Why the software industry is morally bankrupt, volume #0xDEADBEEF

A blog comment in response to an argument that writing a parser for Perl is Turing-complete:

"That's some mighty fine left brain thinking there( especially for a Monday morning ), but does it in anyway affect any practical aspect of Perl? Like can it be used to show that Perl is more or less reliable/secure? This isn't a criticism of your node, but I left college 35 years ago, and this sort of analysis seems very ivory-tower-ish to me now. It's sort of like saying 'one cannot prove self-existence'. Is the fact that Perl cannot parse itself a good or bad thing, or can other languages do it? Does that make them superior?"

Computer science is an intellectual and pragmatic failure. Kids, if you're looking for a good career, major in English.

Disclosure

Inspired by Dan Savage's column this week:

(n.b. In the following, a "cissexual" person is a person whose internal sense of what sex their brain expects their body to be matches the sex they were assigned at birth. In all hypothetical situations, assume that no partners involved are interested in procreating. In all hypothetical situations, the question is whether the non-normative person has a moral obligation to their partner to reveal their non-normative characteristic before any sex occurs, rather than at some point in the relationship.)

Poll #996

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 22

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Do you think that a transsexual person who has completed genital surgery has the obligation to tell a sexual partner that they were born with genitals that appeared different from the ones they currently have?

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
21 (95.5%)

Maybe so
2 (9.1%)

Do you think that a cissexual man who was born with only one testicle and has a (cosmetic) testicular implant has the obligation to tell a sexual partner that they were born with genitals that appeared different from the ones they currently have?

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
22 (100.0%)

Maybe so
1 (4.5%)

Do you think that a person who was born with sexually ambiguous genitalia and had their genitals "corrected" to resemble the genitalia typical of one sex or the other has the obligation to tell their partner that they were born with genitals that appeared different from the ones they currently have?

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
22 (100.0%)

Maybe so
1 (4.5%)

Do you think that a cissexual woman who has had breast reduction surgery has the obligation to inform her partner that she once had breasts that appeared different from the breasts she currently has?

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
22 (100.0%)

Maybe so
1 (4.5%)

Do you think that a cissexual woman who underwent female genital mutilation while young and has had reconstructive surgery to correct it has an obligation to inform her partners that she once had genitals that appeared different from the ones she currently has?

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
22 (100.0%)

Maybe so
1 (4.5%)

Do you think that a person who has outward genitalia that are typical for a person of the gender they present as, but who is infertile due to a congenital condition, has the obligation to inform their partners that their reproductive capacity does not match that of a typical person of their gender?

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Yes
1 (4.5%)

No
19 (86.4%)

Maybe so
3 (13.6%)

Do you think that a person who was born with a cleft palate, but had it surgically corrected, has the obligation to inform their partners that they were born with a face that appeared different from the one they currently have?

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Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
22 (100.0%)

Maybe so
1 (4.5%)