I'm a SWE with 3 years of experience working with C#, WPF, ASP.NET and a touch of C++ and MFC. My primary motivation for looking for a new position is to join a team that will help me grow as a SWE.
Yes I understand but even if he isn't necessarily being paid 266,666 apples, he has access to that much wealth. I mean, Bezos is able to start his own space expedition which I don't think many people can do. While that's happening, we have people who are doing essential work getting paid close to minimum wage. Their net worth is probably some insignificant amount. These essential workers probably won't be able even own a home until well later into their life, if ever.
Maybe I'm just too immature and ignorant but the fact that Bezos can start his own space expedition while Amazon workers have to pee into bottles and get paid $15 per hour just doesn't seem fair. And paying people the minimum amount simply because they are replaceable makes it seem like people are treated as if they were resources. Maybe in terms of logistics people can be seen as resources, but my opinion is that people and their lives are not resources. I don't think people go to work and spend a good chunk of their life working just to be a resource for someone else to take advantage of.
As mentioned before, I don't know what a "fair" pay would be. Maybe it could be based on a percentage of the total revenue? But one man being paid 266,666 apples while others get paid 1 apple doesn't seem "fair". Especially, if the 266,666 produced apples were only possible with the combined work of others.
And yes, the work is essential and workers are easily replaceable because the work is something practically anybody could do. My point is that because the work is essential, the easily replaceable workers should be payed more. Regardless of who does the work, whether it is some random civilian off the street or Bezos, somebody has to do the work. That's why it's essential. The work itself is valuable so I believe whoever does the work should be payed based on the value of the work.
What if instead of paying Bezos paying more taxes, he has to pay his workers more? I think it's wrong to just force Bezos to give away his wealth. However, I also think that some Amazon workers should be payed more.
I don't think Bezos would have had the same amount of success with Amazon, if he had to do everything himself without hiring any other people. I believe most successful achievements were achieved through the work of many people. In the villagers and apples example, if the one man was able to produce 1000 apples by himself, I agree that the one man should be able to keep all 1000 apples to himself. However, if the one man was only able to produce 1000 apples with the work of others, I think that the workers should be receive a "fair" share of the produce. I don't have an idea or definition of what "fair" would be but 266,666 to 1 apple doesn't seem very "fair".
I don't see Bezos as being bad or evil but I see the fact that his workers don't get payed more as unfair. It's kind of like the "thank you essential workers for keeping the society functioning during the pandemic" phase that America had last year. We call these workers "essential" but their pay doesn't reflect that title. Some of the work that these "essential workers" do might be simple unskilled labor, but it is necessary work. Even if the work itself might not be of something that demands better pay, I believe the fact that the work is necessary is something that demands better pay. And if one person has 266,666 apples, I think there are enough apples to go around to pay the "essential workers" more. I just don't think it's "fair" that some "essential workers" who are earning close to minimum wage will never have the same opportunities that others in more lucrative fields (e.g. software engineering) will because of financial limitations.
Thank you for the discussion. I am now convinced but unfortunately, I cannot confidently say that I deeply understand.
I've taken a shot at the linked paper but will require more readings to fully grasp what it's saying. However, between what I understood of the paper and the example that you provided, it makes sense that J would be considered an abomination of APL.
Hopefully, after reading the paper a few more times and maybe even trying out APL, I'll have a better understanding. Thanks again for your time.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I think I'm beginning to understand but am not quite sure.
While I wouldn't consider myself fluent in any of the following, I do know how to read musical notation (from middle school/high school band) and I can read/write/speak a non-ASCII language (Korean). So I am somewhat familiar with non-ASCII notation.
> The closest I can come to explaining what happened with J is that they did their best to convert every APL symbol into an equivalent combination of ASCII characters.
This is the statement I keep on getting stuck on. From what I have read, besides the symbols being converted to ASCII characters, APL and J are generally the same. Both work on arrays, both are parsed right to left, etc. It seems like the only major change is that the symbols got converted to ASCII characters that are at a maximum 2 characters long. If this is the case, what would you say about the J language's notation if the authors one day decided to change all the symbols to non-ASCII characters? Everything else would stay the same, such as what the symbols do and how much space the symbols takes up (max 2 characters). If the J language were to change only its symbols and nothing else, would its notation be considered to be on par with APL's?
As you mentioned, my lack of proficiency in other specialized notation might be preventing me from understanding the issue. That said, your last set of comments strikes a chord with me and I do think I kind of understand. As you mentioned previously, notation is "a powerful tool of both expression and thought." The usage of specialized notations allows one to express their thoughts and ideas in a way that normal writing can't. But I guess this is where being well versed in the subject matter comes into play, since after all it is a "specialized" notation. It would be difficult for someone who doesn't have a strong background in the subject matter to take advantage of the specialized notation.
To me, with my limited knowledge and experience, J vs APL appears to be a symbol (graphical) design comparison rather than a notation design comparison. And as someone who doesn't have a strong mathematical background, both APL's and J's symbols conveyed nothing to me when I first saw them. Changing the symbols to non-ASCII or ASCII has no effect on me besides figuring out how I would input the non-ASCII characters. But I suppose that to you, a change in the symbols isn't something so superficial. The way I understand APL vs J now is that for those who are experienced in APL, the changing of the non-ASCII symbols to ASCII characters, simply for the purpose of not having go through the trouble of inputting non-ASCII characters, "broke" the notation.
Couldn't the same be said of J? If APL's powerful notation comes from not having to memorize much and being a good visual representation of what the verb does, doesn't J's usage of alphabetical characters achieve something similar albeit a bit worse? For example "i." for index and related functions. Since the letter 'i' is usually used for indexing, one could assume that "i." is something related to indexing. Does the usage of alphabetical characters weaken the notation so much that it could be considered an abomination?
If there was another language that was a copy of APL but with new non-alphabetical symbols that were less suggestive than the original APL symbols, would that language be considered to have a less powerful notation? If so, how much weaker would it be considered? What would the symbols of a language that is APL-like and uses non-alphabetical characters, but would still be considered an abomination look like? Would that language be considered to have a more powerful notation than J?
This might be a bit of a stretch but I'd like to use the symbols on a media player as an analogy. The symbols on a media player (play, pause, resume, seek back, seek forward) could be compared to APL's symbols. Then, for the J version of the media player, rather than the symbols, there could be "Pl", "Pa", "Re", "SB", "SF" or something of the sort. I would say that the APL's symbols do look nicer, but I don't think J's usage of alphabetical characters should be considered an abomination. If so, wouldn't all text GUI's (e.g. command line managers such as nnn or MidnightCommander) be considered an abomination compared to a regular GUI version?
Maybe I'm not looking at the right thing here but APL's and J's notation seem to be similar. One does look better than the other, but both seem to serve the same purpose.
Maybe I'm missing the point but could you clarify a bit more on APL's notation vs J's notation?
Speaking as someone who is not very well math inclined and as someone who was born in an Asian country, both APL's special characters for verbs and J's alphabetical characters for verbs are similar enough for me. Both languages use symbols for verbs, it's just that J's symbols happens to very closely resemble the characters of the English alphabet.
Although, due to the familiarity of the English alphabet, J's symbols might intuitively bring up ideas of the alphabet character, is it not possible to just think of it as a new mathematical symbol? For example, instead of seeing "o." as the alphabet character 'o' followed by a period, couldn't it be seen as a circle followed by a dot? Or if we lived in a world where the alphabetical characters of the English were swapped with the special characters of APL, would J's notation still be broken? Does familiarity of the symbols used in a notation make it any less powerful?
Maybe the reason why I don't understand is because I haven't tried APL and only tried J. And I eventually ended up quitting on learning J because it was starting to get too difficult for me. Would it be possible to explain the differences in APL's notation and J's notation is an easier or simpler fashion?
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I'm a SWE with 3 years of experience working with C#, WPF, ASP.NET and a touch of C++ and MFC. My primary motivation for looking for a new position is to join a team that will help me grow as a SWE.