It was the next logical step for Russia after they built their own GPS and their alternative to the World Bank, the BRICS bank. Their biggest enemy has proven that they cannot be trusted and they are the ones who invented the Internet. Anytime they have a disagreement with a nation, they take their ball and go home. Like what they were doing with Huawei. I won't be surprised if China and India are working on the same kind of project.
This world needs an alternative to anything built by the USA. That way superpowers will have to go to the negotiation table on an equal footing. We don't want one bully. We need at least 5 bullies.
US residents have to compete with prospective students from other countries. Some of those countries rank better than the US when coming to STEM subjects. They end up getting admission ahead of US residents.
Solution is to improve teaching of STEM subjects at primary and high school level. The problem will sort itself. Second option is protectionist in nature. Favour US residents ahead of international students, even when international students are way better. Second option will only drop the quality of PhD graduates coming from those colleges.
Clear and concise to someone new to programming. Also less typing. Comparison of an a market leader to a new entrant is designed to make you switch from market leader to new entrant in the market.
Now that is a good strategy. Copy directly from a language that is moving at a very fast pace and competing directly with the language you want to replace.
Checked Exceptions are the main reason I switched to C#.NET. I hated checked exception. I know the designers wanted to save us from ourselves but they ended up making the language verbose.
> What's the difference between ternary operator and inline if/else?
There is no difference. Ternary operator is a syntactic sugar for if/else.
> Is there even any reason for if/else that doesn't return a value (that may be void/unit/similar)?
Main reason why an if statement returns a value is because it is used to test if condition is true or false. If it returns other values, it was going to make it more complicated. Especially when you have an if statement with multiple conditions that must be ORed or ANDed.
What is awful about the variable syntax? This syntax was copied directly from C language.
> making our amazing designer create a Shopify site that he/she can manage him/herself
This statement sounds like your co-founder is just getting rid of you because he realised a designer can do better than you and won't need shares of the company. You validated the market for him and he doesn't need you. This is the reason I always tell idea guys to pay me or go and learn programming themselves and implement their ideas.
Maybe they are saying it is much easier to enter the country? I will give an example with my own country -> South Africa. We have more white people than all other Africa countries combined. We have more Chinese people than all other African countries combined. We have more Indians than all other African countries combined. I won't even be surprised if we have more Indians than US percentage-wise. That sounds like a country that is more open to the rest of the world according to me.
However, there are nationalists who aren't welcoming if you are from a poor African country. They only welcome other races expect their own race -> African. It is mostly poor African people who think other Africans are coming to take their jobs. Good thing is that they don't have government support. Unlike in the US where it is the head of state telling people not to come to their country.
I suspect we even make our border to be porous just to allow other people to freely enter the country.
Even though South Africa has 11 official languages, English is the most official language in South Africa. When speeches are delivered by public officials, they are 99% in English. All official documents have English in it. Even the government official website is in English [1]. It is the only compulsory language at school. All private and urban schools teach English as a first language, then other languages as additional languages. Parents this side make sure their kids can speak English before they speak their own indigenous languages. Not mine though.
For that to happen, functional languages have to take over. Most people are just not into functional programming languages. They prefer imperative programming languages. I feel Microsoft is doing a great job of slowly forcing C#.NET Developers to learn F#. It was so easy for me to learn F#. It was so strange that I was able to understand a functional programming language. I didn't have luck learning other functional languages.
I have been programming in C# for 13 years now. Majority of new features are just syntactic sugar. Code I wrote in 2009 is still running even in 2019. I don't rewrite my applications in a newer version each time there is a new release of .NET Framework. I only use the latest language features on new projects. Problem starts when I am in a support and maintenance job because I quickly fall behind. When I go for interviews, I get asked questions about new features of the language, which I feel is unfair.
I feel sorry for new Developers because I learnt those features bit-by-bit over the years and they are expected to learn them at a go. It is also hard to understand why a syntatic was introduced when you never used the way it used to be done.
I have a Huawei P30 Lite which I use for work purposes. Build quality is better than Samsung. I prefer using it over my iPhone. It is nowhere near inferior. Did I mention that it is supposed to be a cheap phone but its performance is impressive?
If I use twitter again, I will use it as a news source. I will follow news outlets, IT personalities, sports personalities, sports clubs, and Presidents. I won’t even tweet. Tweeting when you aren’t a celebrity or public figure is a waste of time.
This world needs an alternative to anything built by the USA. That way superpowers will have to go to the negotiation table on an equal footing. We don't want one bully. We need at least 5 bullies.