Paraphrasing. Closed doors (focused work) lets you reach local minimum faster. Open doors (More connections) lets you escape local minimums.

I guess you need focused work to make progress but once in a while you need contact with others to find inspiration or new ideas.

Another one similar phrase(kinda). "If you want to go fast go alone. If want to go far go together". African proverb.

This is exactly the right framing and that was going to be the same quote I chose (go far together…)

Eighteen years here. I am not American but I think this is a holiday that we can all celebrate as reminder that we should be grateful for what and specially for who we have, independently what we don't have.

A fellow 18-yearer here. I am very grateful for the discussions and insights and expertise and recollections I see every day from all over the world.

Isn't the author saying that Python + Pandas is almost as good as R, but Python without Pandas is less powerful than R.

I can't help to conclude that Python is as good as R because I still have the choice of using Pandas when I need it. What did I get wrong?

you missed the "almost as" in your first sentence.

also, we didn't define "good".

For what is worth. The Kotlin folks have been adding some cool features and tools for data analysis. https://kotlinlang.org/docs/data-analysis-overview.html

I do agree that you should be able to fix most bugs in 2 days or less. If you have many bugs taking longer to fix, it may be an indication that you may have systemic issues. (e.g design, architectural, tooling, environment access, test infrastructure, etc)

Sure, but you never know if this next bug is another fix it in 1 hour, or it will take months to figure out. I have had a few "The is not spelled 'Teh'" bugs that it takes longer to find the code in question with grep than to fix, but most are a not that obvious and so you don't know if there are 2 hours left or not until 2 hours latter when you know you found something or are still looking. (or unless you think you fixed it and the time to verify the test is about 2 hours, but then only if your fix worked)

True. Adding to these. Perl6/Raku suffered from the second system effect. Described in the Mythical Man Month. Larry and company were over confident with their previous success.

I know that there are many reasons for people to work after 65. I also know that sometimes life takes surprising turns. But it makes me nervous to see people so capable as Dave that are well known in our industry looking for a job. What is the hope of the rest of us ? I love software engineering but I still hope to be able to retire to work on my own projects.

"Quality is Free" was repeated over and over by my college professor back in the 80s. I guess he was fan if this guy. https://archive.org/details/qualityisfree00cros.

Similarly in software. When a software product is well crafted/engineered, it has less defects, it is easier to understand and modify, saving a lot of time and effort. I do not see that anymore. I see a lot of smart young engineers but they are managed in a way in which the craft doesn't matter and what matters is how many story points you do.

Congrats Joel! This is such a great and useful idea! Godsped!

thanks huherto!

This is my take too. Just because of the name, people try to make them as small as possible and we end up with too many of them.