It uh.. was kind of weird that a junior dev wrote.. an.. rfc? I sense that this is a company that has somewhat adapted that concept for some kind of internal communication, or it's AI slop. All the jobs I'd ever had would probably call something like that a "design proposal" or similar.

Maybe this is a folksy anecdote about a junior developer working for John Email designing the protocol for trinary morse code over a token ring of twisted pair barbed wire. An RFC for that kind of project would be natural.

In the spirit of this, I propose we start calling things like flowcharts, SVG images of digraphs, UML diagrams etc "articles of war" just to spice things up.

It says "more junior engineer on the team" which could mean senior vs stuff, or regular vs senior. At least that's how I understood it.

I typed "balancing compassion for self and others" and, surprisingly, there are zero results found.

If I could have any wish granted, I would wish for that balance to be preserved as the foundational learning before all things.

0 results found.

Verily, mine ears do smart, for folk now christen every trifle with some newborn word unkenn’d of honest ages past.

I don't want to bemoan this. There's some people who don't have the resources to house a bunch of people but do have authority over a parking lot. I applaud anyone doing what they can for others with what they've got.

Balance compassion for self and others.

+1 for harm reduction. it is a sad state of affairs, but it's better than nothing.

I remember a different apocrypha for why they skipped from 8 to 10. They wanted avoid OS specific code that conditionally activated from the substring "windows 9" but meant for windows 95 and 98. One would imagine any code like that not being quite as helpful a few decades later.

If true, this would align with Microsoft’s historic dedication to backward compatibility in the face of horribly-written third party software.

You misread the GP. The versioning skipping from 8 to 9 was because of bad detection code for windows 95/98. The GP is talking about people staying on Windows 7 until Windows 10 came out, skipping Windows 8.

Windows 95 and 98 VersionStrings were 4.00.nn and 4.10.nn

I don't know the details of that. But even if that's the correct way to determine versions, I think there might be some fraction of software that does it the less correct, more obvious way.

I thought it might be to bring Windows in line with Mac OS 10. Seems petty, but I could see a billion dollar company not liking their flagship is on version 8-9 while the competition is on 10.

I thought that was why the second Xbox was “Xbox 360” so it did not seem a lesser number than PlayStation 3.

That too

Not entirely apocrypha. Among the ones we can most easily name and shame from available source files there were early versions of the Java JDK known to have tests exactly like that in low level library code. Presumably Microsoft's famous app compatibility lab found many more that were closed source that they were not allowed to name and shame.

There's also different apocrypha about the numerology aspect that 9 is a very unlucky number in some cultures and commonly skipped in version numbers (similar to but more so than 13 in the US being skipped on many elevators). (Also why it is said other companies like Apple often skip 9 to make it easier to use the same version cross-culturally without cultural taboo mistakes.)

> Both people in the conversation imagine that the other 'gets it' - a delusory and false assumption

'getting it' isn't an all or nothing thing. It would be an illusion to take it to an extreme.

The idea of some people in your life being able to get you better than others, more quickly and with fewer words, is a fact of life. Comparative human connection bandwidth can be estimated by vibes, history, outcomes.

> Such reachouts are very very rare unless your software has gone viral in the right circles

Another anecdote. I had job offers coming out of my ears while I was posting videos of my indiegame on twitter. Only one video had substantial reach -- near the end of my time actively twittering. I think what helps is doing something as well as you can, and be persistently visible.

I don't think it's self aggrandizing. It points to a need to balance compassion for self and others. If you let that ratio get unbalanced in any direction it leads to bad outcomes.

All ideas exist in an evolutionary system. New ideas are being produced all the time and the ones that prosper have the best fitness. An idea like this prospers because it has multiple fitness advantages:

- It tells people they are inherently better than other people: "Other people aren't as good as you."

- It excuses their bad behavior: "Your bad behavior is not your fault, you just reached your limit in dealing with bad people. It would happen to anyone".

- It offers a false veneer of being reasonable, even when it is just a framework of excuses. As you say: "It points to a need to balance compassion for self and others."

I don't think such ideas are necessarily engineered this way, but that is why they proliferate.

Right, fusion stops being a net producer of energy on atoms heavier than iron.

A star’s fusion reaction ceases when too much of its core turns to iron.

Mercury is heavier than gold so it's a fission reaction.

Ah yeah, that slid by me.