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#off-topic
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2019-01-28
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emccue01:01:03

The way this person does parens in lisp is frustrating

sigmaray03:01:12

I know this code style is wrong. But I don't know why. Could you please explain?

ahungry03:01:32

parens on a line of their own in a lisp seems as unusual as closing braces not on their own line in an algol like

Eric Ervin19:01:23

I'll confess to doing a lot of parens that way. No big deal since I only write Clojure as a hobbiest. I think it is a habit I picked up in the dark dark days that I wrote Perl.

sigmaray03:01:28

Hm... It looks similar to K&R vs 1TBS holy war. When I started to program in C-family languages (that was ten year ago) I was putting "{" in a new line. After 6 months I decided to follow 1TBS code style and started to put "{" on the same line. Now I'm newbie in Clojure and I have strong desire to put closing bracket in a new line (while knowing that it's considered to be a bad practice).

ahungry03:01:58

I think if its for a personal project, follow your heart's desire. If its for a team setting, stick to common conventions

miro07:01:56

Happy Monday guys, if anyone is interested in that kinda stuff I wrote a short post about workflow and process modeling from a functional programming paradigm. It is interesting that working with clojure now makes me question even the verbosity of modeling standards such as UML and BPMN 🙂 Happy to hear any thoughts. https://github.com/mikub/titanoboa/wiki/BPMN-is-dead.-Long-live-the-Functional-Programming!

agigao09:01:30

Have anyone experienced writing code in an open office, sitting alongside non-technical women and gathering one's own thoughts together (regarding code/architecture) under their conversations?

Conor09:01:03

Why would it be different if you're sitting beside a non-technical woman as opposed to a non-technical man?

agigao09:01:12

The matter of interests: lots of talking about babies, lipsticks, vacations, creams and so on during office-hours.

Conor09:01:51

You sound p. sexist dude

Conor09:01:03

Just put your headphones on if you don't want to listen

andy.fingerhut09:01:15

If you are asking about how to concentrate when there are irrelevant conversations going on around you, I often use headphones and listen to music that doesn't distract me from thinking.

agigao09:01:23

@conor.p.farrell cut it please, here are bunch of guys in here as well but no one laughs that loud and talks that much especially about irrelevant stuff. Coffee shop is a place to go and have such convies.

agigao09:01:50

@andy.fingerhut Tinnitus is a b*tch, headphones intensifies hearing that noise in the ears.

orestis09:01:30

Share your concerns and ask them to keep it down, please?

Conor09:01:42

You could have phrased it as 'co-workers who have loud, irrelevant conversations', but you didn't. If it's impacting your work, talk to your manager or whoever has responsibility for making them get on with it. A certain amount of distraction is inevitable in an open-plan office

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andy.fingerhut09:01:30

Some offices have audio privacy rooms -- might be able to take over one of those for when you need quiet time.

agigao13:01:19

Are we really getting into this conversation? Free speech was a good thing once, you know)). When I see/hear women talking, I see - women, talking, not some generalized idea of human engaged into some activity.

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Mattias13:01:53

Sounds about how I experience men talking about sports. Really annoying. Business hours, even.

Mattias13:01:48

But yeah, don’t we generally agree that lots of noise nearby is bad? Headphones work for some but maybe not most (especially as you might need to be talking to your project colleagues, or whatever).

Mattias13:01:30

Would be surprised if you got a nice simple answer to solve your problem. If there was, someone would be rich already.

leonoel14:01:56

@chokheli your freedom of speech has not been violated, you just deliberately summoned a random SJW and now you have to deal with it.

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futuro15:01:26

The generally deleterious affects sexism (and general bigotry) has on your mind aside, going to your boss and saying “all these dang women talking about dumb women stuff is getting on my nerves!” is a really weak argument, and seems like a fast track out the door.

futuro15:01:10

Distracting noises and conversations are a well known problem in open office plans, and you’re better off understanding how others have solved it, regardless of source.

chrisulloa15:01:24

That is a terrible attitude that seems rooted in tech bro culture. Sexism is not cool.

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chrisulloa15:01:32

It just doesn’t make sense that you would point out specifically “lots of talking about babies, lipsticks, vacations, creams and so on during office-hours.” because these are topics of conversation that aren’t exclusive to “non-technical women.” There are plenty of really badass programmers out there who also happen to be moms. Call it SJW or whatever you want, but you need to reflect on how your attitude drives talented people away from the industry.

futuro15:01:24

(Also, freedom of speech doesn’t mean “freedom from accountability/responsibility for your speech”. That’s not how community works.)

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3Jane16:01:06

Though y’all might enjoy this:

brown13116:01:10

@leoneol Did you notice that you said that it's freedom of speech to say something that offends someone else, but when someone expresses that they're offended, then they're an "SJW" or whatever -- they're the ones at fault. That's how the dis-empowered are silenced. (Believe or not this isn't meant as a personal attack. I'm just trying to point out what was said.)

leonoel16:01:48

that's a gross oversimplification

leonoel16:01:43

SJWness is silencing disempowered people as well

leonoel16:01:39

it's just very selective about which communities are allowed to be offended

didibus16:01:28

I think the word offended is being misused. You could say fearful instead. Your words make me fearful of you. This is the problematic sentiment.

didibus16:01:05

Now the philosophical debate is, should you aspire not to scare others? And if your words and behavior scare people, should you change them?

didibus16:01:39

This is more complicated if some people are more or less irrationally scared

didibus16:01:27

But it's easier to discuss at least in cases where the fearful sentiment is rational and justifiable

didibus17:01:01

For example, a direct threat to ones life. It's pretty rational to be fearful of someone threatening your life. And easier to debate if such threats are positive or not for a free and peaceful society.

didibus17:01:31

But, if I ramble about my love of spiders, and someone has a strong spider fear, and says I'm scaring them, that I should keep it to myself. That's harder to deal with.

brown13118:01:20

@leoneol Saying you're offended doesn't necessarily make one a "SJW" or any other pejorative. I was pointing out an apparent double-standard in regard to freedom of speech. @didbus I never said that the other person should have kept it themselves or anything of the sort. That wasn't who I was addressing.

leonoel19:01:13

definitely yes

didibus19:01:19

Ya, I'm sorry, I'm completly out of context and speaking in the abstract. I didn't actually read over the altercation. I just meant in general, you can be offended for two reasons, one is just that you're a bit repulsed, like someone is being indecent or gross. Which is the more classical meaning. But nowadays, people also use it to mean afraid. Like when someone says they think black people are more violent on average. Someone else might say that's offensive, but the meaning is much more, that's a scary belief, which could have real life negative repercussions on the quality of life of black people, such as promoting police brutality against them, or increased surveillance, biased due diligence, etc. Thus the sentiment is not repulsion, but fear that if you are black, you will be a target for bias and injustice based on that persons belief.

futuro16:01:20

I wish I had eight arms; parenting would be far easier.

futuro16:01:55

Also, as a man, I enjoy talking about babies and lotion and vacations. :man-shrugging:

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didibus16:01:09

Didn't read any context, but freedom of speech is with regards to the government. You're free to criticize the government without repercussion. That's all it is

didibus16:01:14

> Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Teemu Kaukoranta16:01:54

I feel like it's more relevant to quote UN's declaration of human rights, rather than the US constitution. 🙂 >Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

didibus16:01:48

The UN declaration is not legally binding. It's just a philosophy, not law. At that point we can debate all we want, and quote who we want, but in the US, what you legally can and can't do is based on laws. So when someone says, but freedom of speech, they normally imply they have the law behind them. And this is often a fallacious attempt at convincing someone.

Teemu Kaukoranta16:01:06

You're right, but I think less than half of the original commenters were from the US

Teemu Kaukoranta16:01:31

I had an internal debate if I even want to point this out, but I went for it, since this is #off-topic 😄

didibus16:01:19

Fair enough. I did assume the reference to the "freedom of speech" law implied US 1st amendment

Teemu Kaukoranta17:01:32

It's a fair assumption, especially since it's probably true for you most of the time (usually you chat with people from the us due to language + timezone). 🙂

Teemu Kaukoranta17:01:48

This is just a pet peeve of mine

Teemu Kaukoranta17:01:51

that's why I pointed it out

Teemu Kaukoranta17:01:18

I mean Americentrism

didibus17:01:16

Ya, I agree with that pet peeve. I still don't think it was referring to the UN declaration though 😋

Teemu Kaukoranta17:01:56

Yeah, probably not 😅

agigao18:01:16

Woah! It seems that my original question asking about your experiences have turned into a hot topic, and in a very wrong way. :)) @mattias504 Yeah, that's the point, and emphasizing/remarking that fact doesn't necessarily have to lead to a heated conversation. @leonoel I don't think anyone can violate my freedom of speech. @christian.gonzalez Those bad-ass programmers know how that job works and know what gets in the way of thinking. etc... To cut it short, every situation has a context, I heard so many assumption out here in comments and context is a gamer changer, no-one has any idea about the kind of professionals do work in my office, how many people are there an so on. I have 3 female co-workers around me, 2 of them are reporting managers and one is a Data Analyst, they do actually expressed similar concerns and moreover I've never experienced any distraction from them and they from me - because they know how our job is being done and they work hard. To clarify things I was referring to the UN "version" of free speech. And for the final bit, I'm not writing from the US, I lived there (in Boston) for some time and I know what you're talking about. Anyway, we all might enjoy this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceS_jkKjIgo

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Mattias18:01:00

@chokheli Agree completely. There is a hysterical thing going on where everyone tries to be the most easily offended. (“I need Clojurians to be my safe space!”). Mostly no need to. But where the line goes between “relevantly pointing out bad structures” versus crazy trigger word safe space hysteria... yeah, that’s a big wide gray area.

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agigao18:01:59

There's a difference between safety and comfort.

Alex Miller (Clojure team)18:01:30

I wasn’t offended, just seemed like a dumb comment intended only to get a reaction, so mission accomplished I guess.

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Alex Miller (Clojure team)18:01:28

off topic, even for #off-topic

john19:01:35

I think we just passed some kind of test. We called out stupidity without banning it! Cheers 🍻

didibus19:01:37

@chokheli I commented in the large, hadn't actually read the altercation. But now I did. I think sexist is a strong word, which isn't fair to you. But your comment did show bias. Now how much you value trying to be unbiased in your day to day is not something I'm going to comment on. But I think being able to recognise and identify bias is a good skill to have. So if you're confused here why people saw bias in your comment. A good trick is, if you can remove some information, and still your meaning is fully described, that extra info was probably a bias. In this case, the fact that the distracting conversation was coming from women, from non technical people, and that their subject of conversation was lipstick, creams and babies added nothing to your point. An unbiased version would have been: "Have anyone experienced writing code in an open office, sitting alongside a group of people and gathering one's own thoughts together (regarding code/architecture) under their conversations? And their matter of interests is a bunch of topics that I'm not interested in, all non related to work, during office hours."

didibus19:01:08

That said, it's hard to be unbiased all the time, and the bias is often accidental, being we exist within an environment which inherently biases us at a subconscious level in many ways, good or bad. So I do think people should also give others some slack, and benefit of the doubt in general, especially online. Showing bias and being x-ist is different, mostly in intent, and we shouldn't jump the gun, we are all biased in some ways.

didibus19:01:59

BTW, this trick also applies to data sets in AI 😋

john19:01:52

All opinions are biases. I dislike our over use of the term lately. What we mean is ineffectual, stupid, counterproductive or unlikable biases. We need a more nuanced word to talk about that issue in AI.

didibus01:01:28

What I mean is bias which is counterproductive to the problem at hand. In ML, it wouldn't be unlikable or stupid, just ineffective to the objective the model is trying to achieve. This is true as well when we express ourselves. The goal is to communicate a thought to others, so it can be expressed accurately and understood as we intended it. So someone said something, and people responded with "do you have a problem with them being women?" And that someone said, "no I don't". And from this point on, the communication failed, the initial expression was inaccurate, so what people thought was said wasn't what was meant to be said, and the whole conversation derailed. Trust became an issue, would they have said yes if others hadn't called them out on it? Or is that really not what was meant? This is a good use of bias. It's not the thought that needs to lack bias, but the communication. Otherwise you fail at properly expressing yourself, and just end up in awkward positions. Being good at communication can require EQ, and I've been trying to work on mine for a while. Recognizing bias in the way you phrase things and taking into account the feelings the audience might have are good ways to improve your communication skills. I used to react, and still do sometimes, the same way. You say things, and then backpedal, no, you don't understand, that's not what I'm saying, or I don't mean this, I don't believe that, etc. You think, "come on!! Lay of some slack, focus on the main things I'm saying, give me some leeway, you know what I really mean." But that's just laziness of expression, why should the burden be on others to work with me to understand me properly? The truth is, I have suboptimal EQ, and bad communication skills. You can work on that, get better at it, and learn to better express yourself.

john02:01:26

oh, I was just talking about the AI use of the term "bias." I just think the discussion should use a more nuanced term. By "unbiased" we really mean biased towards what we like. Or stronger, biased against some specific biases.

didibus02:01:50

Ah, ya totally. I mean, so many words are overloaded, and have secret contextual implications.

john02:01:04

But yeah, any "ism" is usually considered a bias in the common parlance

didibus02:01:25

Its true sometime people say bias just to refer to their weights. Other time they mean their dataset has misleading info in it. Could use a better word to disambiguate.

john02:01:45

But on these kinds of questions I sometimes like to put things in perspective, like what if we came into contact with alien life? Then how biased would we seem?

didibus02:01:36

Right, this is actually where ML falls short. You can find apparent correlations. Assuming your data is high quality and re representative, those might be very real correlations. But you'll never figure out causation.

john02:01:49

Like, maybe they're cool. Maybe the play soccer or whatever. But they have a weird thing where they all cannabalize each other at some age, of like 30 or 40... Then our biases between each other might seem a little less alien.

didibus02:01:56

Pretty sure if you look for it, you'll find a human society/tribe somewhere at some point in time that did just that 😋

john02:01:58

nah, I'm talking civilization-wide, techno-capable society, but ended up with a homeostasis on system wide cannabalism

john02:01:50

like that old movie, right? soylent green?

didibus03:01:06

Like that actually turns out to be a better way to run an advanced civilisation

didibus03:01:43

Never saw it, but heard about it

john03:01:40

Whose to say which is "better"

john03:01:46

Depends on the goals

didibus03:01:43

True, and your moral fabric I guess

john03:01:12

I suspect moral fabric is a function of purposes, goals, desired futures, etc. from an evolutionary perspective. Different goals will bring out different moral fibers.

john03:01:36

Here's an extension on that thought experiment: Taking a Cultural Relativism perspective, supposing that that's their way and our is ours, so we decided to trade with them and do commerce... Suppose an emissary of ours died there, on accident, and accidentally left her child there stranded. The aliens raise our distant relative a fulfilling life with respect to their norms. But, when she turns 30, she'll be cannabalized. What should we do? Should we fly across the universe and "save" our distant human from those circumstances? Even when they were raised in that culture?

john03:01:40

Why or why not?

john20:01:11

AI is a collection of biases

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mattly20:01:58

I would call these "intentional" versus "unintentional" biases, because it talks about intention explicitly

mattly20:01:16

it's entirely possible for "bad" biases to make it into something intentionally

mattly20:01:51

and hell, I've started using the same words for talking about behavior in code

john20:01:38

Aye, some kind of unlikable heuristic

eriktjacobsen23:01:51

Uh.. . #clojure getting spammed with gay porn again... anyone?

hmaurer23:01:42

@eriktjacobsen it happened before?

eriktjacobsen23:01:54

oh yeah. multiple times

mattly23:01:21

I'd post a "Twin Peaks 'It is happening... again'" gif but I think we're all wary of images now

didibus01:01:28

What I mean is bias which is counterproductive to the problem at hand. In ML, it wouldn't be unlikable or stupid, just ineffective to the objective the model is trying to achieve. This is true as well when we express ourselves. The goal is to communicate a thought to others, so it can be expressed accurately and understood as we intended it. So someone said something, and people responded with "do you have a problem with them being women?" And that someone said, "no I don't". And from this point on, the communication failed, the initial expression was inaccurate, so what people thought was said wasn't what was meant to be said, and the whole conversation derailed. Trust became an issue, would they have said yes if others hadn't called them out on it? Or is that really not what was meant? This is a good use of bias. It's not the thought that needs to lack bias, but the communication. Otherwise you fail at properly expressing yourself, and just end up in awkward positions. Being good at communication can require EQ, and I've been trying to work on mine for a while. Recognizing bias in the way you phrase things and taking into account the feelings the audience might have are good ways to improve your communication skills. I used to react, and still do sometimes, the same way. You say things, and then backpedal, no, you don't understand, that's not what I'm saying, or I don't mean this, I don't believe that, etc. You think, "come on!! Lay of some slack, focus on the main things I'm saying, give me some leeway, you know what I really mean." But that's just laziness of expression, why should the burden be on others to work with me to understand me properly? The truth is, I have suboptimal EQ, and bad communication skills. You can work on that, get better at it, and learn to better express yourself.