• 3 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 4th, 2023

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  • Definitely not too weird a question!

    There are plenty of introverted Americans who hate how extraverted it is here. And the U.S. definitely isn’t “superior” to Germany in that way (or any other particular way.)

    Also, there’s a difference between introversion, shyness, social anxiety, an avoidant and/or schizoid and/or schizotypal personality type, an avoidant attachment style, hikikomori/shutins, autism, and plenty of other sorts of socially-averse sorts of temperments. Some are “problems”, some aren’t. Given the way you’re talking about yourself, it sounds like what you’re experiencing is something you’d like to change about yourself. I do think it’s worth introspecting a bit (see what I did there?) and seeing to what extent your desire to change is internalized shame put on you by others and to what extent changing your presentation in the world would lead to a truer expression of your true self. But assuming the latter is the case…

    Practice. Even if Germany is a pretty introverted place (and that’s valid – there are definitely differences regionally with regard to how introverted or extraverted the culture is) there are definitely places/events/gatherings/etc that are more expressions of extraversion than others. Immerse yourself in such events. Baby steps are fine. Start with contexts that are just a little bit more extraverted than you are if you like. And move on to more and more extraverted sorts of contexts. Also, I’d try to focus on events centered around things you hold a genuine interest in. (I, for instance, have enjoyed a lot of tabletop roleplaying games. That activity, even though it’s engaged in with others, feels much less overwhelming to me given that everyone’s focused on a common activity rather than just on “each other.”)

    One more word about this. Try to avoid “masking.” That is, don’t invent a facade of extraversion to show people. It’s very cliche to say it, but: “be yourself.” I think probably ultimately if you end up “pretending to be extraverted” rather than engaging in socialization in a way you genuinely enjoy, it’s likely to do you more harm than good with regard to your goals.

    Good luck!


  • I’m not sure why you’re getting downvotes exactly.

    A basic tutorial on web development like Sleepless One suggested is definitely a good place to start, just to get a basic overview of what you’re getting into. I personally learn best by doing rather than by learning. What I mean by that is if I sit down to try to learn… say… the C programming language, I’m probably not going to learn much from it, let alone retain it. But if I decide I want to write a game in C and start writing the game even from what little I know about C, I’ll learn as I go. Not to say for me there’s no benefit in a “learn C” tutorial, but if you’re anything like me, I’d recommend switching to doing the specific website you have in mind as early as possible rather than trying to “learn web development” before switching to the project that is ultimately your end goal.

    Beyond that, you’ll want to avoid falling into a trap of doing what feels to you like it’ll work rather than what’s “best practices” for “the industry.” So the other thing I think will benefit you searching-wise is to look for information about not just how to make it (technically) work but also how to do the thing you want to do “right.”

    At least that’s my recommendation.

    Beyond that, are there any existing websites that closely approximate what you have in mind for an end goal for your project? If so, could you share one? I think it might help us with more specific recommendations.












  • Where I work, the infra folks are way overworked. Getting them to do things is impossible given their existing todo list. And when you do get them to do something (by throwing managers at them) they half-ass it.

    (I’m not blaming them. I blame the managers. It is frustrating though. Anyway.)

    And as a result, there’s one system that I use frequently that they set up, but cut corners and never hooked it up to our single sign-on solution. And so in order to get into this system, everyone has to use a shared username/password. “readonly:readonly”. And every time I log in, my browser nags me about the known weak password.


  • Yup, use docstrings and be descriptive. Learn by reading docstrings in other codebases. (Django’s codebase is always an excellent example of how to do Python, including how to do docstrings.) a) Anyone who sees your code will thank you and b) if you can’t explain it in human language, you probably don’t understand it well enough to implement it well.


  • Yeah, but… The Matrix, though.

    I’m one of those weirdos who didn’t think two and three were terrible. They didn’t live up to the original, but I didn’t think they completely ruined it.

    But four. I can’t watch the first one any more without thinking about how Neo isn’t even “The One” by canon.

    And I think The Wachowskis specifically intended to retroactively ruin the other three with Resurrections. (I know Lilly wasn’t so involved with Resurrections, but I doubt Lana would have gone way against Lilly’s wishes on it.) The whole movie felt like a cry of “fuck this, I don’t want to be making this, so I’m going to make it the absolutely worst abomination ever.”

    (And there’s another one coming. 😬 )

    Movies (and other fiction) largely work by setting up expectations and then building/working off of/subverting/whatever those expectations. When you fuck with those expectations in later films, it can make the earlier films no longer “work”.

    I don’t disagree with you regarding Indiana Jones. The last two don’t ruin the first three. But the execution makes a big difference in terms of whether sequels retroactively ruin earlier films.