Articles from TnL
Regret gets a lot of talk time, but usually the meaning of it is mistakes, or things you'll think are things you can never take back. Personally, I reject that as unproductive. I need to live a life without regret, because the nature of regret is to linger, and that's not productive if I can't avoid it. My definition is useful for the worth regret has in life and avoiding the trap it represents in some conversations.
One of the harshest truths in life that not very many people can hear, let alone incorporate into their lives, is that nobody cares about you without expectation. Nobody. Not your parents, not your spouse, not your best friend. I personally find this fact beautiful, and even my marriage has been improved by knowing we must continually choose to care about each other and earn the caring and respect from each other, because the moment it is taken for granted is the moment tyranny slips in and egos fight. This isn't about a marriage, but it is about a relationship with your employer that you have just as much control of.
Why do we feel worse about something if a parental figure is berating us than if a stranger in the grocery store is? Why does the 12 year old in a video game get so much more insulting than if we were sitting next to each other? Well, we know the answers of most of the inputs, but let's talk about the one question I want focus on here: who knows who is who?
So many programmers I know have their favorite language, and they really, really want to sell me on the virtues of it. The problem, every time, is that their programming language is stupid, and so is yours. It doesn't matter what it is, it's a stupid one. I know, because there aren't any programming languages that aren't stupid. There's no panacea, no golden balanced ratio. Especially yours.
I have an account on hundreds of sites. Most of them use my email as my identifier. Do they own my identity online? Does Google own it? Facebook? The government?