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0 sats \ 8 replies \ @jbschirtzinger 11 Sep \ parent \ on: Should I "Give Up Github"? devs
Ah, the "I am sorta living my dream" creative bubble, and that's good enough for me!
2010-12 were far from quiet for me. It is funny, though, how often people will get some advice from someone, take it, and forget where it came from.
I'm not sure what you mean about the IDF. Do you mean you were part of the IDF, or you were working against it?
I'm not sure what you mean about the IDF. Do you mean you were part of the IDF, or you were working against it?
I began basic training in 2010. Fortunately, by the time they stopped expecting me to do anything beyond fade away of old age, I had not accumulated any regrets. It's a little sad how military bureaucracies claim to want talented and motivated people, although do their best to drive away anyone who dreams of affecting the system rather than only serving it.
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Ah, well, I think it is a credit to you that you served in the IDF, although I certainly understand the disenchanting aspect the military has on people who join it. I think the key is to focus on the reasons a person serves, and not the reasons the military says are the reasons people ought to serve.
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focus on the reasons a person serves, and not the reasons the military says are the reasons people ought to serve
conscription is a difficult issue. most officers with whom I discussed it emphasized that they'd prefer soldiers who served voluntarily, or at least, willingly, rather than unmotivated conscripts; and that this opinion went quite high, although at the statistical level, the government kept conscription simply due to the need for enough manpower.
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conscription is a difficult issue. most officers with whom I discussed it emphasized that they'd prefer soldiers who served voluntarily, or at least, willingly, rather than unmotivated conscripts; and that this opinion went quite high, although at the statistical level, the government kept conscription simply due to the need for enough manpower.
Then the reason is basically to have a nation called Israel that has boundaries from people that wish it harm. Again, I think this is a credit, although one can argue about what constitutes harm.
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Then the reason is basically to have a nation [...]
We're getting a little off-topic for this thread about my github account!
I do however wish to emphasize that the observations about conscription are universal, i.e. similar opinions could probably be found from officers in any conscription military. To a certain degree, I served in the IDF simply due to legal inertia; around the age of sixteen I began making inquiries about the various ways people had either evaded the service requirement, or accepted it and made the most of the experience, and my conclusion after about a year of gathering and forming opinions was that although I could have mounted an effective case as a conscientious objector, it would actually not have been an honest one. This was a difficult realisation for a geeky teenager who had all sorts of grandiose ideas, including thinking of himself as a pacifist. I realised that I was not as much of a pacifist as I had naively imagined. The grandiose ideas did survive, although mostly just as sad dreams for a better world that might only be attainable for future generations.
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I have some things I'd say about this, but maybe this isn't the spot. If you start a thread about this elsewhere though, I will.
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It was definitely an interesting diversification of my education; I had begun programming independently, and not really developed any impressive skills; nor did I get any security clearance required for continuing to write software. However, the middle year of my service consisted mostly of doing QA with one of the contractors that had sold to the ministry of defense the old dream of a connected battlefield, information flowing from the radars through the touchscreen and even out the tubes. The grand vision was implemented in a dozen different ways by various hardware and software that contractors were busy updating as quickly as the government could pay them to create new bugs while keeping diligent track of the familiar ones.
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Ah, the real-time HUD. One failure in the modern battlefield is overlooking good old-fashioned human intelligence. Everything, people seem to think, is better computed.
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