We are overworked, underemployed and (feel) powerless,
because social security has failed.
30% of my income goes to social security systems, so I have to work 50% to earn the same.
I can earn (up to) 50% more from social benefits than from doing actual work, so why work.
I feel powerless, because it's easier this way.
I don't have to take responsibility of my life, because "somebody" will do it for me.
Look around you.
Every single item you see was given to you by "capitalism".
> Look around you. Every single item you see was given to you by "capitalism".
If (god forbid) you or a loved one gets sick in America, "capitalism" will also take away everything you own to pay medical bills. If you were born in a poorer neighborhood in America, "capitalism" will give you a terrible education, push you into a terrible job market, and do everything it can to keep you from becoming one of the owners of capital. If you want to get an education but you're parents can't pay, you graduate tens of thousands of dollars in debt. If you get old and you dont have a lot of savings, "capitalism" will put you into a shitty retirement home while your kids are too busy working their asses off to visit you.
I'm not even trying to propose an alternative model here, in fact I think the kind of admiration for the vikings that the article pushes is misplaced. I just think that personifying "capitalism" and using the loaded language of "taking responsibility for your life" are pretty irrelevant and counterproductive in the 21st century.
The premise is wrong:
"constructing a larger string out of multiple smaller strings is a pretty common programming task"
No, it's not.
"strcat(strcat(strcat(strcpy(buf, "This "),"is "),"a long "),"string.");"
Just checked 20 years of C/C++ repositories ... not a single strcat.
Actually I can't remember ever using c-strings for more than args parsing or debug logging.
I just did a quick GitHub search, strcat seems to have been used about 5 million times across all repositories, as compared to (e.g.) memcpy at about 80 million. Clearly somebody is using it. I would hate to try to get a measure of how often it's used in other languages; it's not the sort of thing anyone would think twice about. I believe you have made an inductive error based on your own sample and that the original premise is entirely correct.
Tried to buy a Visual Studio license for porting our game to Windows Phone last year.
Ended up paying $2K for a version that was able to build WP apps, but not allowed to release them.
VS + VA used to be fantastic, today it's just a piece of ... overpriced crap.
But maybe expecting more from $2K+ software (VS) than from FREE software (xcode) is wrong.
Not sure what you are talking about. Visual Studio Express allows Windows phone development for free. Of course, for releasing they charge money (much lesser than what Apple charges).
Having quite a big impact on US economy.
Or: Govt will seize control of Apple ... and destroy it within six month. Throwing technology back by 10-15 years.