It's not philosophical that op reports (being sick of) clicking cookie banner ads in each site they visit. It's not even surprising empirically.
It was actually refused by ad & publisher networks. They really wanted the capacity to "convince" the user that their tracking is very special and good for them.
That when you need a given feature, you will more probably find an actively maintained package which cover it and is compatible with the rest of your dependencies/framework.
"The social network" does not make Mark Zuckerberg look bad. He looks like a poor socially inept nerd who got scammed by Parker, it makes one want to pity him.
I'm currently reading a book called "Facebook The Inside Story" and while it's definitely an anti-Facebook perspective it illustrates a number of ways the movie was unfair to Mark.
The biggest problem, to me, was suggesting that Mark basically stole the concept from the Winklevoss twins. The book traces the origins of the idea and clarifies the context. Things like: there are many other similar social networks, a boy at Mark's previous school had created and shared a "Facebook" project, the Harvard school newspaper was explicitly calling for the creation of a school wide Facebook (and that call inspired Mark to try and create one first), etc. It's less like he stole the idea from the Winklevoss twins and more like the idea was out there in many ways. What he did to the Winklevoss twins was tell them he was working on their project while working on his own intentionally trying to derail them.
> The biggest problem, to me, was suggesting that Mark basically stole the concept from the Winklevoss twins.
I don't think the film suggests that at all. It says the Winklevoss think this, of course. But it doesn't agree with them.
> What he did to the Winklevoss twins was tell them he was working on their project while working on his own intentionally trying to derail them.
That's also exactly what the movie says. The film is on the Winklevoss's side at all - it makes them look ridiculous for thinking their "innovative" idea is that a harvard.edu address is exclusive. They're douchebags who want to make a website to put on the internet what is already happening at the Finals clubs (buses bringing in hot women to party with harvard legacies).
The part of the film that I thought was the biggest problem was that it framed the whole Facebook project as Mark's way to deal with loneliness. The film starts with him being dumped by Erica. The film ends with him refreshing (pathetically) the pending friend request to her on Facebook.
In reality he had a long term girlfriend when he started developing Facebook and she is now his wife.
Mark maybe a socially awkward human who doesn't quite understand that Facebook has become a weird perversion of actual social interaction, but he is not alone the way the film constantly repeats (Eduardo: "I was your only friend")
I agree with you that the film also slights Zuckerberg by suggesting he has few or no friends and was creating Facebook over a girl. There are a number of things I think the film "gets wrong". The removal of Saverin made a lot more sense to me in reading the Facebook book I referenced above compared to when I saw the movie - where it felt much more like betraying a friend.
When I saw the film I did get the impression that it supported the "Mark stole the idea from Winklevoss twins" narrative. Granted, I saw it years ago and I may be remembering things incorrectly, but that's what I (remember that I) took away from it.
A big concept that I think the movie "gets wrong" (scare quotes because the movie successfully tells an entertaining story and isn't trying to be a faithful history, so the movie isn't exactly wrong, just not reflective of reality) is the focus on the drama with the twins, Saverin, and Mark. The book spends much more time with Facebook design decisions and a broader cast.
The movie's narrower focus on a few main characters and their drama makes it seem like the consequential moments of Facebook's history are things like getting the idea from the Winklevoss twins. The movie thinks more about a spark of an idea - Facebook, whereas the book thinks more about taking a prototype and turning it into a big business. I think the latter is more of what is important about Facebook.
>"The social network" does not make Mark Zuckerberg look bad
It depicts that he did steal the idea from the Winklevoss brothers. It also painted a picture that he directly conspired with his investors to screw Eduardo Saverin.
I suspect that's all at least partially true, but perhaps not as clear cut as the film shows.
Maybe something was lost in translation, I watched the movie dubbed to Spanish, but what I remember is that the Winklevoss tried to exploit Zuckerberg and Saverin was slacking after the first few months, so Zuckerberg only responded in a crude but not totally unreasonable fashion.
Movies tend to make us identify with the main character, maybe that's why I saw his actions as adequate to the throat-cutting environment.
I meant the sort of timeline that unrolled...you see things like this excerpt, supposedly an email between Zuck and the Winklevosses:
"I read over all the stuff you sent me re: Harvard Connection and it seems like it shouldn't take too long to implement, so we can talk about it after I get all the
basic functionality up tomorrow night."
Where that's happening, in the movie, well before Zuck starts working on "The Facebook". Without any other context that perhaps it wasn't Zuck's first exposure to that kind of idea.
> but what I remember is that the Winklevoss tried to exploit Zuckerberg and Saverin was slacking after the first few months, so Zuckerberg only responded in a crude but not totally unreasonable fashion.
I don't know what Saverin was actually up to in those days (reality vs the fiction of the movie), however the movie clarified that Saverin was taking the subway in New York "12 hours a day" trying to generate advertising sales for Facebook. It notes that he had taken an internship and quit the first day to direct his time in pursuit of trying to garner ad sales for Facebook. Parker insults Saverin about this in the confrontation scene at the Palo Alto house they're renting ("you're just one step away from bagging Snookies Cookies"), and then Saverin clarifies to Zuckerberg in the hallway what he's up to.
The movie makes it appear as if they decided to cut Saverin out of the company because he froze the company accounts out of spite, after Zuckerberg tells Saverin that he needs to move out to California, that he's at risk of being left behind. There's a phone call between Zuckerberg and Saverin (during which Saverin's girlfriend lights something on fire), where an upset Zuckerberg confronts Saverin about freezing the company accounts, where he rants about the risk that it posed to Facebook and its uptime.
Did Saverin actually do that, and did that play a role in why they tried to cut him out of the company? Maybe somebody else here that knows a lot more can chime in.
This story with quoted personal instant messages & emails indicates Saverin began running unauthorized ads on Facebook to promote his own thing and that there was a more elaborate decay in the relationship between the founders:
Really? I won't say everyone in The West Wing is a saint. But most everyone on both sides of the aisle comes across as a lot more idealistic and principled than you're likely to find in the real Washington DC.
The very notion of identity thievery is "BigMoney" (banks and credit rating) putting on their customer the responsiblity of what we used to call fraud.
But the customer is basically never actually responsible for fake debts and accounts opened in their name. By law and practice the banks end up eating almost all of that cost. So this whole idea seems somewhat questionable to me despite being a popular meme on HN.
I do believe that in a lot of case an outdated, wrong or plain erroneous documentation does more harm than no documentation. And while the correct solution is obviously "update the doc when we update the code", it has been empirically proven not to work across a range of projects.