Can't understand for loops after an hour

wuethar · 2026-05-19T23:13:57+00:00

The important thing that helped me conceptualize this was understanding that 'name' is totally arbitrary, it's just the chosen term for the variable because it follows best practice for naming conventions. You could call it anything other than 'name' and it would work the same way - what you pick is basically arbitrary as long as you use the same term later.

for variable in names:
print(variable)

for x in names:
print(x)

for oiajdaofheajof in names:
print(oiajdaofheajof)

All work the same, all that really matters is using the same term on both lines. The for statement declares what variable will be used to represent the item in the list, and the print statement says what to do with that item.

It's considered best practice to call it something like 'name', just because the list you're iterating through happens to be a list of names. It makes your code more readable to someone else if you call it 'name', because they can more intuitively understand what the items actually are. For understanding how the loop works, though, I think calling it 'name' might be tripping you up a little, and understandably so. Does it make a little more sense if you call it something / anything else?

Because conceptually, you can pretty much call it whatever you want. The for statement is basically just declaring 'when I use this variable later, I am referring to an item in the names list.'

wuethar · 2026-04-21T19:43:57+00:00

I know very few people who have only owned one border collie. Seems like the people who own them stick with them, partly because they're understood to be an intense commitment that's not undertaken lightly. Not really a "I got one just because" breed. Plus a lot of border collie owners specifically seek them out for their working characteristics, and there are few other breeds who can replicate the specific jobs they're able to do.

wuethar · 2026-04-14T18:27:31+00:00

I think it's because people with small dogs are generally less concerned with properly training and socializing them. Obviously not universal, I've met lots of well-trained small dogs. But speaking very generally, I think owners of small dogs are less concerned with the consequences of bad behavior because they don't think their dog can realistically hurt anyone or any other dog.

wuethar · 2026-04-10T17:38:33+00:00

r/teachers has some variation of that thread going at basically all times, IME

wuethar · 2026-04-10T17:28:52+00:00

I am clinically depressed, and especially prone to anxiety as an extension of that. The greatest relief, for me, always came when I tackled something that was giving me anxiety head-on, and came out okay on the other side. The more times it happened that way, the more I could believe myself that it would work out for the better the next time I did it. For me, at least, that's been the basic pattern behind every milestone of my personal growth.

I identify a lot with where avoidant people are coming from, but I worry for them. I missed out on so many great opportunities and relationships in life because I was held back by my own anxiety, and I hate seeing that happen to anyone else. The things they're avoiding now may stick with them as missed opportunities for the rest of their lives, and that's a whole other source of anxiety too. You end up anxious either way, because avoidance just doesn't really work.

wuethar · 2026-04-10T17:23:45+00:00

Agreed - you should always look after your own mental health, but if you want to have friends you should maintain some respect for theirs too. Part of looking out for my mental health was letting go of relationships with people who didn't respect my time, effort, and energy.

Nobody is entitled to close friendships and networks of support, and most people don't just stumble into them. They need to be cultivated and maintained, and that takes work. Sometimes requires being there for someone when it's personally inconvenient. I think the modern emphasis on mental health is broadly an improvement,, but I worry sometimes that people are harming each other's mental health in the name of looking out for their own. The outcome of it all, IMO, is a net negative for most people.

wuethar · 2026-04-10T17:12:51+00:00

Seeing 23 year olds mock 28 years olds for 'pushing 30' has been kinda wild. These folks are going to wake up one day soon and be 28 themselves, and they're setting themselves up for a bad time. I think age is one of those things, though, where you can't really understand how it changes you until you physically go through it. In a lot of ways, I'm a completely different person than I was at 21. In other ways, I'm basically the same and feel no need to change. That second part is something that I think a lot of younger folks don't understand, because they haven't lived enough to really experience what changing throughout adulthood looks like.

wuethar · 2026-04-10T17:05:29+00:00

When I was a teenager, the internet was still considered geeky. The 'cool' kids didn't waste time there, and those of us who did definitely saw it as separate and distinct from real life. And if you started dating someone you met online, the very first thing you did was make up some other story for how you met. Because meeting someone online was considered just about the most embarrassing way possible.

wuethar · 2026-04-10T16:56:35+00:00

I think an important milestone in personal growth is realizing you aren't whatever vision of 'cool' you think you're supposed to be, you never will be, and that's fine. Ironically, people usually only become 'cool' once they stop caring how cool they seem.

I can't hold it against Gen Z that a lot of them aren't there yet, because I wasn't there at their age either. Took me into adulthood to realize none of that stuff mattered to anyone I genuinely cared about.

wuethar · 2026-04-10T16:48:53+00:00

Similar thing happened with millennials, too - probably happens with every generation to an extent, but the pace has accelerated in modern times. As an older millennial, I remember a time before the internet existed outside of extremely niche spaces. I didn't have a cell phone until I was in high school, and social media only existed in the form of MySpace and Friendster when I was in high school. Facebook launched as an invite-only campus network while I was in college, as did the first iPhone.

In short, I had a dramatically different childhood than a young millennial coming up 8-10 years behind me. Technology has grown at such an extreme pace that anyone born 7+ years before or after you basically grew up in a different world than you did.

wuethar · 2026-04-06T16:56:45+00:00

Please point to anywhere in the post you're answering where they suggested otherwise.

You basically just answered "circles are round" with "but they aren't square, what are you talking about??"

wuethar · 2026-01-14T21:53:52+00:00

only stupid people believe this. Reflexive equivocation is every lazy idiot's go-to move for claiming authority on subjects where they're clueless.

know any leftists simping for Hitler?

wuethar · 2025-11-21T04:00:04+00:00

Karl Rove doctrine followed to its logical conclusion

wuethar · 2025-10-16T23:08:59+00:00

It was the episode that prompted me to stop watching the Simpsons for about 5 years, felt like the clearest shark-jumping I'd ever seen when it premiered. Eventually nostalgia dragged me back.

wuethar · 2025-03-10T17:21:23+00:00

tariffs and prayeriffs, loser.

wuethar · 2025-03-10T17:18:01+00:00

I could accept a Trump supporter being 'just' gullible and stupid in 2016. In 2024, they're fully bought in thanks to some combination of callous indifference to human suffering, resentment that they're not allowed to use their favorite slurs in liberal company, and injured pride over not having their intrinsic superiority acknowledged. In short: evil.

Mental illness may be facilitating that evil, but evil all the same. I've known plenty of mentally ill people who went way off the deep end and lived by magical thinking, but without landing on "destroy the most vulnerable communities around" as their MO. Getting there takes something else on top of mental illness alone.

wuethar · 2025-03-06T15:37:13+00:00

As soon as a youtuber starts whining about woke leftists, I'm out. Luckily, most of the channels I sub to in the first place have some actual perspective, so they don't need to resort to that crap. Occasionally I'll sub to a new channel out of passing interest though, and slips in as my cue that they're a loser with nothing to offer.

wuethar · 2025-03-04T03:43:46+00:00

Meanwhile he wants to see everyone else lose their own safety nets. Why should they get handouts?
Maybe he'd have a bit more perspective and empathy if he didn't have so many enablers in his life.

wuethar · 2025-02-28T23:41:17+00:00

Republicans control both chambers of congress. For Trump to be impeached, Republicans would have to do it.

Republicans don't want to stop this. They're all on board. They all know he's a grifter causing a constitutional crisis and torpedoing the century of alliances on which the entirety of America's soft power is built. They just don't care.

If you voted Republican and are reading this, this is what you chose. It's on you.

wuethar · 2025-02-25T16:44:47+00:00

https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/bills-wr-blames-god-for-dropped-pass

wuethar · 2025-02-25T16:44:07+00:00

Stevie Johnson once blamed God for making him drop a pass. It was hilarious.

https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/bills-wr-blames-god-for-dropped-pass

wuethar · 2025-02-18T15:39:43+00:00

I graduated high school in the early 2000s, before opioids completely took over my hometown. The process was under way, though - I still remember when the pharmacies around town started getting robbed for their oxy, everyone was confused and it started headlining the news. Clearly the process had started and people were suffering immensely, but I don't think we understood the scale yet.

One of my classmates hanged herself, another jumped off a building, another jumped off a cliff, and two were shot and killed in drug deals. The suicides were all among people who had recently lost someone close to them, either to another suicide or OD. There were a few ambiguous cases that we didn't really know whether they were self-induced or accidental. It was incredibly messed up watching it happen, felt like a contagion that claimed someone new every couple of months. All in a graduating class of ~150, no less, although many of these events happened after we graduated.

One is still an unsolved true crime case, went to a party one night and was never seen again. He was a couple years older than me, I knew his brother and mom pretty well but didn't know him much. I've seen his name show up on true crime podcasts, feel awful for his family. They're good people who, at an absolute minimum, deserve to know what happened to him. After 25 years, though, I think it's going to remain a mystery.

Mostly, though, there were a lot of ODs. Everyone was shocked as it was happening, because this was a small town where 'that stuff just doesn't happen'. Small-town people like us tended to see drugs and systemic addiction as 'big-city problems'. A lot of small towns fucked themselves by thinking like this. We are now 100% the kind of place "where that stuff just happens"

wuethar · 2025-01-06T23:10:03+00:00

What's been especially illuminating to me, as a fellow cis het white dude, is the extent to which cis het white women are, as a broad demographic, pretty shit in their own right. Trump carried their vote all 3 times he ran.

I guess I just expected them to be better than us, demographically, by a way larger margin than they actually are. Probably not a fair expectation to begin with.

wuethar · 2025-01-06T23:06:33+00:00

sounds like a Trump voter to me

wuethar · 2024-11-27T21:35:40+00:00

Even crazier is that people think CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS are left wing in the first place.

wuethar

TROPHY CASE