German unification was unthinkable until the soviet union collapsed. Maybe in 25 years, the 2 Koreas will be reunited, making Korea an even bigger power on the global stage.
The DDR had about half the income per capita as West Germany. South Korea is currently at about 24x the per capita income of the north.
It would be a huge challenge to unify those two economies and it would surely take decades. South Korea developed itself from the 1960s onwards, so I would guess that unification would take that kind of time frame (50-60 years - if they could pull off another such miracle).
Ok the other hand, it would give the south a ready source of young labor, which they absolutely will need going forward. Managed properly, it could be a huge boon.
A nice sentiment but seems less likely every year that goes by. The South doesn’t even really want the North because it would be an economic burden. Or so I’ve read.
I think like with Germany it is predicated on the collapse of one of the backing superpowers - China or the US. Tbf. at this time (after Trump era) it’s hard to tell which one is more stable.
Austria was never part of Germany. It was part of the Holy Roman Empire and after that the German Confederation, with the latter being dissolved in 1866. The first actual united German state was founded in 1871 as the German Empire, without Austria (Kleindeutsche Lösung).
I don't know that it will actually happen any time soon. I don't think South Korea wants the burden of modernizing the North and despite what most coverage indicates, I don't think Kim Jong-un is crazy enough to actually start a war. As long as Kim doesn't die or get killed, I think North Korea will sadly remain as it is for a long time.
The author describes a context while he's debugging. I think an analogy would be a chess game, where the player has built/planned your stack of several 'look ahead' moves. And then you get interrupted. That can be indeed be very disruptive for a human brain. A computer can save that 'stack' and resume, not so for a human brain to recover your context. Programming has its unique things. Not to deny the other unique situations (underwater panel, clinician's analysis etc) that have been mentioned in the various threads of this discussion.
That's a pretty disfunctional state of affairs you describe in Health-care. A little bit like what we have in Tech. Where career managers/MBAs/PMPs control execution of projects with various levels of technical complexity - essentially Tech projects where the project succeeds inspite of the powers-that-be.
Looks like you discovered where your motivation knob is, and come to think of it, being dis-satisfied with something is a very common, and rational way to be motivated.
Your interruptions/work-context are way out there in terms of stress/impact etc.
APL and J : Agreed. Haskell is my refuge when Python starts getting verbose. Even if you're interrupted, there's a slim chance with concise languages that you could carry that line in your head even as you are dragged away from your context.
I do love Haskell too, but I am only a dilettante. I played with Euterpea[1], and I like it's mathematical bent like J and APL. I could probably get more practical work done with Haskell, but I like the way J and APL make me iterate on a short piece of code until it is a diamond. I should look at Haskell again...
Re. the darker possibility becomes the bias, since the organization (maybe due to its size), with its focus on success, has a low tolerance for an employee who is struggling.
That would be true. However, the word excellence, especially in IT companies is a relative term at best. We have seen others in this forum refer to Amazon's work as fixing broken code that's hardly maintainable. Hardly what one would call 'excellence' particularly given how exalted a position Amazon occupies as a desirable employer.
You could have a bunch of OOPs-fanatics who will hate the functional programmer who does things differently. Toxic culture (lack of self-awareness means that 99% of people don't know they are participating/creating/perpetuating the toxicity) means this functional programmer is demoralizing the team.
That's how objective IT is. Its culture wars of this sort - misplaced fanatic sincerity and close-mindedness, or worse mean-ness. And its demoralizing to the majority. Hence the PIP. Its like a dystopian landscape.
> We have seen others in this forum refer to Amazon's work as fixing broken code that's hardly maintainable.
Reminds me of someone that worked at a vendor of Semiconductor ATE equipment. The codebase was a total hopeless trash fire. Watching him flail and fail gave me the impression that working for a place like that, actually caring about anything is a liability.
You should only care about three things. Your mental health. The money you are making. What your boss wants. You should treat anything you are working on as a booger to get rid of as quickly as possible.
'As you are closing the ticket you may feel a sting. That's pride fucking with you'
I recently left my employer after about an year and half. I was on the edge of a PIP - so I thought - and constantly felt like an imposter. Making it past the year-mark surprised me.. and it was getting better when I quit. My manager would insist on the bi-weekly 1:1s that I was not on a PIP.
In comparison, I can only imagine what a hell Amazon must be, a soul-destroying place to work for most people who aren't in the top 25% or something like that. As an employer, Amazon sounds like an evil machine.
