most of the available services (anthropic, google, openai, xai, deepseek) have a free tier. you can't use it extensively, and have to wait... but its there.
programming has always gates... today is no different. arguably, there are quite a lot more free options than there were when i was coming up.
I had the exact same pleasant experience. I had a Gen 2 ring with battery issues, and support was fast and painless with a new ring on its way in a couple of days.
I wouldn't want to assume the details or the difficulty someone else has or is going through related to this.
What I have found helpful, when I went through something like this, is to distinguish between the "feeling" of certainty and the "choice" to put my faith in something. A lot of the time, we talk about "faith" and we conflate those two. I can choose to trust something and not feel confidence in it until after the fact. How much confidence I feel in a choice varies for a lot of reasons, but I may still choose to accept the risk and act on the little information I do have because I don't have better alternatives.
In that sense, you can choose what you believe. Or at least, you can choose what you put your faith in.
Hm... but in my example, in order for the Church to do that, they would have to formally excommunicate that individual. That isn't something done often, and doesn't really support what you seem to be saying it does (unless I misunderstand you).
The Church doesn't get to just point at a person who commits a sin and say that person isn't a Christian. There is a formal process for evaluating if that individual meets certain criteria (laid out in scripture). Its not done without serious consideration.
And there is a significant difference between saying that a person "isn't a Christian" and saying that some practice by a christian "doesn't represent Christianity".
For a practice to be considered "Christian" it should resemble the established and agreed upon tenets of the Christian faith, as laid out in the Bible and generally agreed upon by the Church at large.
Its like, I can claim to be a lawyer, but to actually be one, I need to pass the Bar. And a lawyer can be disbarred, if their actions show them to unable to execute the duties of a lawyer in accordance with the standards set by the state they practice in.
Similarly, a licensed Lawyer can claim something is lawful, but that be false when compared to the actual written code of that state. Someone can then come along and say that the advice and practice of that Lawyer does represent the actual law of that state.
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Look, I get it. Its frustrating to see christians do bad things, and for the church to not take responsibility when it should. And I'm not defending that. It is also frustrating for the Church when people do not represent it fairly. This is a common issue with any organized group of people, because People aren't always reliable. A fact the Bible has much to say about.
I don't know enough to comment on the specifics of your thread with the other poster, but I thought I would offer a suggestion for "Core Tenents".
Though there are many instructions in scripture that many christians ignore or fail to live up to, there are a set of core beliefs that comprise the essential nature of the Christian faith. The Apostles Creed summarizes most of them for Christianity.
As an example, if you deny the deity of Jesus, then you can not reasonably claim to be a christian. This is the case with Mormon's, who are sometimes called Christians, but whose theology differs in significant ways from Christianity.
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There is also another way to approach the idea of "that person isn't really a christian". Though it is in fact, impossible for a human to judge definitively, Jesus does say that "you shall know them by their love one for another" (John 13:35). And the bible does teach that under certain circumstances, the Church is to treat someone claiming to be christian as though they are not, because they refuse to acknowledge and/or address behaviors that are instructed in scripture.
The Church isn't generally good at that, which may be the point of the OP. But, it does allow the Church to say that someone who unrepentantly practices sinful behavior doesn't represent Christianity.
A number of people have recommended good books. So i'll maybe drop a few pieces of advice that I've learned while managing a diverse group of ~35 people.
* Listen to the people who report to you. They aren't always right, but they often are, and if they are pushing back then there is a good chance that they might be seeing something you don't.
* Much of leadership is about communication. And much of communication is about planning. And much of planning is about knowing and understanding all the components of the problem you're trying to solve. So cultivate a deep understanding of your people, their talents, your business, your boss, and spend time thinking about how to best optimize all those things.
* Its hard to lead in an area where you don't some expertise. You don't have to be the best, but you shouldn't be a slouch in the subject matter either. In order to earn respect you'll need to be able to understand what you're being told by your team, and you'll need to be able to articulate why you are making certain decisions, and that is seriously difficult if you don't have a good understanding of the domain.
* Good task management and organization is remarkably similar to good distributed systems architecture. Teams should be organized so that communication and integration dependencies are minimized, because communication overhead grows logarithmically as the number of people who need to be informed increases.
not nearly a complete list... but a start maybe. good luck! good leaders/managers are a scarce resource.
I hear this kind of response some times, but I don't agree with it. If you're being tongue in cheek, then I'm missing it, but if you're serious, then this is precisely why many managers are bad.
It also runs counter to my experience. I don't think people deliberately promote people who are incompetent in order to "get them out of the way". People are smarter than that, as it only pushes bad people into management.
If we want better managers, then we should move heaven and earth to get the best people who understand the needs of both technical and organizational constraints and who can communicate and coordinate effectively.
I think you're right, in that open displays of emotion are rarer in men. I'm not sure you're correct in the assertion that men can't appeal to people for help based on being sad. At least, that hasn't been my experience. I think men don't display/communicate their emotions in the same way, but I think its somewhat normal (at least it is today) for men to seek out help for something because they are experiencing conflict and it bothers them.
I looked closer, and it seems my memory is either bad or the levels have changed since I last dug into those numbers. In either case, thanks for checking those numbers!
programming has always gates... today is no different. arguably, there are quite a lot more free options than there were when i was coming up.