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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • Takumidesh@lemmy.worldtoProgrammer Humor@programming.dev.DS_Store
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    3 days ago

    Well an uppercase ASCII char is a different char than its lowercase counterpart. I would argue that not differentiating between them is an arbitrary rule that doesn’t make any sense, and in many cases, is more computationally difficult as it involves more comparisons and string manipulations (converting everything to lower case).

    And the result is that you ultimately get files with visually distinct names, that aren’t actually treated as distinct, and so there is a disconnect from how we process information and how the computer is doing it.

    ‘A’ != ‘a’, they are just as unequal as ‘a’ and ‘b’

    Edit: I would say the use case is exactly the same as programming case sensitivity, characters have meaning and capitalizing them has intent. Casing strategies are immensely prevalent in programming and carry a lot of weight for identifying programmers’ intent (properties vs backing fields as an example) similar intent can be shown with file names.


  • Yea I agree, and things like trading on high margin or using standard lines of credit to invest are generally bad unless you really know what you are getting into.

    But it isn’t always hard to beat interest, it just depends. HELOCS are a great tool for people and depending on your situation, you can get them significantly lower than typical returns. Yea it’s a risk, but so is getting in your car and driving to work everyday. There is no income without some type of risk, opportunity cost, physical/mental health, etc. I think just like most things, there is balance. A student loan for a college degree is not much different than a traditional investment, neither is a note on a truck + lawn care equipment for a fledgling business. They all have risk, but they (along with mortgages) are more tangible for a lot of people.

    My point is mainly that, sometimes it is ok to go into debt for a single purchase. I don’t think it’s smart to just open a bunch of credit cards and yolo your life savings into long calls, but I also don’t think it’s smart to squirrel money away in your mattress because all debt is evil.



  • This is not really applicable and only works if you look at investments pretty naively.

    The most obvious rebuttal to this is home ownership a mortgage is debt and is also a ‘single purchase’ however for most people, a mortgage is their first step towards financial independence. The next concept of course is TVM (time value of money), having cash available now to invest in worth more than later, and so utilizing leverage to invest money is important.

    Generally, investments that beat interest make it worth it to utilize debt to make them, this is the premise behind investing using margin, utilizing heloc loans, or taking out a loan for a business, education, or tooling that will allow you to earn more.

    Debt isn’t inherently bad and there are many ways to use debt to your advantage.

    A good way to look at it is like this, if you have a line of credit available to you that satisfies your emergency fund, let’s say a few thousand dollars, instead of sitting on the fund in a low interest savings account, you can move that to something marginally less liquid, like an REIT or an index fund, and use the line of credit to float cash until you can withdraw. Use the credit for the 4-6 days it takes to clear the transaction. You may pay some interest, but the emergency fund will have actually gained significantly more than any interest you would pay.

    Not all investment is the same, buying out of the money long calls on mene stocks is not the same as moving medium or long term savings to high dividend managed funds.