johnpattiyson

Not true. For example, a compiler can be a pure function. It accepts input that is the source code, and outputs the machine code. There's no side effect there. I admit it needs minor scaffolding to always read all of stdin first, and write all to stdout at the end, but the programme, as written by the programmer, is a pure function.

This is one of several ways that Haskell worked before there was an IO monad [1], all allowing pure functional useful programmes.

[1] S. Peyton Jones. Tackling the awkward squad: monadic input/output, concurrency, exceptions, and foreign-language calls in haskell. Technical report, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, 2010.

Also, the upload progress screen flashing by is alarming for very small files. Either wait a second before showing it, and so skip it for small files, or keep it on screen for at least a second even if it's done.

I go to the website. See a big black call to action button, so I click it. Maybe without reading the text first. Nothing happens. I get that if I drag and drop files then click it does stuff, but it needs to do something, anything, whenever it's clicked.

The big black button does nothing for me.

I can't scroll the TOS (have to click and drag to select text to see further down).

The contact popup seems half-done - blank with some text up at the top looks unbalanced.

OS X Safari

The design is incredible - striking, fresh.

Why do I own a home?

My girlfriend and I bought a house together a year after we finished university. We're now married. We found a beautiful 100-year old brick house in a village in the UK an hour from my work, 30 minutes from hers. It's just big enough for the family that we want in the future so we're not planning on moving.

We bought it because we wanted to have our own space to live and raise a family in. Every penny that we pay off is ours in equity. The interest base rate is so insanely low (0.5% in the UK) that we hardly pay any interest on the mortgage. We've worked hard to pay off as much of the mortgage as possible, forgoing holidays for a couple of years, so it's now more ours than the banks. In a decade or two it will be ours entirely. If we rented (and some of the houses in the village can be rented) we would pay twice as much each month and having nothing to show for it after decades.

We're close to two major UK cities, so we are not out in the sticks. We're both young academics, so we are certainly not rich.

As a couple we have a lot of fun decorating, remodelling and maintaining it. The previous owners had windows that weren't in keeping with the style so together we replaced them with hand crafted sash windows. Every summer we spend a glorious weekend having fun painting all the woodwork together.

When we die we will be able to pass on our house and its value to our children. It will be the house they grew up in, in the village they grew up in. They will either be able to sell it to get our life savings, meaning they or their children can buy their dream home, or perhaps they'll build a family in it as well.

Having your own house is about having your own space - your own castle.