Considering how they came up with Swift, I'm not surprised. They just "get it" with coming up with efficient, yet practical approaches to technical problems.
Lonely people can still plan their lives and act as adults. I'm one of them, a cat sitter is watching my cat right now. In any case, usually having your friends pet sit has to be discussed in advance as well. You have to hand over the house key etc.
That's true, you can have very tolerable roommates. Then again, to women there's definitely an added appeal to a guy who has his own place, especially when you're over 30.
I just can't go back to a roomie situation due to having a cat (most of those places forbid pets) and wanting to bring girls over without asking for permission and having awkward introductions. The freedom of my own pad is worth the occasional isolation pangs.
It'd be nice if it Markdown was added to HN, at least for a consistent way of quoting that's better than using the code tag (which frequently cuts off text for some reason in mobile Safari).