So, if you are a programming "ninja", does that mean you sneak into other repositories and burn them down or poison the author?

The definition of torture: watching your non-techie wife attempt to setup a new computer and refusing to accept help.

... there are so many metaphors I can put here but if she sees any of them it would be grounds for divorce so I will leave it at that.

Oh, look. I incorporated yet another programming related metaphor in my writing.

I hope this isn't an automatic rejection when the agent requests a full MS. Most people don't appreciate any of my programming related metaphors for some reason.

if there's one thing I love more than coding, it's using metaphors to explain to other people why they're not "getting it". like the all famous contractor:

"yeah I know you need 5 months to build my house, but can you do it in 2. Also, I'm going to pay half. Oh, and when the house is done, could you also add a cellar?"

any more good metaphors out there?

I'm currently explaining how SSH Keys work, did I do well?

Do you think the keywords used by git (or other version control systems) are intuitive?

I'm talking to a very junior dev about git and I find myself having to explain around the fact that I don't feel the keywords are great. They are asking good questions like
* Why do you say "push the commit" but then say "make a pull request" - when I want to push why isn't it called a "push request"
* "Why are the metaphors sometimes related to trees (branches), sometimes roads (forks) but you still call it "master" instead of tree trunk or main road?
* Why do you call it "commit", what kind of commitment am I making?

Yesterday at my career progression chat my manager told me that to showcase more seniority I would need to "stop moving the needle by myself and become a multiplier".

So in order to progress I need to change from being a sewing machine to a mathematical operator??!!?!?
Thanks, that's very fucking helpful.

I got so many concerns/questions about the EU chat control and the future. Sorry for my long rant lol:
1) What about projects that are on life support and no active development?
2) What about chat application in video games or the chat service on the website of a local shop
3) What about false flags? Like that parent who got into legal trouble for sharing a picture of his kid with a doctor to get a medical opinion on some skin condition. (might misremember the details)
4) What about false flags like instagram banning accounts and forwarding it to the police department and over-exhausting the resources of the police (accidental 'DDOS' of their personel)
5) What if the content shared in country A is legally OK but not in country B. What if you then travel there? Or if your participant is from that country B.
6) What about content that is taboo but should be OK to discussed? Like puberty or hormonal discussions online? Some subreddits like "stopsmoking" is now also regional banned by Reddit in the UK to avoid any unneeded risks. That is bad. YouTube had some problem where adult content existed on their platform but labeled as educational.
7) What if you encrypt messages before sending it. Will you be banned just in case? What if you need support with an app and you send an encrypted application crash log that came from your computer, will you now be banned just in case?
8) What if you like privacy and have those apps for innocent purposes. Is having those apps now illegal
9) What if criminals use apps from Asia or Africa or somewhere where this law is not present/enforced. Or what if they create a simple app with this encryption. It is not difficult to make one.
10) Before 2001, airport security was very lax but then 9/11 happened and the security increased. It never went back to the state before. Since they have or will have this check, what will them stop it from expanding it after the next disaster of an unrelated accident (like terrorist attack).
11) What if those services miss a case? Will the company that allows this to be send now have legal trouble?
12) What if users are using metaphors or practice self-censorship to avoid flagged words? We see it with monetization in social media (like murder or killing is replaced with "unaliving")
13) It will be just an other problem to start a new company with limited budget. So start-ups will just have a bit harder time to break into the market.
14) this might just push users away from mainstream options
15) it's just an other attack vector for hackers to use
16) Do we want to have private companies be able to scan our messages because they are contracted by the government? They can have their own bias to satisfy their shareholders. What if they are invested by the Big Oil so critic towards the Big Oil is altered? How certain can you be this won't happen now or in the future. Reddit Admin did that before so who knows at this point.
17) Anonymity will disappear.
18) Different companies verify users and store this data so this seems like a major cyberrisk and identity theft waiting to happen
19) fragmentation of users. it is now annoying that some family or friends don't use whatsapp but use telegram and the other way around. You might need +5 chat application to keep contact and lose social relationships.
20) Is AI detected messages even legal proof in court?
21) What if you talk about video games and flag the AI system this way? Or use abbreviation from a niche community that also overlaps with flagged words (like checkpoint being abbreviated as CP) or just the language with poor support or use a 'dialect' in your chat that trips up the software.
22) What if your phone is stolen and they send those messages in your name or this is done remotely.
23) What if you are sharing old family pictures and there is 1 and only 1 odd picture that just barely trips up the system.
24) Games like 'Beyond human' also has gameplay that hurts a fictional child which fits the storyline and acts as shock value. Will this be banned
25) The newer population will see this as normal so what will they find acceptable if they can now vote

I think that the metaphors we use to design software can hold us back sometimes.

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about file systems.

“File” is a fine metaphor for “chunk of data” I guess but we use two conflicting metaphors on top of that to describe the same thing: “folder” and “directory”.

Why do we limit ourselves to this rigid, hierarchical system for managing our data?

Maybe something based on tags, or attributes or some other metadata.

Hierarchy can be useful so I don’t want to completely get rid of it, or anything drastic like that, but we (or at least *I*) don’t think in those terms.

Thought experiment (and I promise there are no plot twists and no metaphors -- it won't turn out that I was talking about tiktok/apple/censorship):

Imagine there is a cosmic horror entity that can annihilate us in an instant. It lives at the bottom of a pit. We as a species are being constantly sucked into that pit -- in this fictional universe, it's the natural order of life. The pit devoured many before us, and we're next. The pit is not conscious -- it's just a force that exists, and like a black hole, it can do nothing but attract things around it just to devour them. It has no choice -- it destroys things passively. It never changes the way it destroys things.

We know we should've been already done for long ago, yet we are still alive. We know that at this scale, it wasn't because of something WE did or didn't do.

It can only mean one thing: a very powerful entity consciously keeps us alive.

Can this entity be called "god"? If yes, why? If no, why?

Choosing either way tells nothing about you and your religious beliefs -- the universe is pure fiction, and known gods/religions don't work there. All I need from you is raw thought process.