It only interoperates with Java in a trivial sense. Using Hibernate for example is a real pain in the ass in Scala, because of its insistence on using its own collections.
> It only interoperates with Java in a trivial sense.
It's not in a "trivial sense". You can call any Java code from Scala, call Scala code from Java (except when dealing with Scala constructs that don't have direct Java equivalents). Even Java and Scala functions are the same since Java 8/Scala 2.12. I am not sure how much more interoperability you could even wish again, besides saying that Scala should be identical to Scala. And I write this having written Scala for 10 years and used dozens of Java libraries in Scala projects.
> because of its insistence on using its own collections
This reads like Scala is somehow doing this stubbornly against all reasonable arguments. That's not the case. Scala collections have benefits. Maybe this means using Hibernate is not straightforward from Scala. Ok. I don't know. But this doesn't invalidate Scala having its own collections.
There are tradeoffs in everything. We are talking about two languages and how they interoperate. As far as language integrations go, the Java-Scala interop is excellent, in my view.
There have been several threads on COBOL here on this forum, and the anecdotal consensus is that COBOL developers don't actually get paid much more than developers in any other language.
Yup, pretty much. However, the implications of veneer can be significant.
Providing a single unified interface which provides granular, unified querying of disparate types has several benefits. In particular, it can simplify logic in the consuming application, and reduce network load (both in terms of the number of requests, and especially in the amount of data returned).
For example, a pet website backed by a traditional REST architecture, may have separate endpoints for say `/pets`, `/owners`, and `/purchases `. In this context, the front-end may need to make calls to all three of these endpoints, retrieving the full payload for each - only to discard most of the fields, and keep 2 or 3 relevant ones from each entity.
By comparisons, a GraphQL based approach would allow a single consolidate query for just those specific fields (from all entities).
Of course this isn't relevant in every use case, and there's no silver bullet - and in many cases, a REST based approach may well be better.
Interesting, I'm surprised that they don't have to provide you with the tools needed to do your job!
In Australia, the emp is generally responsible for providing any necessary tools or equipment needed to do the job (contractors are another matter though)
In normal circumstances they do provide the tools needed for the job, as they should. But this was a sudden state of emergency triggered by a pandemic, there were no funds, reactions weren't fast enough... so basically, they didn't.
Anyway, those of us who have research projects (as is my case) typically do have computers provided by the university at home, because research has strange schedules and working from home has always been a need (meeting with colleagues in different timezones, waiting for experiments to complete at night, rushing for deadlines, etc.).
But... it's not really practical to make room for two different desktop computers for my own use in an already spaced-starved flat, or to work in a laptop for many hours when I could do so in a desktop. So in practice, my home computer and my work computer are one and the same. And it's like that here for most, if not all, people I know.
We are a Latin country and also tend to live in small flats, maybe in other places it's different. I can imagine that if I had one of those American McMansions, it would make sense to have a home office with a sober, black work computer, a good camera setup and a green screen, and then a gaming room with a flashy gaming computer and huge speakers (near the billiards and darts room, probably :)). But that's not really how things work about here. Here, separation of home and work computers at home is almost exclusive of jobs with high security restrictions. Most people in normal jobs just don't do it because it's not practical.
The problem I've always encountered with this (which I 100% agree with), is that I've never met anyone in a decision making position who's cared or been open to discussing it. Most places seem to just pick something because they heard it's used by Facebook or Google, and they think cargo culting those companies might make them successful too.
Usually, any disagreement is seen as either contrarian or ignorant, and you end up building an over engineered monstrosity because that's what they want.
> The problem I've always encountered with this (which I 100% agree with), is that I've never met anyone in a decision making position who's cared or been open to discussing it.
As someone who is nominally a decision maker (in that my job title has "architect" in it), I have the opposite experience, I guess: most of the pushes for GraphQL have come from devs desperate to have a magic bullet, rather than to rework an overly-granular API.
(Of course there are also the folks who want a tick on their CV but that's a whole other problem)
What always seems especially disingenuous in these discussions, is the abnormal focus on nuclear projects going over budget (regardless if it's a first pass or not).
It's almost a truism at this point, to say that a look large infrastructure project is going to go over time and over budget. But when nuclear is in the picture, this seems to be wheeled out like its somehow a fault of nuclear alone.
Perhaps because solar and wind are orders of magnitude less complex. So they are less likely to go massively over budget. Because most of the work streams can be bought at fixed cost from reliable contractors.
I'm not sure where you get your information, but mental illnesses certainly can be identified by physical (neurochemical) differences from a statistical baseline. Probably one of the easier ones to identify is dopamine deficiency and dysthymia.
Drugs can certainly mess up someone's life (see my earlier post). But untreated mental illness can literally end your life (either directly, via suicide, or indirectly, via medical complications from body dysmorphic conditions)
I think a large part of the problem lies in the difficulty of accurate diagnosis, coupled with people's personal experiences with misdiagnosis.
I've been misdiagnosed as bipolar in the past, and the medication regime I was put on lead to schizoid delusions and incredibly unstable emotional state that only resolved once I stopped taking the medication (under the monitoring of the psychiatrist who initially prescribed them).
My mother was also misdiagnosed as bipolar, leading to her actual condition of Borderline Personality Disorder going untreated until she attempted suicide (she died 6 months after because of complications relating to the attempt).
A friend of mine who is schizophrenic was also misdiagnosed as bipolar, because his delusions and paranoia were fairly minimal. In his case, the misdiagnosis was probably more helpful than not, as the medications were helpful in stabilising his mood.
My point here isn't that the medical establishment is bad or that doctors are stupid. It's that disorders related to mental illness are very, very difficult to diagnose and treat, even for incredibly intelligent trained professionals. Many disorders have significant overlap with other disorders. An effect whose impact is only made worse by the fact that a bunch of these disorders are highly co-morbid. Mix in the fact that the borders between healthy and unhealthy are not especially well defined, and it's easy to see where a lot of the contention comes from
I'll add that someone who might be (self-)destructively bipolar in one environment, might be able to 'manage' in another, even without medication.
I've had multiple friends with diagnosed bipolar disorder, and harrowing and heartbreaking stories of how this affected their lives well into their twenties or even early thirties.
All of them have found ways to 'manage' their condition, without medication, through a combination of lifestyle changes, (odd) environments, and, perhaps most importantly, a group of friends who can deal with it or provide support in various ways. Some of them have been on medication for periods, and much prefer their current, imperfect situation.
By no means would I advocate avoiding medication, and I'm absolutely not saying that this can work for everyone. I'm also not arguing that their lives are just peachy now. It's a serious disorder.
And I do agree that people making statements like "we're all a little bipolar/autistic/borderline/etc." are often not helping and often actively harming those who are any of that more than 'a little'.
I've been diagnosed with autism and it's maddening how often, when I open up about it, people will say stuff like "well isn't that 'just' <x>" or "everyone has that". At this point I usually don't even bother trying to explain that there's a difference between, say, being punctual and curmudgeonly about it, and having a borderline-meltdown when plans change.
I've noticed that many people create a distinction between the police and the rest of society - as though they're separate to and apart from normal people.
Given police officers are in fact a part of the same society as the people protesting against them, it seems likely that the issues with brutality, and racial prejudice, are not endemic to police themselves, but indicative of problems of the overall society at large.
If people are protesting the symptoms of these broader cultural issues, and not the underlying cause, it seems an inescapable conclusion that any change will largely be ineffectual.
I feel that the difficulty with this, is that noone likes to admit that there are systemic issues in the way their society functions. From a sociological perspective, most people don't want to be beating a drum that runs counter to popular opinion.
Similarly, most people are reluctant to engage in confrontation on an individual level, when encountering behaviour that ultimately leads to these type of outcomes.
Just as importantly, most people are awful at taking responsibility for their role in a problem. People prefer to create a false dichotomy, and position their impact on problems as meaningless, and view solutions as outside their locus of control.
This effectively leads to a kind of tragedy of the commons, where responsibility belongs to everyone and is taken by noone - similar to what we see with climate issues.
To effect meaningful change, it's usually required that both individuals and groups make their voice heard and actually do something. Yet most people go about their lives, and only take action when the collective does, in response to some climax of conditions. This is better than the inverse - of individuals taking action while groups do nothing - yet usually results in neglibile change, if any.
I suspect a part of the problem is that a sizable demographic cares, but only insofar as they care to signal their virtues. Yet when it comes to doing something themselves, the it's a much lower priority. I also suspect most people in this situation engage in a cognitive dissonance that's almost automatic too - and probably aren't even aware that they're doing it.
