For 3) does destroying all mature immune cells also get rid of all immunities that the patient has gained throughout life from vaccines, previous illness, etc? Would it make the patient very fragile, not to have gone through gaining those immunities at a young age?
Revaccination, yes, definitely necessary in the idealized case of a complete wipe of immune cells. But that's a small problem in comparison to having a broken immune system. Just get all the vaccinations done following immune repopulation.
Part of the problem in old people is that they have too much memory in the immune system, especially of pervasive herpesviruses like cytomegalovirus. Those memory cells take up immunological space that should for preference be occupied by aggressive cells capable of action.
Another point: in old people, as a treatment for immunosenescence, immune destruction would probably need to be paired with some form of cell therapy to repopulate the immune system. In young people, not needed, but in the old there is a reduced rate of cell creation - loss of stem cell function, thymic involution, etc. That again, isn't a big challenge at this time, and is something that can already be done.
At present sweeping immune destruction is only used for people with fatal autoimmunities like multiple sclerosis because the clearance via chemotherapy isn't something you'd do if you had any better options - it's pretty unpleasant, and produces lasting harm to some degree. Those people who are now five or more years into sustained remission of the disease have functional immunity and are definitely much better off for the procedure, even with its present downsides, given where they were before. If the condition is rhematoid arthritis, however, it becomes much less of an obvious cost-benefit equation, which is why there needs to be a safe, side-effect free method of cell destruction.
Is there any logic that notices when a number in the filing that isn't normally included in the summary is surprising, so should be included, or is the summary template static?
I liked a lot of Johnathan's ideas about writing simple code.
One idea that I don't think fits for the type of system I develop is the idea of preferring huge blocks code over function calls (around 30:00). He counters the benefit that the function name documents the chunk of code it encloses, but an even bigger benefit, in my opinion, is that the function signature documents the function's inputs and outputs. If you avoid global variables then you know when you modify a function exactly what information you have access to and exactly what information the function produces. This makes changing the function much easier.
He says he's talking about thousands of lines of code that always get executed in serial, so it doesn't sound like my code is very similar to the code he's talking about. I also expect that code I write gets read and modified much more often than the code he's talking about.
A lot of game code is actually "data" code, so the large functions come about naturally because so many assumptions and special-cases are made that you don't have anything resembling a CS-style algorithm, just a blob of "integrated assets" - and so the only route for further progress is a new syntax tailored towards the particular methods of integration being addressed.
That said, a new syntax can work, if it's the right one.
I agree that you need more than mastery of the movements to win a fight, but the reason exercises like kata are so valuable is that when you master the movements your mind is free to focus on higher level problems.
When I studied Mathematics in elementary school I didn't memorize all of the multiplication tables because I thought I could always use a calculator if I wanted to multiply. Years later, when learning Algebra I had to go back and memorize those tables because having to calculate simple products and quotients was slowing me down. Knowing multiplication tables isn't necessary or sufficient for being able to do Algebra well, but it sure speeds you up.
I often practice my coding skill by doing problems like the algorithm problems on TopCoder. I find focusing on coding and solving problems quickly improves my work productivity in a way that doesn't come just from doing that work alone. I think these Kata will be even more useful for building the low level skills I use often in my work, so thanks to the original poster!
