It always strikes me how much commonality exists across different software engineering disciplines—not to mention across fields outside of engineering (e.g., how double-entry bookkeeping mirrors immutable design principles, or how federalism resembles class-based OOP).
Great to see an attempt at describing this phenomenon. A great start to what will surely be an awesome resource.
I don't remember the exact book/article that prompted me, but I believe it's because everything software is designed by humans for humans. We invented formalism because it's a nice way to communicate truth about the world. Then we invented computers that act based on formal instructions. Then it's been us trying to replicate the world on top of computers. Paradigms are models of communication, data structures are models of information, algorithms are reusable instructions.
To those bashing the author as uninformed -- this is George V. Neville-Neil. Member of FreeBSD Core Team who wrote the book on FreeBSD. He might know a thing or two about POSIX! [1]
It's a bad article because it's too vague and doesn't clearly relate to the questioner's problem, not because the author doesn't have the proper pedigree.
One could certainly write good articles about why the POSIX API is too limiting. For example: the filesystem API is awful in many ways. I'll try to be a bit more specific (despite having only a few minutes to write this):
* AFAICT, it has very few documented guarantees. It doesn't say sector writes are atomic, which would be very useful [1]. (Or even that they are linear as described in that SQLite page, but the SQLite people assume it anyway, and they're cautious folks, so that's saying a lot.) And even the ones that I think its language guarantees, like fsync guaranteeing all previously written data to that file has reached permanent storage, systems such as Linux [2] and macoS have failed to provide. [3]
* It doesn't provide a good async API. io_uring is my first real hope for this but isn't in POSIX.
* IO operations are typically uninterruptible (with NFS while using a particular mount operation as a rare exception). Among other problems, it means that a process that accesses a bad sector will get stuck until reboot!
* It doesn't have a way to plumb through properties you'd want for a distributed filesystem, such as deadlines and trace ids.
* It provides just numeric error codes, when I'd like to get much richer stuff back. Lots of stuff in distributed filesystem cases. Even in local cases, something like how where in particular path traversal failed. I actually saw once (but can't find in a very quick search attempt) a library that attempted to explain POSIX errors after the fact, by doing a bunch of additional operations after the fact to narrow it down. Besides being inherently racy, it just shouldn't be necessary. We should get good error messages by default.
It's a great article, and it raises many major issues with our current model of computing. But it's obviously triggering, and lots of people are rushing to defend their comfort zone.
Think outside the box people ... "files", what a charming but antiquated concept; "processes" and thus "IPC", how quaint!
> In arbitration, this doesn't work. It's a vastly more even playing field for consumers, who tend to have less money than the companies they're suing and less downside in the case outcome (money damages versus e.g. having been sexually harassed).
I dunno, not my personal experience. I took a large bank to arbitration over a low value credit reporting dispute. Offered to "settle" several times for nothing more than a fix to my credit report, which would have cost the bank $0.
The bank refused and so we went all the way to a final judgement.
The arbitration dragged out over 16 months. 4 days of hearings in which multiple attorneys and witnesses were present on the bank's side. Numerous conference calls, 800 emails, 250 pages of legal briefs, 1000+ pages of exhibits, discovery, etc. I would not be surprised if the total outlay eclipsed half a million for them.
Lest anyone come away from this thinking that arbitration is good for the consumer, this story only has a happy ending because the business chose to settle.
I also took a corporation to arbitration. A Big 4 bank destroyed my credit over a billing mistake that was their fault, relating to a credit card account with a $230 balance. Despite seeking nothing more than to have my credit fixed, the bank refused to settle. I contacted upwards of 100 attorneys with no luck, so decided to self-represent.
16 months, 25 hours under oath, and over 2,000 hours later, I "won" a judgement forcing the bank to fix my credit -- but no monetary recovery at all.
Comparing the number of available beds with the number of unsheltered homeless people does not disprove parent's argument that there is a bed for everyone who wants a bed.
A better question would be -- what the average shelter utilization?
> Comparing the number of available beds with the number of unsheltered homeless people does not disprove parent's argument that there is a bed for everyone who wants a bed.
It does, because the claim was not that there's a bed for everyone who wants one. The claim was exactly this:
> There are shelters for every homeless person already. The homeless prefer the street.
Which is a plainly incorrect statement, if for no other reason than the fact that 'the homeless' aren't a monolithic group with the identical goals.
> 'the homeless' aren't a monolithic group with the identical goals.
I didn't say that they were a monolithic group. I said the homeless prefer the street. Considering there is space for them in shelters this is obviously true. Obviously there are many reasons why they prefer the street, but they are monolithic in their choice to not utilize the shelters.
> I didn't say that they were a monolithic group. I said the homeless prefer the street.
If you're not making any distinctions within the population you're just spouting meaningless statements. You can also say 'the homeless prefer permanent housing,' or 'the homeless have never used drugs in their life' and it's equally true, because it's true in some cases.
> Obviously there are many reasons why they prefer the street, but they are monolithic in their choice to not utilize the shelters.
Considering the fact that there are in fact homeless people in shelters, saying they're 'monolithic' in their choice not to utilize shelters is incorrect on its face.
If you are naïve enough to think that we will simply build our way out of the homelessness crisis, I encourage you to book a flight to Los Angeles and strike up a conversation with any first responder. They will all tell you the same story -- the homeless are nearly all on Methamphetamine and/or Fentanyl.
Yes, rent prices have increased over the last decade. But the affordability, purity, availability, and use of those very destructive drugs have also increased over the same time period.
The chart that I would be interested in seeing is are those elements plotted against homelessness rate. I suspect that the correlation coefficient between per-capita meth use and homelessness rate would be ~1.
Sure, but I think you're making a correlation=causation connection... I'd argue that those forced into homelessness are more likely to turn to drugs, which then leads to a cycle of poverty that's difficult to break out of.
If LA had more affordable rent, a lot of those people currently living in tents would have more privacy, more stability, less temptation to turn to cheap drugs to cope.
Jake, I get the argument. Fifty years of bad housing policy have yielded high housing prices today, high housing prices leads to homelessness, and homelessness leads to drug abuse. Fixing housing policy now will lead to lower housing prices, homelessness, and drug abuse in the future.
So we should fix housing policy. Ok.
That seems very reasonable and logical, except that no one seems to know how to actually make housing policy changes happen. You write a (interesting and informative) blog post about Proposition HHH, Matt Yglesias writes a blog post about 1950s boarding houses, PhDs at Zillow churn out peer-reviewed papers, and LA voters even throw $1,200,000,000 at Proposition HHH -- and yet the problem gets worse and worse.
You write that the "homelessness problem is intractable without zoning reform". Well, what if zoning reform is also intractable?
Focusing exclusively on fixing housing policy, which appears to be intractable for the foreseeable future, is a mistake. We should be focusing on drug abuse as well, which is a very serious problem in LA.
West Virginia has very high rates of drug addiction, and yet much lower homelessness than LA. It’s because housing is much, much cheaper. That only happens by building more.
You're asking readers to imagine that LA is representative of other areas, but reject the idea that LA is comparable to WV? I think you need to pick one to make a coherent argument.
I suspect that there is a strong non-linear effect, i.e., introducing novel drugs into a state with very cheap housing does not move the needle that much on homelessness (WV) but is catastrophic when done in a city with expensive housing (LA).
We should address the housing problem. We should also address the drug problem.
its amazing that you think your opinion is worth sharing on this. read the stuff people who study this wrote. then you dont have to base your opinion on a chart you “would be interested in seeing”. the cost of housing vs median income / amount of people on the poverty line is mostly what determines homelessness. cities that have successfully addressed their problem has all basically done the same thing, which is build / subsidize housing.
You may have a circadian rhythm disorder, e.g., delayed sleep-wake phase disorder (DSWPD) [1]. It is rare in the general population (<1%) but my intuition is that software engineers are overrepresented. Irrespective of whether you do, there are likely concomitant behavioral issues that are exacerbating the issue.
I struggled with sleep for years. I had difficulty falling asleep before 2am or so, difficulty getting out of bed, and any multi-day period without obligations (e.g. holiday) inevitably resulted in my bedtime shifting by an hour or more each consecutive night. Tried everything. Described symptoms to several somnologists, primary care doctors, psychiatrist, psychologist, etc. Last couple of years I saw improvement. What helped was:
- 0.5mg melatonin 7 hours before bedtime [2] [3]
- Do a CBT-I program with a psychologist
---
Taking melatonin near bedtime did absolutely nothing for me. Taking melatonin at 5pm was magic. Symptoms that had persisted for years evaporated within two weeks.
CBT-I is very effective for behavioral issues but it's not magic. It is expensive and take a lot of time and effort. Don't use a self-directed app or book. Find a psychologist who specializes in CBT-I. Insurance may not cover it. It will require a couple of months of effort and cost $2,000 or so. It is worth every penny.
Everyone knows that light can affect your circadian rhythm, but body temperature can as well. Cold = sleep, warmth = wake. Consider investing in something that can increase temperature in the AM. Might be as simple as a space heater on a timed outlet. Might be as sophisticated as an Eight Sleep mattress.
> Edit to add: before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness, yes those are real factors: that said, the lower the cost of housing, the easier it is for someone on the margin of being housed or being homeless to stay housed.
I live in Santa Monica, CA. The notion that mental illness and drugs are not the primary contributors to homelessness runs totally counter to common sense and my lived experience.
Today, on 4th & Pacific, there was a man passed out asleep on a the median in broad daylight. No tent. Just splayed out baking in the sun. Earlier this week, I saw a man stop by each trash can along the Venice boardwalk to dig through and pick out half-eaten fast food. Eyes rolled back. An emaciated old woman passed out in the sand in a fetal position. A man using a power drill on the air and muttering to himself.
These people are not on the margins. They are never bouncing back. Homes could be $0 and they would still be on the streets. And they are the rule not the exception.
Meth is dirt cheap, widely available in Los Angeles, and it induces psychosis. Isn't it obvious that's the issue?
Meth is dirt cheap, widely available in Los Angeles, and it induces psychosis. Isn't it obvious that's the issue?
As a long time volunteer and giver to drug rehab programs, I'm very sympathetic to this argument, but I still agree with OP.
People don't really like drugs. That kind of addiction is usually closely connected to something else in their life going wrong. If the only happiness you can find in your life is in a pill or a pipe, then that's where you will go until it destroys you.
This is where OP's "on the margins" argument comes back. If housing is more affordable, you'll have fewer miserable people and fewer people on drugs. If you transform public schools from prisons/daycares into institutions that actually feed and empower the curiosity of children, they'll have less a reason to buy drugs from each other. If you make it easier for people to start businesses and follow their dreams, they'll have a purpose that feeds them instead of a chemical.
You can't eliminate the drug problem this way, but it can be improved on the margins simply by giving more people an easier path to happiness.
Along this line of awareness is something I've been noticing more.. with housing costs what they are, many people are stuck in toxic (sometimes extremely abusive) living arrangements.
Which may lead one or more people in those living situations to reach for an escape via drugs/alcohol - which may lead the others living with that to suffer more..
Yet neither of the two (maybe more) can afford to escape the living situation, as most people can not afford to move to a new place alone - it seems many are stuck with having (often multiple ) roommates - which keeps the living in pain cycle going, with no way out.
breaking a lease or eviction or leaving and having someone else fail via owing money / damages / eviction can make it even harder to get a better living situation - even if the damages were not in control of the person, sometimes the first person doesn't even know what happened until they've spent time and money to apply to a new place and get rejected.
There are indeed many more social / cultural costs beyond what most people consider I agree.
With people needing to work 75 hours per week to pay for an average place - any with kids will have much of our future generations being raised by cats and tvs, no parents around to guide anything - so we're also creating a repeating social hell cycle in other ways too.
If this isn’t a problem in need of an immediate solution, then what is? Those people need help today, not if/when LA figures out how to fix fifty years of housing stock mismanagement. I would be surprised if the old woman in the sand is alive in five years.
And what about the vagrant trying to break into my apartment complex last week? The other one with a sharp object who got arrested in my neighbor’s backyard a couple of weeks ago? The young guy in my old neighborhood who was stabbed to death in his backyard by a different vagrant? The man passed out snoring right outside my girlfriend’s front doorstep?
I always wonder about one of the greatest contradictions in economic liberalism.
Employers complain about lazy workers.
Citizens complain about drug addicts.
Poor people can't manage their finances.
The contradiction lies in the belief that all people act rationally but as soon as someone behaves in a way you do not agree with they are automatically assumed to act irrationally.
Lazy workers are irrational but nobody stops and wonders if there is a rational reason for them to be lazy.
Drug addicts are irrational but nobody stops and wonders if there is a rational reason for them to take drugs.
Poor people are irrational but nobody stops and wonders if there is a rational reason why they can't manage their finances.
Really, what has happened is that rationality has been redefined to be subjective success and irrationality the failure to achieve subjective success. In other words, we did a simple language trick to praise the winners for winning and blame the losers for losing.
I think the top comment on the article nails it perfectly. There is a bit of a bait-and-switch happening when we talk about homelessness.
The first thing one has to do is define homeless, which actually has many definitions. By number, most homeless are socially normal people staying with relatives and friends.
But that isn't what people imagine when we discuss homelessness.
> The first thing one has to do is define homeless, which actually has many definitions. By number, most homeless are socially normal people staying with relatives and friends.
Me and my 5 kids just came within a hair of being homeless. As in, we beat the long, long odds and scored the 1-rental-for-every-100-families-looking.
To clarify, families with cash in the bank are facing strong prospects for homelessness this year. Families without cash, with special needs, or many other common factors might as well buy tents now because there is nowhere for them to go.
Most folks without a home don't want to be seen. Hell, most folks with a home don't want to be seen most of the time (since most peoples' free time is probably spent in their home).
It makes perfect sense that the people in the absolute worst position (severe mental illness or disability or severe, hard drug addiction) are going to be some of the most visible but it doesn't make them a majority.
No RVs at all in Santa Monica, limited parking in general, close to zero tents, a limited number of parks, and no forests. The city proper is filled with tent encampments but is otherwise not that much different.
There is one general characterization of a homeless person who has severe mental illness or is in the throes of addiction. There is another of a person who is simply down on his luck. He sleeps in his car on a side street at night, showers at the local YMCA, and takes the bus to his minimum wage job. If housing was cheaper, or if government assistance better, then he could afford a small apartment.
I agree that the latter exist and I think you would agree that the former exists. The data suggests that the majority of the population falls into the latter camp.
What I'm getting at is -- we should treat the data with more skepticism. It doesn't match what I see with my own eyes. Something is off. Either my eyes are grossly deceiving me or it's just wrong. Yes, I'm more likely to overestimate the number in the former camp than underestimate -- but it's just overwhelming. The ratio seems like it's 100:1 not 7:3 or something. They can't be that good at blending into society.
> Being in a tent doesn’t mean someone is mentally ill or using hard drugs.
My intuition is that there is a very tight correlation between the two. It seems almost tautological to me that someone who chooses* to live in filth in a tent on a median or under an overpass is mentally ill. Maybe I'm wrong.
* "Chooses", not in the sense that they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a job, but in the sense that -- why don't they put up their tent in a cleaner less densely populated part of town and take a free bus ride into town?
This is a flawed comparison. GraphQL is probably a superior query language. The more salient question is how the complexity of back-end API endpoint implementation differs.
The answer is that it varies widely between ecosystems (i.e. you are going to have a totally different experience developing a GraphQL endpoint in PostGraphile, Graphene, and Apollo)...and the paper doesn't mention which back-end technology was used.
Great to see an attempt at describing this phenomenon. A great start to what will surely be an awesome resource.