Language helps me express what is in my head without an actual human or machine language. I think in objects that are not words, so i always translate to human language when expressing my thoughts. Learning a new language helps me understand culture and the people mostly using it and as importantly the vocabulary of the already known languages. i am a poliglot. When I converse in one language i never translate to another it just flows.
i had a ford focus 2002, ran to 150,000 miles and it got totaled. The only things were replaced: timing belt, tires, brakes, fuel filter, plugs, O2 sensor, alternator, one of the solenoid (maybe 3rd or 4th gear). Besides the solenoid and the alternator all items are maintenance.
At 100K miles, there's a pretty good argument that the alternator is maintenance as well. (If it died very early, maybe not, but it's a rotating part with brushes; it's eventually going to need maintenance on any car.)
Absolutely agree. In addition to that we should include things like: radiator, radiator and heater hoses, air conditioning compressor, timing belt, break rotors (disks) and, automatic transmission, suspension bushes and shock absorbers, wheel bearings, exhaust pipes, mufflers, catalytic converters.
I only buy secondhand cars, and these are all things I've replaced, either myself or by mechanics. All these things will eventually wear out on a car, but replacing most of these parts is relatively straight forward, and I believe in expensive in comparison to the huge financial outlay require to purchase a new vehicle - in which we ought to include the depreciation as well as the running costs and maintenance.
Maintenance items do not (or should not IMO) count as reliability items since they are similar expected expenses on all cars. Timing belt would be the only one I would look at because there can be significant differences in the mileage intervals. VW famously has (or had) a fairly short interval, like 30K miles, and very low tolerance for going over that. Other vehicles can go 100K miles before any engine maintenance beyond fluid changes.
I have incrementally refactored large codebases by committing to a guide of which constructs to replace with what, what is the final goal and writing test cases. Once the guide was seen beneficial by other developers, rather they were forced to use it, they were surprised how well that worked. All this was behind the scene from the customer and updates bugfixes were going out. Re-write may be the answer sometimes, many times, a well thought incremental re-factoring guide is an easier path.
and sometimes a few lines of extra code is needed to help the compiler figure out programmer's intent. simplest, example, is extra code that will be optimized out in the final product, or another to not optimize out certain aliasing. the compiler is your friend who sometimes disagrees, misbehaves, and right, just all along is a good friend.
