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In theory you can automate finding interesting research directions by identifying conjectures with many dependencies. And notation has never been mathematicians' forte, with them trying to cram the entirety of universe into single letters.

> Changing the name of a variable or block for example, could create “holes” in the calling sites

WTF. Isn't the whole point of visual programming that you are NOT bound by the limitations of text as a medium? A block refers to a specific variable. It shouldn't matter what it's called, it shouldn't matter if what it's called changes, it should still refer to the same variable even after renames.


That one is a bit more defensible for variables, when you rename variables, it gives you "rename" or "rename all". "rename" renames the variable, leaving uses of it the same, "rename all" also renames where you used it. Deleting a variable leaves the blocks that references it in place but they'll throw an error if called (IIRC this is useful if you wanted to switch from a global to local variable or vice versa).

Now, custom blocks have a different issue, where deleting one just severs any code that was using it (so if you had some custom blocks in a program: [on start] -> a -> b -> c, deleting the definition for b will mean c no longer gets called). There's now a block to delete custom blocks, so you can make self-destructing code.


Almost every "normal" job has regular performance reviews where individual contributions, not collective outcomes, are reviewed and used as a sole input for raises, promotions, and firings. If you can't sufficiently document what you personally did, you might've as well not done anything at all.

Yes, that's true, but it is still generally accepted that a completed project is a result of some collective effort where people of varying degree of seniority and ability contribute. There is also not a singular event of a project being completed with a list of heroes/geniuses making it happen, but rather a whole lifecycle of gradual development, maintenance and going out of relevance with contributors coming and going.

I can imagine mathematics of the future being more like that rather than history of discoveries with dates and names


We had it (or one of the clones) in middle school, but it was a demo version that had saving disabled. Half of each class was messing with the turtle. The other half was writing down the code with pen and paper so that we can have it graded.

Counterpoint: most Open Source projects are (or started off as) programs people built for themselves, and anyone else ending up using them was a happy side-effect.

And yet, many people have ambitions. They will put up a website about how great their software is and how everyone should use it.

I usually put a warning that it's experimental and might not be maintained. More users, more problems.

(And yet, I'll confess to be slightly disappointed that nobody is using software that I didn't promote.)


I regularly see people going over 110 MPH on European highways. And no, I don't consider it reasonable to arrest people just because they reached middle RPMs on the top gear of their cheap SUV.

You can make pretty much the same chart for Celsius and it makes as much sense.

40 - scorching hot

35 - super hot

30 - sunny summer day

25 - nice warm weather

20 - nice breezy weather

15 - a little chilly

10 - bring a coat

5 - getting cold

0 - drivers be careful

-5 - is cold

-10 - seriously cold

Etc.

Body temperature also has a nice cutoff point of 37.0C before you start to worry.


If it makes you feel better, in Poland we still use millimeters of mercury.

The problem with "0F is fricking cold" is that so is 5F, and 10F, and even 15F to many people; and the difference between, say, -10F and +10F is pretty much none for practical purposes. Whereas knowing whether it was +1C or -1C during the night can have major impact on road safety.

With literally everything else about those two scales being a matter of preference and getting used to, this is the only objective difference with real world impact. Very tiny impact but still. Focusing on this one thing is the only way to answer the question of which is better with anything other than "whichever you're used to, it doesn't matter whatsoever". And if you focus on this one thing, then by the slightest of margins, Celsius is objectively better.


<Slightest of margins

As someone who lives in a northern US state, there are so many other factors that affect winter road safety that aren't a binary above/below freezing temperature at sea level. I'm not really going to argue against Celsius but F is a very workable scale that has some (minor) benefits at human scale.


As far as I can tell, literally every single benefit of Fahrenheits I've ever heard of boils down to being used to dealing with numbers around 100 but not around -30. I have yet to hear about any such benefit that isn't 100% attributable in its entirety to being taught °F before °C at school.

All those other reasons are exactly why I said the difference is minimal. But that minimal difference is not zero. If you add every single such difference that exists between °C and °F, of which there's literally just one, then Celsius very clearly comes ahead, although by an amount way too small to matter.

Black ice is always dangerous. No matter how many other dangerous road conditions you can come up with, black ice is still one of them. And black ice happens exactly when the temperature crosses 32°F boundary multiple times. It's far more important to know if it was 31°F than to know if it was 30°F.


I really don't get this argument. Why does more extreme temperature mean that F makes more sense than C?

It doesn't mean that. F is better than C for weather no matter what kind of climate you live in.

A few comments up, someone was saying F only makes more sense than C because you live somewhere with specific temperature ranges. But the US has all sorts of ranges.


Got it. But why?

Celsius isn't granular enough (people can perceive 0.5˚C changes), and anything above 50˚C is rare or nonexistent. 0-100˚F pretty much lines up with the extremes.

Empirically, my wife can perceive a 0° change on a bad day. The same temperature can be too hot and too cold at the same time. That said, I have never encountered a situation where 1°F makes any difference. If somebody feels bad, it takes at least 2-3°F change to make them feel good again. Celsius is granular enough for that. All workplace safety and food safety regulations in Europe are expressed in whole, non-fractional degrees Celsius.

What's so special about the number 50? Why aren't you comparing to 40°C instead? 40°C is a more useful boundary than both 50°C and 100°F.


Thermostats normally use 0.5˚C increments because people can feel the difference. Then they disable the decimals when in F mode.

50˚C is the highest temperature that regularly occurs in the hottest place I can think of, Death Valley. The point is, half the 0-100 range never gets used even in extreme settings. But yeah, in most places, more than half is unused.


Thermostats are made with way more granurality than needed, like body scales with 100 gram/quarter pound precision or battery testers with millivolt sensitivity. Most people have single zone HVAC with one controlling thermometer, and it's literally impossible for the whole house to have uniform temperature. And yet, most people are fine around the whole house, not just where the controlling thermometer is.

I still don't get why are you so fixated on 50°C. Why not 125°F? You'd get even more unused range if you go 0-125.


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