> > Imagine being able to unzip a build of your software to a blank windows/linux server and expect that it work flawlessly 100% of the time, regardless of any prior/lack of configuration or other supporting dependencies on that machine
> I mean, that's basically _why_ Docker exists.
It is, but Docker isn't it. At the least, Docker won't run side-by-side with Virtual Box on Windows, so "regardless of prior configuration" is not met. In general, Docker adds an extra dependency on top of a blank system: Now you need to get Docker set up and running first, and then you can deploy your app. The alternative in question is about controlling the build to such an extent that you can reliably deploy the artefacts onto any system without having some runtime environment prepared.
I don't view Docker as an "extra" dependency: I view it as the _only_ dependency.
For example, at my last job, before we switched to Docker, a client dev that wanted to run a local backend had to install postures, apply initial schema, and then download and run the app. Not only was this a bunch of steps the client devs weren't familiar with, it led to backend devs being reticent about using the most appropriate tool for new features (e.g. shoving service discovery awkwardly into SQL instead of into something like etcd - and before anyone says "well that's fine" or "just do xyz instead," realize that's just an example of several). It was annoying to client devs to have to add new tools all the time, and annoying to backend devs to have to constantly troubleshoot misinstallation / misconfiguration.
When we switched to Docker, the client devs could run the backend without having to manage anything. Install docker (once), then run a very basic script that basically just ran "docker-compose pull; docker-compose up".
I don't generally want to be able to deploy to arbitrary environments. I want something that is easy to build, builds consistently, and lets all my fellow devs run whatever host they need to be maximally effective.
On Windows, it's true, if you need Virtual Box specifically then you can't use "Docker for Windows". You could either move the VB stuff into Hyper-V, or run Docker directly on a VB VM (a little less turnkey, but not particularly difficult).
> One big argument for Docker is no dependencies, but Go and C# already can create fat native binaries that have no dependency on anything else (no .net framework or even VM, all native, same thing in Go). I believe Rust too offers the same thing. There is no excuse with all those different languages all supporting that.
Using Nix, you can build a self-contained deployment for just about any language/rutime you can imagine, and the target machine doesn't need to run Nix.
Well, the conveniently indicated grams on the packet are not units of weight - they're units of volume. So you've got two kinds of units of volume in your recipes: milli/centi/decilitres, and grams of butter. But it's fairer than the grams of flour I've been ranting about elsewhere here because at least the manufacturer can have some responsibility for fine tuning it to their product!
They are the SI unit of mass. He's just saying that because it's indicated by lines on the package that the actual measurement is done in volume, and the conversion is implicit by the scaling. Where he goes wrong is in thinking that it's implying that "grams of butter" is a unit of volume.
Well, tell that to Europeans, who don't use millilitres to measure their flour or sugar by volume - they use bizarre units of volume called "grams of flour" or "grams of sugar". Check their cup measures! It's crazy.
Apparently it works perfectly fine for household cooking to use units of volume for flour and sugar. Close enough is good enough!
Australians, Indonesians, Germans all measure recipes with two kinds of spoons (!). Australians also use cups (that are 10-12 mL bigger than American ones); other countries may too.
I wonder if the ideal country where no-one uses units of volume other than litres and millilitres actually exists.
The really bizarre units of volume are certainly the ones I've seen in Europe - where you get measures marked in "grams of flour" and "grams of sugar". I suppose no-one has ever asked for a hundred grams of sugar of flour, but I'm tempted to every time I see one of them.
"Grams of flour" isn't volume, it's mass. You stick your mixing bowl on the scale, hit "tare", and add flour until you hit the right mass. Then hit tare, add the next ingredient until it hits the right mass, etc. Much more accurate, which is needed for good consistent baking. Also much faster.
I meant Library of Congress, an anachronistic visual metaphor related to data storage from the 1990s, perhaps earlier? In 2012, 1 LoC was roughly equivalent to ~3 PB (petabytes).
I remember first seeing it on Slashdot way back in the day, before they had user moderation or user meta-moderation.
If you save the source document, the code needed to parse your recipe archive is likely to be pretty short. Then you have a corpus to do A/B testing of your recipe parsing code against.
Side note: I feel that moderation and later meta-moderation system on Slashdot was the most transparent, fun, positive moderation system I’ve ever been part of. I wish HN had more than just up and downvotes, for instance. User meta-moderation would help reduce flamewars immensely IMO.
Why will Virgin be treated differently than Ansett? (I was pretty young when Ansett went bankrupt, but Virgin's reputation seems to have been "trying to be Ansett and make a duopoly again".)
Virgin won't get special treatment, but the Australian government, like all governments, will give the whole commercial aviation industry concessions and benefits to help keep it afloat, as it is of importance for economic and security reasons.
It's a different scenario to when Ansett went under, as back then the problem was isolated to Ansett, and the industry was still fundamentally strong (due in part to the entrance of Virgin, which at that stage was an up-and-coming low-cost carrier with solid backing from Branson and other early investors).
The AU government wasn't willing to bail VA out of insolvency, but now that a private buyer has come in to restructure it, it will be able to get the same benefits as Qantas.
There was a rumour that the AU government was willing to let VA collapse and hope that a foreign low-cost airline like Ryanair or Easyjet would enter the market. But it's unlikely any airline is in a strong enough position to make that kind of move at the moment. So they will likely offer a restructured VA the same kind of support as they'll offer Qantas.
You're radically misunderstanding that definition.
It has to do with the notions that are expressed by "can, should, might, must, has to" etc. These words (most of them are called "modal verbs" in English) modify a proposition in such a way that they do not mean it happened/happens/whatever, but qualify it, or indicate its possibility etc. So "he's going out now" is a proposition. "He can go out now" modifies that proposition - no longer are we affirming it, but merely affirming the possibility or permissability of it.
Nothing about "are you sure" is modal. A modal dialog is called modal because the mode of the program has changed - no longer can it accept requests to delete articles or add text or modify an avatar, but it is now in a mode when you can either say "delete this" or "don't delete this".
In particular, if you showed an inline prompt that says "are you sure? delete/cancel" but still allows you to interact with the rest of the system, it's not modal.
> I mean, that's basically _why_ Docker exists.
It is, but Docker isn't it. At the least, Docker won't run side-by-side with Virtual Box on Windows, so "regardless of prior configuration" is not met. In general, Docker adds an extra dependency on top of a blank system: Now you need to get Docker set up and running first, and then you can deploy your app. The alternative in question is about controlling the build to such an extent that you can reliably deploy the artefacts onto any system without having some runtime environment prepared.