They are implicitly comparing media sources to non-"media staples", such as your gut or your dreams. There may be "general information sources" better than those.
Seems like Node.js isn't the only language where people notably introduce dependencies.
So, global-yet-Western corporations outsourced manufacturing to to China, some "unfair" trades that have long-term benefits for China happened, and now Chinese companies can now compete against those corporations (at least on Amazon).
I don't see how the West is lost, even after the author claims that if there's a war against China, "You’d need to walk around naked because you have no shirt, pants, socks, or underwear". Global-yet-Western Companies that outsourced manufacturing to China like Nike and Apple seem to be doing very well.
Furthermore, why is the fact that Chinese companies can compete after 30 years (while following the CCP rules) a bad thing? Did globalization go wrong because this wasn't supposed to happen? Was China supposed supposed to just be the world's cheap manufacturing for eternity? If so, a better title for this article would be "How China Was Not Lost".
The commenter you replied to seemed to be comparing 2 situations. That seems normal to me. Comparing things seems to be great way to understand complex issues.
What makes the comment a wrong way to discuss? Is it a bad form of comparison for some reason?
Nice anecdote, I tried to speak more to the point that I think that most US citizens are right to support the US escalating the conflict against China. Their values align with their actions.
Furthermore, people that think they can convince US citizens that they should not escalate the conflict are focusing on a lost cause. This does not mean no discourse should happen, but people should understand that differences in opinions are due to very big differences in values.
I did not look much into why a Chinese citizen would support China escalating the conflict against the US nor have I done much research on how China builds up anti-US sentiment.
1. Hedonism is "fairly correct". In a well-fed and low-violence society, the pleasure/pain axis explains >40% of what every human cares about, especially chronic pleasure/pain.
- 1a. Both the US and China are low-violence and well-fed.
2. Obesity is responsible for a high amount of pain. Furthermore, there are few things in society that don't kill you which are worse that obesity.
- 2a. People don't die that much in societies like China.
3. Modern entertainment is a good painkiller. However, obese people that consume it still experience great amounts of pain throughout the day. Entertainment that distracts people from fixing the chronic pain they feel is a negative to society.
With these assumptions, the US doesn't look like a significantly better place than China. In theory, the freedom enabled by the US allows people to do well on the pain/pleasure axis. In practice, the US enables companies to do things that lead people into greater chronic pain.
Note that I think that Taiwan could be a significantly better place than China by this logic.
I've never understood why people support the escalating US-China conflict since it's so easy to just keep focusing on win-win collaborations but your comment gave me an insight.
Please let me know if this is wrong, but I think this is the argument:
1. The US is a better leader than China because it is a significantly better place. Notable US problems that cause lots of suffering are significantly less severe than notable Chinese problems.
2. As a result, the US government should put a lot of effort into making sure that China doesn't become too powerful. It is ok for the US to publish articles that are less reliable than those on Iraq WMDs because if China becomes too powerful, the world will be far worse. In particular, China should not become powerful enough to project its values on other countries as much as the US does. China also should not be able to non-democratically reform international, democratically-decided rules such as International Maritime Law.
For most people in the US, it would take heaps of evidence and learning could to even make them doubt that US might not be a significantly better place than China (Note that I'm not arguing that the US is not far better). On the other hand, many people in China doubt that the US is significantly better as China because of how much better they see their life compared to the past. So, they don't understand why people in the US are confident about their conflict against China.
I personally can't buy into this argument though because I lack the confidence in my personal philosophy to know what a "better life" truly is. However, many people in the US have a more stable philosophical foundation and could never be convinced that the US is not a significantly better place than China.
The author seems to be say in the article that writing readable code, at least for yourself, is still an important goal. I think they are arguing against why a writer shouldn't be expected to take it further.
For example, should a new grad be able to read your code without help? Should a 5 year old? At some point, you are spending more time writing design docs, refactoring the code, simplifying the tests, and gathering learning resources than you are just writing code that works.
Newer engineers rarely hear about how much they need to learn to read good code, and how much disagreement there is about what good code looks like. As a result it is easy to get into the mindset that "surprising" or "complex" code is bad. Instead, it would be a lot better if engineers are encouraged from the start to see reading code as a challenge. Nobody starts off knowing grep, folder organization conventions, go-to-definition shortcuts, and architectural design patterns needed to understand certain pieces of code.
To improve yourself, you are better off focusing on writing code, but at the organizational level, it's better for the team if people are willing to assume that reading code and writing readable code aren't an easy tasks.
Seems like Node.js isn't the only language where people notably introduce dependencies.