One doesn't have to buy into the system you describe. I basically sleep on the beach on Maui and mostly eat for free. In many ways, it's a good life :)
The defacto standard is to put nothing in an enclosing namespace unless it's needed there. The purpose of functions (especially in a language like JS) is to wrap up everything that's needed to accomplish a given task and leave no mess behind.
Then why oh why are variables global by default? (this is not meant as an attack on your point, I fully agree, I just find this awfully frustrating about JS. Sane languages have scoped by default and a global keyword, not the other way around)
But when writing code, how do you know that it's always going to be "single page bound"? YAGNI is frequently useful poison and nothing more. When it's so easy to do it right the first time, why not?
> When it's so easy to do it right the first time, why not?
a) Because it isn't "right" as such. It's just "better" if the code is going to be reused. Which it isn't.
b) The code style serves as documentation. I can clearly read from this code that it's not a reusable component. It is now easier for me to get an idea of how and where this code is being used in the site.
c) Personally, I'm wary of "pre-emptive generalization". Every layer of abstraction makes the code slightly less readable. Also, unless there exists at least two use cases right now, you're not likely to get the reusability right anyway.
"I mean, if you're making these decisions collectively how could you justify the division of effort?" For the sake of argument, it could be arrived at by deciding that Python was good for some things and Ruby was good for others. Or rationally understanding that tastes differ and so it would be good to have both options to maximize individual productivity. Or by collectively deciding to have a competition. Or any number of other ways.
Individual humans aren't subordinate by misfortune. Evolution "designed" them to accept cultural assumptions so as to avoid threatening cultural cohesion. I love Ayn Rand (as a writer, not a philosopher. I have never identified with a character so much as with Howard Roark) but an isolated human is weak and vulnerable. We're a social creature and leaving society amounts to suicide. Absorb those stupid cultural assumptions and question them at your own risk.
Haha Ayn Rand proponent vs Ayn Rand proponent: fight!
> Evolution designed them to accept cultural assumptions
It's a bit presumptuous to squarely pin something like that on evolution. Evolution is likely to favor many things, including individualism and rationality. Yes, Aritstotle said that man is a political animal. Yet Aristotle didn't spend time observing baboons on the plains of Ethiopia.
I'm not sure where Ayn Rand stands as a writer because her writing is hard to separate from her philosophy as she chose writing as a tool to transmit her philosophical beliefs. I also loved Roark in the Fountainhead (yet I tend to identify more with her imperfect characters like Gail Wynand), and as I'm currently somewhere around p.300 in Atlas Shrugged (warning: as it is a very long book, my judgement of it may easily be a wrong one), I feel that she wrote Atlas Shrugged when her mind dogmatised her beliefs (the Fountainhead, I think, was written when she was still questioning herself and reading it feels like reading a bit more honest piece to me). Despite her later dogmatism, I respect her as a philosopher because she (a) opened my eyes to how absurd Hegel-derived philosophies are, and (b) made me understand the cult of Athena in the ancient Greece and the impact it likely to have had on Western civilization. Since Ayn Rand was so much courageous philosophically than Marx, I think it would be completely unfair to everyone involved to call Marx but not Rand a philosopher.
> an isolated human is weak and vulnerable
Not really, unless you immerse him/her into an unfamiliar society. Although I'm not a follower of Thoreau, I think he made a fair argument that it is not at all unhealthy to live outside of society. Now I'm not an advocate of moving into a cabin in the woods, I just wanted to point out that there exists a different perspective.
> leaving society amounts to suicide
No, leaving a society is much more like quitting cocaine than committing suicide. Society is a lot like a drug. It takes some time to become hooked, but once you do, it seems nigh impossible to leave. Hence the recent success of Facebook.
> It's a bit presumptuous to squarely pin something like that on evolution. Evolution is likely to favor many things, including individualism and rationality.
To a certain extent we will see individualism and rationality favored by evolution as is evident by the fact that these things exist. Note however that even the most individualistic person still accepts the vast majority of the cultural assumptions with which they are brought up. Too much crititcal thought would interfere with the transmission of culture and without culture (i.e. those things which we've learned without having to figure out for ourselves) humans are a fairly weak animal.
> Although I'm not a follower of Thoreau, I think he made a fair argument that it is not at all unhealthy to live outside of society.
Yet Thoreau still had social contact. He spent a lot of time by himself (as most thinkers seem to) but he was still part of society as is evidenced by the fact that we know him. Imagine yourself existing in a jungle with no clothes, tools or language as a naked animal. That's leaving society and that's what accepting cultural assumptions helps to prevent. Challenging cultural assumptions leads to debate and most people can't handle that in my experience.
Much of the psychological benefit of exercise comes from increased testosterone. This happens by stimulating muscles. Try to develop a regular routine for things likes squats and pullups and see if that doesn't make you feel better.
I would recommend some kind of "zen" type of meditation as well. It doesn't have to be the religious type (i.e. the lowercase Z suffices) but learning to stop thinking and accept the present moment for what it is without preconcieved notions can be incredibly useful for spotting assumptions when one is thinking and, consequently, for improving the quality of ones thoughts. It also helps with planning for the future and analyzing the past. Bad assumptions seem to be at the root of most stupidity and zen style meditation is excellent for learning to cope with them.
plus if you think about it, you have to do tokenization before you do 'stemming'. I was really excited about finding this because computational linguistics is supposed to be the sort of thing that lisps are really brilliant for.
