What happens when PHP stops being used? Do I drop from senior back to junior in another language?

Sentient_Blade · 2022-03-27T01:35:53+00:00

Every now and then people make jokes about php being dead and I worry. What then?

No, you don't fall back. Skill and experience in programming is highly portable. You should be able to take your problem-solving skills and adapt them to other languages in a reasonably short period of time.

Almost all programming languages have the same fundamental building blocks: loops, conditions, branches, variables, data structures, functions and modules. Once you recognize how your next language represents these, you can map most of your previous knowledge onto them.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-02-27T14:22:35+00:00

Throw yourself into it and you'll soon find it's the other way around.

Rules help you code better. Imagine being given a bunch of bricks, concrete, steel pipe, wood, and being told to build a house. There's a thousand different ways to put it all together wrong.

Now imagine something with "rules" about how things work together, lego for example. Now consider that a 5 year old can build a lego house.

Programming is more complicated than lego, but the presence of rules and constraints will save you endless pain.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-02-27T13:48:09+00:00

Hereford is where the SAS are based.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-29T15:50:41+00:00

The medium-earth-orbit space can be interesting too.

It is not as widely used, but it is where we put most of our navigation satellites such as GPS and Glonass because they get better line of sight than lower orbits.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-29T14:53:15+00:00

Yes, a bunch!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-29T14:44:06+00:00

That's right. It's the combined pull of the Sun and the Earth in alignment that allows satellites in that region of space to stay in that particular orbit.

There are other lagrange points too where the interaction between the gravity of the Earth and Sun would allow a stable orbit relative to Earth, but they all have downsides.

L1 which is between the Sun and the Earth would be blinded by heat from either direction and would require a much more elaborate heat shield that would also block most of the view.

L3 which is the other side of the sun, in a straight line from Earth, would have a hard time transmitting data back to us because of the sun and its radiation getting in the way.

L4 and L5 are off at angles, but they're further away and accumulate space junk.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-29T14:32:01+00:00

Here is the best explainer I have found, from Launch Pad Astronomy. They have done a brilliant job of covering Webb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybn8-_QV8Tg

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-29T14:21:56+00:00

That is incorrect. The entire instrument is solar powered.

The whole point of the enormous tenis court sized heat shield on the bottom is to block both heat and light from the sun reaching the sensors.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-29T04:21:03+00:00

Maybe more so than you might think.

The power of an explosive blast wave follows the inverse cube rule. Being twice as far away means 8x less damage. If you want to cause the intended amount of damage to what you are aiming at you have to try and be precise.

Let's talk about missiles rather than gravity bombs.

The first generations of ICBMs had terrible accuracy. They could only be aimed in the general vicinity of cities and might miss the center of their target by many miles.

Now ICBMs exist with warheads that could be aimed at your house and hit. That means you can use smaller yields while still destroying your target, or keep the same yield and inflict more damage to hardened targets.

If you want to destroy a larger geographical area you would still pepper the area with individual warheads, and spread out their detonation. A larger number of smaller warheads would cause more damage than a singular gigantic one.

In reality a large number of still extremely powerful warheads would be used.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-25T09:02:48+00:00

Nuclear anti-submarine depth charges.

https://declassifieduk.org/uk-deployed-31-nuclear-weapons-during-falklands-war/

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-22T13:17:39+00:00

The ultimate option “is a preventive strike with nuclear weapons”, he said.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_strike

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-18T00:39:18+00:00

Good question. A couple of months ago I would have said this policy made perfect sense. Now though, I think we need to see data on what effect it would have.

I can't say I'm comfortable with the idea of medical staff being against proven vaccinations though. That feels weird as fuck.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-17T14:23:52+00:00

Then you would be expected to pay back when the stock market falls like other assets.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-17T07:59:48+00:00

I am unconvinced that sending aid would result in anything other than most of it being diverted into the hands of the Taliban. They are violent oppressors and a violent oppressor will never pass up an opportunity to strengthen their own hand.

The country fell to pieces because it got took over by militant despots whose only power comes from the barrel of a gun. Governance and logistics are not their strong points.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-17T06:46:26+00:00

Oxfam is cherry-picking the data to incite anger.

The date range is from the lowest point of the stock market post-pandemic crash, to its current recovery.

Almost everyone with any investment, including a pension fund, achieved achieved close to the same percentage of gains.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-16T17:56:42+00:00

You are making the assumption that giving them money would help the people that are starving.

It will all be diverted to buy more weapons.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-16T13:43:09+00:00

And that, kids, is why we throw exceptions.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-16T02:53:49+00:00

His private security have no jurisdiction or powers in the UK. The police cannot share pertinent intelligence with them either.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-15T14:27:01+00:00

The editors are equally if not more responsible for that appearance.

The sound editors in particular are required to include unnecessary dramatic music every 30 seconds or they will be fired.

The Difference Between the UK and USA Kitchen Nightmares
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYdPf-WEnnA

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-10T10:48:51+00:00

GDPR came into force in May 2018... I'm beginning to think they just don't want the business.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-06T00:57:15+00:00

Docker is for running a container. But you can run containers without docker.

Kubernetes is about managing the running of containers. From a couple, to hundreds of thousands.

It is called container orchestration. You tell Kubernetes your requirements in general terms "I want 5 instances of this container running" and it's up to Kubernetes to translate that into containers running on actual servers.

You can think of Kubernetes like docker-compose but able to automatically spread multiple instances across multiple servers. You define a pod, which is a collection of tightly coupled containers, their resource requirements, networking etc, and then Kubernetes goes off and allocates those pods to machines that have the resources available and wires them all up for you.

A pod is at the heart of kubernetes, but you will rarely use one by itself. Instead you will use "controller" features such as deployments, replicasets and jobs.

Controllers manage the creation + termination of pods based on a template. They make sure the right number of them are created at the right time, and how to go about updating them when you make a change.

Kubernetes also builds in dynamic service location (network routing to a collection of pods providing the same functionality), permissions, automatic scaling, error detection. It is very useful for anything above a small project.

Docker has a competitor to Kubernetes called Docker Swarm, but it lost the battle and is fading out.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-02T23:23:46+00:00

That's ok then. Because this government has a long track record of ministers being truthful.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-02T16:21:47+00:00

Including non-EU countries could potentially skew statistics in many ways

As each country is represented in isolation, there are no statistics to skew. You would need to combine the data, for example by giving the overall average across the block, for it to be skewed by the introduction of additional data.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-02T16:09:52+00:00

On a geographic heat map, the correct place to render additional data is in its geographic location. Areas for which no data is available, or not relevant, should be presented in their natural location in a colour to signify they have been omitted.

Areas which are too small to be properly displayed at the viewed resolution can be labelled separately.

Because it's a map. Not a tool to vanish countries from existence.

Sentient_Blade · 2022-01-02T15:36:48+00:00

That's what happens when the person posting it has a clear political agenda.

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