I’ve been thinking about the concept of pure functions a lot lately. at first I wanted to dismiss them but knew that I didn’t have enough experience with them to really make a judgement, but now I think that I’ve tried them enough to be able to give my thoughts

so first of all, pure functions are useful because they can be easily tested as self-contained code, which makes both debugging and unit-testing easier

but, I would argue that a codebase full of thoroughly unit-tested impure functions is actually much easier to debug than a codebase full of non-unit-tested pure functions. simply because you can immediately rule out all unit-tested functions as the cause of the bug (unless the unit-tests are missing something important, which I’ve never run into personally)

pure functions are very easy to unit-test, but impure functions with simple and well-documented side-effects are roughly as easy, and IMO they tend to be much more ergonomic overall: they’re generally easier to write, read, understand, and use (assuming that this is a function where one would be tempted to have side-effects, of course)

the one exception to this IMO is when you’re mutating shared state that isn’t neatly contained inside of an abstraction like an object. for example if a function takes a data-structure and then mutates that data-structure, you have to trust the caller to know that it’s okay for all references to that data-structure to be mutated. but in that case my solution would just be to make a class for that data-structure instead. because then it’s much easier to conceptualize what that state represents, and when it’s appropriate to make a copy of it instead of changing the original

I feel like there are plenty of potential footgun situations for a caller thinking that they have the only reference to some data-structure, mutating it, and then realizing that some code somewhere else was relying on the same assumption (that they have the only reference to that data). but again I think that the best solution is often just to make a new class to hold the data instead of treating the data itself as immutable

so basically I think that limiting the un-abstracted complexity of a function’s side effects is often a very good idea. but I think there are diminishing returns to limiting side-effects, and trying to maximize the number of pure functions in a codebase is more trouble than it’s worth - both for the caller and for the function-writer

this is probably obvious to y’all but I just realized that Empty Spaces, Human Domestication Guide, and mechsploitation are all genres that are trying to do roughly the same thing. the common themes are:

• an innocent POV character
• who was/is made to be completely passive
• is robbed of power, agency, and dignity
• and subjected to extreme, eroticized abuse

and I think what’s going on is that these are ways to process trauma - especially the kind of trauma that comes from abuse that happened over a long period of time, where the abuse victim is shaped into being whatever is most convenient for the abuser, with no regard for the abuse victim’s physical or mental wellbeing. which effectively shapes them into a doll, or a mech pilot, or a floret

obviously recreating trauma through kink is a well-known thing at this point, and I think that these fiction genres are probably some combination of that and vent art. I guess it’s probably a way to take control over the trauma - to re-experience it in a way that feels safe. if I felt safe reading fiction, maybe I would like these genres too

the month of December is almost here. many of the December parasites have already matured into the early stages of their yearly awakening

early warning signs of infection include a single-minded obsession with disgustingly saccharine music, disgustingly saccharine food, disgustingly saccharine movies, and disgustingly saccharine phrases like “holly jolly”

soon nearly every public place will be littered with garish artifacts of the infected including an inescapable loop of ear-bleeding brainworm music in order to entice the infected into spending as much money as possible

remember to avoid contact with the infected and their ritualized gift-exchange as much as possible during this time. do not let them drag you into this no matter how much they shame, guilt, or coerce - and above all stay safe out there. I’ll see you on the other side

This feels unreal on so many levels

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RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@cassolotl/115590065352270851