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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • IMO it doesn’t really matter what you said the method was for. If you change the format of a string that is returned by a method that returns a string, there’s a risk of breaking user code, even if it’s just in the context of their dev environment.

    Philosophically, whether or not the behavior of your API has changed is completely disconnected from whether or not others are using it “right”. If I can depend on a function to return a certain type of value when given certain arguments, and if it doesn’t produce other side effects, then it doesn’t matter what the docs say or what the function is named, I can use it in any context where I need that type of return value and have this type of arguments available. This type of function is just mapping data to other data. If you modify the function in such a way that the return value changes after being given the same arguments, that’s a breaking change in my book.







  • Once upon a time I got a job working at a swimming pool supply store. For a total of about 15 min during my very first shift I was in the main room putting price stickers on things and whatnot. For the remaining hours of my shift I was back in the chlorine room filling up chlorine tanks. Tbf the pool store was following regulations as far as I know. I had goggles and gloves and the room had a big ventilation fan and all that. But even still, I got chlorine all over my skin and clothes and was perpetually dehydrated from the fumes. Had to run to the water fountain like a million times. Afterwards I decided there was no way I was going to work with chlorine all day every day until it killed me so the next day I came in and asked the manager if there was any way I could do other work and not be in the chlorine room. He was like, “unfortunately that’s the job”. So I told him, “ok I understand. In that case I don’t think this is going to work out. Thanks for the opportunity though!” And I left after only one shift. Shortest job I ever had.








  • I think Cantor would say you need a proof for that. And I think he would say you can prove it via generating a new real number by going down your set of real numbers and taking the first digit from the first number, the second from the second, third from third, etc. Then you run a transformation on it, for example every number other than 1 becomes 1 and every 1 becomes 2. Then you know that the number you’ve created can’t be first in the set because its first digit doesn’t match, and it can’t be the second number because the second number doesn’t match, etc to infinity. And therefore, if you map your set of whole numbers to your set of real numbers, you’ve discovered a real number that can’t be mapped to a whole number because it can’t be at any position in the set.

    Some will say this proves that infinities can be of unequal sizes. Some will more accurately say this shows that uncountable infinities are larger than countable infinities. But the problem I have with it is this: that we begin with the assumption of a set of all real numbers, but then we prove that not all real numbers are contained in the set of all real numbers. We know this because the number we generated literally can not be at any position in the set. This is a paradox. The number is not in the set, therefore we don’t need it to map to a member of the other set. Yet it is a real number and therefore must be in the set. And yet we proved it can’t be in the set.

    I’m uncomfortable making inferences based on this type of information. But I’m also not a mathematician. My goal isn’t to start an argument. Maybe somebody who’s better at math can explain it to me better.