Ones and Zeros

Strongman vs Weak President      A friend argued that he liked a "strongman" (quick action; action happens because no effective opposition; a.k.a. "benevolent dictator").  I argued for the opposite (representative democracy with weak president; requires consensus (so great ideas win); slow/takes time so more gradual change; more representative of the will of the people; journalists, intellectuals, writers, artists, political dissenters, religious minorities, racial minorities, labor unions, immigrants, and homosexuals like weak presidents; requires educated public; middle class).      The core problem with the strongman is what you think about what they implement.  A bad strongman is dictator.  Super wealthy that want political influence like strongmen since only one side to buy (so cheaper and very likely to get results and quicker results).

 Liberty vs. Equality Why Liberty is Better 1) Liberty is a value in itself.  Liberty is innately good.      Equality is a math operation. Equal things are not innately good. 2) Best way to see how liberty is better is to say Total Liberty vs. Total Equality.                                                                      Total            Total                                                                      Liberty       Equality     Good? Social:  All Slaves                       ...

  DRY Is the Most Misunderstood Rule in Programming  by  Milan Jovanović - Jun 5, 2026 Every developer learns DRY early, and almost everyone learns it wrong. Don't Repeat Yourself. See two pieces of code that look the same, extract a method, delete the duplicate. I did this for years and wrote some of the worst code I've ever had to maintain: A shared helper that grew a new boolean parameter every sprint. A base class nobody dared touch because six unrelated features inherited from it. A "common" module two independent parts of the system both depended on, so neither could change without the other. Every one started as an innocent attempt to not repeat myself. What DRY Actually Says Here's the part most people skip. The original definition, from Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas in The Pragmatic Programmer , says nothing about code: Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system. It's about knowledge. A single f...

  Dynamic Rules   Imagine you live in a world where item costs, item prices, sales tax rules, business rules, approval rules, validation rules, rules which govern how we extend credit to our customers, and reorder strategies change over time.     Example scenario: It is mid February and we are a retail store with physical store front and website/internet presence. Assume f or an order to be valid, it the sum must be under $1000 starting in  February , then start of March, it changed to requiring $2000. Then start of April, orders cannot be placed by any customer that owe us money over 90 days.      Think about having a specific validator class for each entity that requires it: public sealed class OrderValidator { private readonly IOrderRuleRepository _ruleRepository ; public OrderValidator ( IOrderRuleRepository ruleRepository ) { _ruleRepository = ruleRepository ; } public ValidationResult...