Is it because no one's been given enough privs on it to do anything interesting?

Why is no one including time zone offsets? RFC3339 all the way!
2008-09-08T22:47:31-07:00
2008-09-09T05:47:31Z
Totally unambiguous, human-readable, sortable, lots of library support.

I'm getting paid my salary to write Golang and I don't work at Google, so I'm not sure what you mean about it not being useful. Its as fast or sometimes faster than C, easier to compile, and it's easier to read.

If I could, I would use spaces all the time. But in Golang, there's gofmt and its iron standard combination of tabs and space indents. Sigh.

To be clear, I do not mean to condone the duplicitous and brutal means of the old Christians and Muslims, whose motives have been summarized by the tongue-in-cheek phrase, "God, Glory and Gold, but mostly Gold."

The "genocide," however, is something the Torah must justify. I'm referring to the unique commands to wipe out the seven nations of ancient Canaan, and at their head, Amalek. Fortunately, modern Jews have no involvement in this beyond philosophy, and these commandments are no longer in force in their simple sense, since identifying the descendants of those nations is no longer possible.

I do not completely understand the commands themselves, but I'll share what I know. The Torah tells us that these peoples were steeped in sexual immorality, and it was not because of our righteousness that we conquered them, but because of their wickedness. Also, each individual of the enemy could save himself by surrendering and accepting the Seven Laws of Noah, or by fleeing (Deut. 20:10).

@penguin regarding the impact of the Ten Commandments: It is only possible to say that the Decalogue is commonplace today because Christianity took it from the Torah spread it throughout the world. Before that transformation, under the prevailing pagan societies, ethics were, wholly unfamiliar to our sensibilities. For example, as recently as a few decades ago, there still existed tribes of cannibals in the islands of the Pacific, and it was missionaries who stopped the practice. Human sacrifice was famously practiced in Central and South America until the arrival of Christianity. In pre-Roman Europe, ancient Egypt and Canaan, children often did not know who their fathers were due to wife-swapping rituals and orgies in worship of the gods of fertility. Kings and judges were purchasable all around, and the law could be bent at will for personal gain, provided deep enough pockets.

The refinement of these cultures is directly creditable to the influence of Torah.

Between the agnostic and atheist outlooks, the agnostic outlook is more logical. It allows for the possibility of some event showing the existence of G-d at any time or place.

In contrast, the atheist has faith that no evidence ever has appeared or ever will: for all time, past, present and future; and for all space. This is an illogical faith, because it is impossible for any human to attain such infinite data.

Sinai, however, changes the playing field. While it is impossible to prove a negative existence, it is not impossible to prove a positive existence. A single observation of that existence is sufficient, and this Sinai provides, in the form of direct, "naked-eye" observation.

This is why I cannot be atheist, but logically can only be agnostic or accept existence of some god. And this is why I have decided, between those last two choices, as I have, and in particular, in favor of the G-d Who took my ancestors out of Egypt and gave us the Torah at Sinai.

@penguin If any fantastic story about any large group could be started by a single person, and passed down as fact throughout history as you suggest, we would have reason to doubt any and all events we have ever heard of. How do we know, for example, that the Library of Alexandria was ever built? That the Boston Massacre ever happened? That Nobunaga conquered Japan? We never demanded these events be proven by external witnesses before we accepted them as history. All we require is that the account be consistent with the rest of known history, and that there be a few witnesses whose accounts agree. Lacking witnesses to counter these, practice is to accept that account as fact.

As far as history goes, the single event of Sinai is the among the most-witnessed events (firsthand) in all history. Only the largest natural disasters have matched it so far.

The reason atheists question it so vociferously is that they have decided a priori that G-d cannot exist. That sounds delusional to me.

BTW, the Satan and the Angel of Death are one and the same. By last count, I believe he's killed a few more than sixty.

@penguin Regarding capital crimes, consider a parallel: Why are astronauts not allowed to smoke? How is it any different from smoking in the privacy of your own house? The difference is deeper than meets the eye. One, the spacecraft doesn't belong to the astronaut. If he burns the spacecraft, his personal monetary loss is minimal compared to the astronomical loss of the craft's owner. Two, he is answerable to the tens of thousands of people who worked to put him in space, and for sabotaging the mission. Three, the dangers of smoking to the astronaut himself are many times magnified in space versus on the ground. There are tanks of oxygen and rocket fuel. Air circulation spreads the fire. And he cannot simply run outside to escape a fire. Even without an accident, the pollution clogs the air filters, jeopardizing the life support system. Ash could impair the eyesight of critical personnel.

In the analog, you are here for a delicate mission. You jeopardize it at your own risk.

@penguin The verses you quoted are out of context. If you would read more than what your atheist teachers have shown you, you would find innumerable positive concepts in the Torah. To wit: equality in a court of law, with no favor to the rich and powerful; the prohibition against bribery; the obligation of each individual to take care of those less fortunate; honoring parents and elders; social rehabilitation of those unable to repay their theft; the obligation to free captives; the obligation to ensure literacy for all, regardless their social status; love for one's fellow, and the prohibitions against taking revenge and against bearing a grudge. Not to mention the Ten Commandments, which revolutionized ethics forever.

It's hard to imagine where the world would be without these contributions.

@penguin As you mentioned, context is the setting of an event, but I had more in mind than just the physical stage of the event. By context, I was including the gestalt of the audience. I include their personal memories, education, values, and analytical abilities; the same factors on the scale of their society; and their ability to cross-check against and be affected by that society, should they stray too far from the norm.

The existence and importance of this form of context is natural and obvious. It explains, for example, why different nations have resisted or accepted changes to new forms of government. It also explains the formation of many different faiths, as well as the explosive growth of atheism over the past century.

The unifying principle is that a social change will be sustained only if its social context supports it. Obviously, if there is a glaring incompatibility, such as a huge cataclysmic event missing from personal and collective memory, the change cannot stick.

If you would like to read about what I have said, as the Torah says it, feel free to read Moses' address in Deuteronomy chapters 4 and 5.

@penguin You asked for external verification. I direct you to the Christians and the Muslims. When their faiths began, they could have easily completely ignored the Jews. Instead, they acknowledged our Torah, and that G-d spoke to us. In fact, they even made Jews a core part of their theology, saying that G-d chose us, and then, much later, abandoned us and chose them (even though the Torah explicitly says that G-d will never exchange us for another people, but you'd have to ask them about that). But why bring in Jews at all? Why treat Moses and all those other Jews as actual prophets? It's because they could see that Jews were a special people even then, thousands of years ago, and that our Book was special (in both faiths, we are known as the People of the Book).

This is quite astounding considering the subsequent history of how they dealt with us, but nevertheless true. They both based their faiths on ours.

By the way, guys, I'm enjoying this a lot. I actually was not born as a Jew. I was attracted to it because I was allowed to ask anything, and I loved the debates of the Talmud. I bear no ill will against any of you, since the Torah teaches that G-d created each of you with a purpose, and He doesn't command Gentiles to become Jewish. The mission of each Jew is to perform the 613 commandments of the Torah; the mission of each Gentile is to observe the 7 laws of Noah. They are mutually compatible. If I have offended you so far, please ignore me.

@penguin A story of such a national revelation, but with no cultural history, would never be believed. Whom could you sell it to?

The Torah was accepted in all generations because the culture had a history of it, or witnesses who agreed with it. The thing is that the Torah always had this context of people verifying it. If the book is the lock, the people are the key. If that context ever conflicted or didn't exist, you'd have a people without context accepting a book that explicitly makes this context the core of everything. At this scale of an event, that's totally implausible.

To fabricate this story, either suddenly or gradually, you'd have to deal the problem of a missing context. All other faiths, whatever their age, deal with this problem by limiting the revelation to one person, or to a tiny group. But the Torah's story is different, because the problem never existed. The context of the entire people existed from the very beginning.

@penguin Ok, let's consider the small start, that the revelation was to a manageably small group, and that at some point, the story got changed.

You have a few difficulties with the small start theory.
1) The closer to the proposed event, the closer the witnesses, and the harder it would be to fake the numbers.
2) The farther from the event, the more descendants you'd have to convince at once.

Suppose someone were to say that your ancestors all heard G-d speak. Not someone in Tibet. Your ancestors. That immediately raises questions: Why didn't I hear about this before? Why haven't any of my friends heard of it from their parents? So that would fail.

So a sudden change doesn't work, but what about a gradual, natural evolution? Well, if it's so natural, the ball is in your court. Show me a parallel. Has there ever been another nation that claims to have heard G-d speak, and lived to bear witness to it?

@helloworld What you have said applies to the New Testament, but not to the Jewish Scriptures. Those texts are much older, and have not changed. Cross-comparisons between new and ancient Torah scrolls of Jewish communities as far apart as Yemen, Morocco and Germany have shown that the texts have not diverged, except in a handful of vowel carrier letters, none of which affect the meaning of the word.

@helloworld If I had no evidence, I'd agree that this is a delusion. But Sinai still stands. It might be possible to brainwash a few. But the more people are involved, the harder it is to get everyone on board. Especially people who love debate as much as the Jews. If "two Jews, three opinions," what about two million?

But there is not a word against Sinai. No record of any underground splinter group that denied that revelation. The Jews tested G-d and provoked Him over and over again, about water, about the manna, about meat, about the Canaanites. But not about Sinai.

How even to start a conspiracy like this? Try to gather a group of two million people and get them to agree that they all heard the Voice of G-d at the same time? Or that their ancestors did, and somehow never told their kids (and then, in a self-effacing moment, make sure they all forget *you* ever told them about this)? Who would even attempt this, when starting small is so much easier and more profitable?

@helloworld That's where we argue with G-d, and we're not going to let Him off the hook. I won't pretend to understand it.

What I do know is that this question is not new. We had the same question at the Inquisition, at the expulsion from England, at the pogroms, at the destruction of the First and Second Temples. And we survived.

Why others died, I don't know. And if I justified G-d, what would that accomplish? That I feel ok about all this? Is that even what He wants?

He told us that He wants this world to be a Divine garden, at peace. If we, His children, feel any pain when we see the opposite, how must our Father feel? He doesn't just feel it. He feels it infinitely. How could He do that to Himself?

In the future, we know that our fast days mourning these disasters will be transformed into celebration. No one knows how. But until G-d makes things right, and He will, we're going to kvetch about it. He hasn't finished fulfilling His promises yet.

@penguin The reason Jews know anything about G-d is the Torah. Unlike all other faiths, in which only a select cabal or even a single person spread word of a vision and gathered followers, the Torah describes a single, mass revelation at Sinai of G-d Himself to an entire nation, millions strong. Why? Because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. No one was there at the beginning of the universe. But more than two million men, women and children all directly heard the Voice of G-d when He gave us the Torah. He told us that we would be few in number and scattered among the nations; yet He promised us that He would not abandon us, that He would judge those who persecuted us, and that He would bring us back to our land. That extraordinary promise, which only G-d could fulfill, has stood strong over the millennia of our many exiles, where other nations rose and fell, and is still being fulfilled today.

This evidence is not easily waved aside.

I don't really like the labels among Jews. I just try to be as Jewish as I can be.

I'm Jewish. I think it meshes well with engineering. There is a strong culture of challenging assumptions, asking questions, and making things work whatever the situation. And, of course, taking on the world, and surviving and contributing.

@ArchieT I think that yarn gives some real benefits. Aside from the caching that @nicholai mentioned, it downloads packages in parallel connections, and it records a known-good set of package versions in a yarn.lock file. Aside from giving extra insurance against breaking changes upstream, and from totally breaking things yourself when upgrading packages, this also saves time when calculating inter-package deps.

The really nice thing is that yarn still uses package.json.

My favorite beginner language is Python. It teaches coding style and improves code readability in all other languages. You have higher-order functions, OOP, and very consistent language design. There are a huge number of libraries available, which is a great intro to open-source collaboration and development, and it is possible and practical to make maintainable web servers, shell scripts, and 2D games with it.

For practicality, JavaScript wins, but it still bears the scars of terrible design in its formative years. You still have to use === because == was too buggy to fix. Types still convert into strings in very un-useful ways. And `this` is still treated as a special property of functions, and it changes, depending both on how it was defined and on how the function got called.

That said, JS is probably the best language for asynchronous programming, especially after the addition of async/await in ES2017 and Node 7.6. And the selection of package managers is excellent. Having to transpile it down for older browsers is annoying, but I think totally worth it.

I almost recommended Go, since its syntax is clearer than C, yet less verbose than Java.

But right now, its package management situation is terrible. It's not that it doesn't have a package manager. It's that the one it has was only half-baked, has no way to lock down package versions, and Google forced it down our throats by making it part of the compiler. It's bonkers.

@4ndyc0d3r for beginning compiled languages, I can see C or Java, but not C++. C++ syntax gets way too hairy, and there are too many complexities just using the standard library for someone just starting out.

I don't have a duck, so I write documentation. Markdown is awesome!

PHP is useful for startups and new projects, because it has a shallow learning curve and doesn't need a lot of external libraries to do basic things. It lets you figure things out quickly, if you are starting from scratch.

The problem is when you are not starting from scratch and have to read someone else's code. PHP imposes very few rules on structure, and this often results in no structure, unless you impose it upon yourself.

After a startup is successful for a few years, switching the site to a more opinionated language will clear up a lot of the structural mess going forward. Plus, you get to throw out stale code and weird quirks from when you were just figuring things out.