Tag: criticism

JUnit’s evolving structure

JUnit’s evolving structure. Edmund Kirwan traces JUnit’s increasing code interdependencies. From early simplicity:

To increasing tangles:

I am thinking a lot about code architecture right now and trying to learn best practices for building structures that can scale over time. This is a huge topic that a lot of smart people have strong feelings about– when I read about it I often come upon vast areas I didn’t even know existed and it is easy to suddenly feel small and anxious, like people will judge me for not knowing how to do all of it. So I am appreciating this critique as much for the critical analysis as for the obvious love and admiration the writer has for the JUnit developers. I don’t know enough yet to evaluate the actual critiques, even!

Summary.

Programmers should be forced to wear their systems’ package-structures on their tee-shirts.

Practice radial encapsulation.

JUnit is a masterpiece.

Angry Papuan leaders demand Jared Diamond apologizes

Angry Papuan leaders demand Jared Diamond apologizes. West Papuan leaders respond to Jared Diamond describing their culture as warlike and lucky that a state government showed up to bring them peace. (Background: West Papua has been violently oppressed by the Indonesian state government for decades.)

Benny Wenda, a Papuan tribal leader, said to Survival, ‘What he (Jared Diamond) has written about my people is misleading (…) he is not writing about what the Indonesian military are doing (…) I saw my people being murdered by Indonesian soldiers and my own Auntie was raped in front of my eyes. Indonesia told the world that this was ’tribal war’ – they tried to pretend that it was us that was violent and not them – this book is doing the same. He should apologize.’

Markus Haluk, a senior member of the Papuan Customary Council, added, ‘The total of Dani victims from the Indonesian atrocities over the 50 year period is far greater than those from tribal war of the Dani people over hundreds of thousands of years.’

This bit at the end really got me. What a contrast between two people’s experience of ‘peace’ and ‘freedom’, and what a contrast in how much they get heard. A white settler published his ideas in a book, and one of the indigenous people he was talking about had to smuggle a message out of prison in order to respond.

Dominikus Surabut, currently jailed for treason for peacefully declaring West Papuan independence, described the relationship of indigenous West Papuans and the Indonesian state as political apartheid. In a statement smuggled out of his jail cell, he said, ‘This is the very nature and character of colonial occupation of indigenous peoples, where they are treated as second class citizens whose oppression is justified by painting them as backwards, archaic, warring tribes – just as suggested by Jared Diamond in his book about tribal people.’

An open letter to peaceful protesters

An open letter to peaceful protesters, at Vancouver Media Co-op. via Lisa B

Another distinction that is important to make between peace movements of the past and protest movements of today is the level of organization. When people think of the Civil Rights Movement, the first thing to come to mind should not be “peaceful.” It should be “organized.” The Civil Rights Movement was highly organized through pre-existing networks of church and school groups. Civil Rights organizers led frequent non-violent civil disobedience trainings all over the country. They organized intensively in communities for years to get to the point of wide scale protests and actions. An example is the Rosa Parks and the bus incident: it is often thought that Rosa Parks sparked a movement by her refusal to move to the back of the bus. In reality, Rosa Parks was trained and groomed to take on that role, as was the larger movement prepared to step into action behind her. This was not a spontaneous event gone ‘viral.’ It was well planned and coordinated. As was the Civil Rights Movement overall: it was not based on public call outs to who ever could show up. To go to a civil rights demonstration participants were instructed and trained at workshops, and they literally signed a contract to abide by specific rules of conduct.