matsdis

Yes but despite the footguns, C (not C++) is a relatively small language, not too hard to learn. And it’s the glue between kernel, system libraries, and all other languages. You don’t want to write big applications in it any more, but it’s still useful to know when you interface with existing stuff.

Depends. I would flag it in a code review on our product, and same for most TODO comments. It’s bad practice to leave them for your team to deal with, or even for yourself two years later.

But for explorative coding (mostly just one person, things like game development or creative coding, or before finishing your branch) I think dead code warnings do more damage than they help. They make you look at things not worth looking at right now, until you figured out what you want to build. Like unused structs or imports just because you commented out some line to test something. I didn’t turn all annoyances off, but I feel I should. I have a hard time just ignoring them. I think it’s better to enable them later when the code is stabilizing, to clean up experiments that didn’t work out. When I just ignore them I also ignore a more important warnings, and waste time wondering why my stuff isn’t working while the compiler is actually telling me why.

Also, in Rust many clippy defaults are too pedantic IMO, so I turn them off for good. Here is what I currently use:

[lints.rust]  
dead_code = "allow"  

[lints.clippy]  
new_without_default = "allow"  
match_like_matches_macro = "allow"  
manual_range_patterns = "allow"  
comparison_chain = "allow"  
collapsible_if = "allow"  
collapsible_else_if = "allow"  
let_and_return = "allow"  
identity_op = "allow"  # I'll multiply by one whenever I like!  
# Just disable all style hints?  
# style = "allow"  

The same story told from an environmentalist perspective: https://edconway.substack.com/p/no-kerosene-did-not-save-the-sperm

So what really saved the whales? Well, the answer is first, the whaling bans. […] In the face of this enforced shortage of whale oil, lubricant manufacturers and other users of whale oil had to try to find a satisfactory substitute.

Lo and behold, in the 1970s there was a sharp rise in research and development spending on esters. Chemists worked out how to create synthetic alternatives.

(The posted article has this too, and expands on the business side of it.)

Yes, I like it. It makes only one (big) mistake: a horizontal table-of-contents. Nobody does that. You can put it on the left, or above the text, but… not like that.

About marriage between cousins: Historically, the christian church has forbidden marriage between even very distant cousins. Intended or not, this has dismantled the power of large family clans.

Over centuries this has a clear effect on psychology: more individualism, a higher willingness to trust strangers (cooperation between non-relatives) and more. Joseph Henrich (anthropologist) has a whole book about this called The WEIRDest People in the World .

If you’re interested in human intelligence, don’t miss Joseph Henrich’s book, “The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter”.

It has a few fun examples where historical people follow seemingly absurd complex instructions/traditions that are actually beneficial, while nobody ever designed them or knows what they do. It puts logical thinking into perspective.

That’s a good article. Here is a related deep dive: Pineapples! (PDF)

Because the pineapple leaves close their stomata during the day they don’t have the benefits of evaporative cooling! Plants heat up and unless there is a breeze to move the heat out of the field they are prone to plant damage, fruit sunburn and “cooking” or “boiling”. Growth slows when temperatures exceed 36°C and stops at about 40°C.