shared state is not hard to find in Javascript

...and it's called "DOM" (the webpage Document Object Model). State is shared between pieces of code whenever all the pieces may read and write to it, and that applies to the DOM. No declarations are necessary; neither reads nor writes require express permission or coordination. In this freewheeling land known as the "document", anything is up for grabs.

Yet why does it matter, given that dynamic changes to the DOM are a huge part of Javascript's appeal? It matters because any shared state, by its nature, can lead to problems for the unwary, especially as size and complexity grow.

• If various Javascript functions touch the DOM, then those functions may cease working properly whenever the page changes structure. One change, no matter how trivial, has the potential to mess up code in several places at once. For instance, say that two tabs switch order...
• Similarly, whenever there's an algorithmic adjustment, all the functions that affect relevant individual parts of the DOM must be spotted and redone. Rounding and displaying four decimal places, but only in inputs for numerical data of a particular category, means code changes for everywhere that those input values are set or read.
• My impression from some blogs is that people are feeling skeptical about the actual prospect of code reuse in many circumstances, but it's still a worthy ideal. As always shared state is a hindrance to reusability simply because it isn't parameterized. A function that includes an instruction to remove a style class from the element of id "last_name" is pretty difficult to reuse elsewhere.
• On the other hand, shared state opens up the possibility of no-hassle collaboration. Function A (assuming a better name!) can take on the responsibility of setting up the shared state in some way. Then function B can do some other task to the shared state, any time after A has recently run. But function C can run directly after either A or B. So function A must leave the shared state in acceptable configurations for either B or C, and B must also account for C. Of course, if there's a new special data value in the shared state that affects what C must do, one must be careful to modify both A and B to set it accordingly. Hence, although shared state makes it highly convenient to intertwine the operation of many pieces of code, the intertwining also greatly reduces readability! It's much easier to analyze separate pieces of code with well-defined connection points.
• Furthermore, implicit shared-state dependencies don't combine well with asynchronous execution. Javascript doesn't have concurrent execution (i.e. multithreading), but it's certainly possible for separate pieces of code, such as callbacks for clicks and timers and network requests, to execute in an unpredictable order. So while there won't be deadlocks in the traditional sense, unwitting callbacks that fire in an unintended sequence could leave the DOM in a useless or false form after the dust clears. 

Many techniques could apply to mitigation of the shared state known as DOM. For information storage, rely on variables residing in purposeful scopes rather than DOM elements and/or attributes. Treat the DOM as an end, instead of intermediate, data format. Isolate the code that handles the DOM from the code that processes data. DOM modifications that always happen together should be collected into a single function with an appropriate abstract/semantic name.

Not all of the shared state in an application consists of variables. Whether log file, database, or DOM, access logic should be carefully considered to avoid maintenance headaches.

a bad statistics joke

Since I recently posted something with a statistical lean...

I recently encountered the statement: "Why be normal? No one else is."

And all I could think in response was: "Why be within one standard deviation of the mean? Only 68% of the population is, assuming it to be normal."

statistical inference and racism

Up-front disclaimer: None of the following should be construed as supporting racism. If anything, my point is that racism is as shaky intellectually as it is morally. It's simply wrong to unfairly treat an individual based on indirect inferences from their similarities to a particular race (or ethnicity, gender, religion, etc.). I also apologize up-front for offending statisticians.

It occurred to me, as it doubtless has to others, that racism has some connections to faulty statistical inferences. Of course, I don't mean that the typical racist is computing actual statistical regressions, but that part of their error consists of an "intuitive" misunderstanding that would appear unsound if it was quantified and written out. And naturally, the inability to estimate correct conclusions about probability and statistics is present in any untrained person, not just the racist one.

the instrumental variable

I've heard people aver that, since racial discrimination has continued to decrease, race should no longer be considered a determining factor in people's lives. While this is a happy thought, it naively misses a crucial aspect: (direct) discrimination is not the only way that racism acts.

Assume a statistical model or equation in which race and discrimination aren't present. It could be for any personal outcome like educational attainment, as long as race isn't included in the model's variables. Essentially, the mathematical equation expresses a complete lack of obvious relevance and causation between race and the outcome. Discrimination doesn't even enter the equation, as we posited.

Now run a thought experiment on our model. Suppose we apply the model to randomly selected people, i.e. we grab the info for each person and then calculate (not measure) the outcome with the model. Further suppose that we also record each person's race. Then we find, as in reality, that when we partition the calculated outcomes by race, the distribution is drastically and consistently different. How can this be? Race wasn't one of our variables, because without outright discrimination it had no mechanism of causation.

The answer is that, in this hypothetical model and thought experiment, race could still act as an instrumental variable. Roughly speaking, race is correlated with the outcome through the model variables. For instance, in a model of personal income, it's highly reasonable to have the parents' income as a variable. Although the model may leave out "race", race can nevertheless affect personal income (the outcome) as long as it affects the parents' income (the modeled variables). Thus race can be a cause of an outcome despite not being a "cause".

Moreover, race is likely to be an instrumental variable for an array of models, and all the models are likely to be related too. Bad (or missing) education tends to lead to low-paying employment or unemployment, which tends to lead to poverty, which tends to lead to crime, which tends to lead to low property values and taxes, which tends to lead to low school funding, which tends to lead to bad education. Regardless of whether there's a blatant racial barrier presently at work, the long-lasting "fingerprints" of racial differences may be active (e.g., systematic segregation sometime in the past that restricted access to the same set of opportunities).

the overeager Bayesian

Stereotypes are simplifications by nature. Sometimes a stereotype can be a helpful mental shortcut, but often it doesn't reflect the most accurate concept of a "typical" sample from a population. This is notoriously true of racial stereotypes that highlight the worst representatives.

For compared to a proper Bayesian analysis, "reasoning" by a stereotype is overeager to apply shaky conditional probabilities. Consider a very hypothetical population with only two races that are each 50% of the population. 10% of the entire population has an undesirable characteristic (left unnamed). Of the people in the entire population who have the undesirable characteristic, 75% are of race A. Whenever someone in this population is of race A, what is the probability of having the undesirable characteristic?

When it comes to a stereotype for the undesirable characteristic, chances are the stereotype is of race A due to prevalence within that subgroup. So the stereotype would tend to override the right Bayesian answer, 7.5%, with a much greater probability that overlooks the facts that 1) only 10% of the entire population has the undesirable characteristic at all and 2) therefore 85% of race A does not have it.

peeve no. 261 is Obi and programming language mentality

The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded. (--Obi-Wan)

Similarly, a programming language can have a strong influence on weak-minded programmers. If your programming language "changed your life", "made you a better coder", "expanded your mind", etc., then I suggest that you may be going about this programming thing the wrong way. If a lack of language support for OO results in you producing a tangled web of dependencies among procedural functions, or easy access to global/file scope results in you spraying program state everywhere, then the programming language is your crutch. It's the guide-rail for your brain.

I'm glad that you found a programming language that you enjoy, but consider me unimpressed by rather impractical claims about the ways that it alters your consciousness.

neuronal pragmatists

Two ways in which neurons act like fans of pragmatist philosophy:

• In the pragmatist viewpoint (interpreted by me), the significance of knowledge is closely tied to its value in practice, assuming highly elastic definitions of "value" and "practice". Similarly, the strength and variety of connections between neurons are closely tied to the impact of neurotransmitters. And the release of neurotransmitters is clearly correlated with emotions, broadly categorized as "pleasure" or "pain", and emotions in turn are a large part of subjective value. Research has also shown that once this link is forged between knowledge and emotions, mere anticipation and contemplation can trigger the experience, albeit at a less vivid level. Hence, anatomy and physiology support the pragmatic notion that creatures naturally evaluate knowledge based on its effects. There's a feedback loop between knowledge and its short-term and long-term results. Of course, the mechanism can operate independently of high-level abstract insights about danger or desirability, like in cases of phobia and mental trauma. Or when someone has difficulty memorizing knowledge that's important yet provokes no reaction in the person besides indifference.
• More mysteriously, the judgment of knowledge commonly has a nebulous and inarticulate component of "reasonableness" that's integral to pragmatic truth but neglected by other philosophies. When this component is verbalized, people describe it as intuition, the "ring of truth", "feeling right", "clicking into place", "harmony", "seeing the whole picture", "jumping levels of meaning", maybe even related to the "oceanic feeling". (Software developers probably refer to it when they babble on and on about "beauty" and "elegance" in their computer code. Mathematicians say that they felt "guided" and "sensed the right track" to a solution.) My speculation is that this brain sensation corresponds to instances of mental economy. In other words, one "item" of knowledge connects up to another item of knowledge to form some kind of unity, even if it takes the form of opposites on a continuum. Data or concepts were in chaos, but now are in order. Exceptions turn into new, subtler rules. Furthermore, I speculate that this mental economy corresponds in turn to synchronization of the firing neurons that store those items. It's well-known nowadays that the brain is filled with activity in most of its states, and that the unconscious/subconscious/non-conscious takes up a rather startling percentage of that activity. Thus it's noteworthy whenever there's an unusual amount of synchronization of neurons in consciousness (does this help explain the human enjoyment of music?). Any knowledge that acts as a bridge or otherwise "performs double duty" causes a synchronization and a new network-of-networks of the participating neurons. So when we speak of resonant ideas, the description approaches literal truth, for the ideas' neuron firings resonate. Perhaps this is a feasible physical hypothesis for what happens when pragmatists claim that people value an idea based in part on its "reasonableness".

working truth

Whether or not my overall standpoint qualifies as bona fide pragmatic philosophy, I appreciate and appropriate some of its postulates . Unfortunately, one in particular has attracted both informed and ignorant criticism. Expressed in its shortest and most recognizable form: "the truth is what works." If this doesn't mean "anything that can make me rich must be right", as some allege, then what does it mean?

As I understand it, the intended meaning of "the truth is what works" is simply that the bestowal of the label "true" is the product of physical or mental action. True is reached, earned, assigned, verified, measured. People set criteria, and then they employ those criteria to divide true from false. True (or false) is a conclusion.

And the vagueness of this definition of truth is intentional, in order to cover an unbounded expanse. The operation of determining when something "works" is tightly coupled to the object and the goal, each of which could vary. What also varies is the threshold for delineating "does work" and "doesn't work" in the operation's results.

Clearly, some cases are self-evident. For the proposition "The battery is missing", the object is the battery, the goal is to confirm that it's missing (but that goal is probably a sub-goal to something larger like "force my camera to start responding again when I press the power button"), and the operation is removing the cover to the battery chamber to look inside. The threshold of the operation is seeing the uncovered battery chamber with or without batteries; "The battery is missing" works and is therefore true on the condition that one observes a chamber without batteries.

But other cases are more difficult, like the proposition "Person X is trustworthy." Eyeballs aren't sufficient to detect trustworthiness, the object. Which operation and how stringent its threshold depend greatly on the importance of the goal. Is Person X a candidate to house-sit for me, or just someone whom I'm asking for directions to the nearest location of engine fuel? Someone will likely use not only their senses but their reason, creativity, emotion, intuition, and so on, in conscious and subconscious double-checks upon double-checks.

No matter what they tell you, people frequently "feel" the truth, although it may act as a starting point rather than the entirety of the procedure. Such factors illuminate the muddiness of separating objective and subjective truth in many routine instances. Thus all the ways in which a truth "works" form a unity, fused together by the person, within the context of the person's other truths, whether those be sensations or reasonings or any variety of "mind-stuff".

However, these personalized unities-in-contexts don't imply solipsism or relativism, at least not in crude terms, because of two manifest and natural meta-truths that are normally left unstated. 1) It works to assume that some contents of experience have independent (albeit malleable) existence apart from one's thoughts. When someone writes a reminder, he or she is explicitly relying on the reminder to not be dependent on, or as flighty as, human memory. 2) It works to assume that, based on communications and empathy, other people interact with the same thought-independent contents of experience. To take an early example, a group hunting a mammoth could hardly coordinate the attack without this working assumption.

Put together, what one could call "the two meta-truths of objectivity" outline a common area of endeavor for people, a ground for discussion. And the recognition of its predominance characterizes a mature perspective. A person's uniqueness lies in the combination of "ingredients" that are individually unremarkable and pervasive. Other people have lived on the same planet and nation and culture and city, have experienced similar personalities and feelings and upbringing and education and traumas, and according to an evolutionary/genetic analysis are not much different (though the differences can have vital implications in society and health). Hence, the humble person, aware of his of her startling non-uniqueness, will exploit all the many applicable truths found and transmitted by other people, after winnowing out irrelevancies and mistakes. Of course, the secondhand truths are subject to the rule: do these reports work, evaluated by whichever mental/physical operations? If direct verification isn't possible, as it often isn't, then the operation of trust is unavoidable.

Trust is doubly (or triply) necessary for truths that are universal. By definition, a universal truth is intended to hold true not solely for example Q or group X but for all actual and hypothetical N that meet the truth's conditions. Universal truths are special in that no (finite) number of confirmations is enough. To invoke a universal truth in the execution of an activity is to engage in a pre-sumptive, pre-emptive "confirmation" of it. For universal truths aren't exceptions: truthfulness isn't inherent but confirmed time after time. In fact, each one owes its very existence to how well it works in acting as a tool or shortcut in summarizing, predicting, etc. in the midst of the unities-within-contexts previously explained.

Admittedly, the confirmation can be a perfectly unsurprising formality, especially for inarguable formulas or other patterns undergirded by rigorous "airtight" experiment/proof. The proof's effect is to demonstrate impersonally that the end is substitutable for the start, without doubts or gaps between. Afterward, nobody needs to rework or review the "guts" of the proof to use it, as long as a person trusts the correctness of the proof like any other secondhand truth. (To be sure, people could and do rework or review proofs for a wide range of valid reasons.)

On the other hand, there is a category of universal truths whose correctness isn't quite provable but elicits strong commitment regardless: ideals. An ideal is zealous desire embodied by a universal idea. It "ought to be". In some sense, it's a fiction made real via its connection to a person's irresistible sentiments. It could be elaborate or fragmentary. It could be solitary or part of a complex. It could be structured or incoherent. In any case, the ideal's impact on behavior is precisely how it works; that's its level of truth. People who pursue an ideal are witnesses to it.

Therefore people who ignore an ideal thereby mark its truth as flawed or incomplete. But they could nevertheless use the ideal by feigning their devotion. Even ideals claimed by no one to be "true" might still work as interesting fodder for conversation or as imagined adversaries to rally around. Just as ideals come in varieties, so do reactions to ideals. Objections to "the truth is what works" might be objections to uncreative or minimalist definitions of works. I don't think it's always synonymous with "profitable". If people seek to "maximize a payoff", then realistically speaking the payoff, options, and factors must be churning like a turbulent flow in endlessly intricate directions (e.g. affected by psychological priming). Part of the reason for the unpredictability is that ideals may conflict and the ideal that "wins" in one situation can "lose" in another. Altruism and self-denial are unprofitable, but all that's necessary to uncover the "mysterious" rationale is to ask the participant which ideals were the motivation. A lack of obvious profit surely doesn't prevent the ideals from working for the participant in some way.

Truths are real, not ethereal. And a truth is known by its real consequences on real people who perform real actions.

I am a Cylon, and candid opinions thereof

I'm aware that I'm not a Cylon. Cylons are fictional, first of all.

But it's an excellent metaphor for how I felt when it began to dawn on me that, despite the deeply religious tenets that I formerly cultivated throughout my life, I underwent a "gradual intellectual anti-conversion" which culminated several (less than five) years ago. "Intellectual" because emotion didn't participate in the process; there was no instance of shaking my fist at clouds and also no desperate clinging to my fading assurances. "Anti-conversion" because I view the change as a reversal/erasure of specific beliefs rather than switching to a new "side" as such. Like the fictional characters who lived as humans only to arrive at the breathtaking realization that they were unmistakable examples of the hated enemy Cylons, I discovered to my surprise that my assumptions had changed sufficiently that the most accurate label for me now is "atheist".

It was "gradual" because while it was happening I sometimes noticed the mental conflicts, but I couldn't recall a definitive moment of selection or rejection. There was no single choice, but at the end there was a belated acknowledgment that some of my beliefs had simply deposed some others in the manner of a silent coup. In fact, further mental struggle had long ago become pointless since one side now occupied all the "territory". Further battles could only be as "asymmetric" as guerrilla warfare.

Before the point of mental consolidation, I considered myself "religious with doubts and reservations". My thinking seemed unsteady but regardless I continued to act the same. After the crystallization point, the prior motivations and habits were present yet ceased to exert authority; I saw through. I could select my level of compliance without compulsion, like adjusting the volume on the playback of a speech. The majestic and imposing scenery shrunk down to matte background paintings. However, my new-found godlessness didn't lead to unrestrained lawlessness or carelessness (just as not all Cylons who lived as humans chose immediately to quit behaving like humans). I suppose that as an immigrant to atheism, by default I naturally cherish the customs of the land of my previous patriotism.

Actually, this phenomenon was another jolt to my perspective. The religious are accustomed to categories such as 1) young people who rebel passionately by doing exactly what is forbidden, perhaps when they start higher education at a faraway location, 2) wishy-washy attendees who "backslide" progressively worse in their actions until they can't bear to even pretend to be devotees any longer, 3) people who deny the existence of any god and therefore act as chaotic and selfish manipulators, iconoclasts, and nihilists (I can very well envision someone commenting "Say what you like about paganism, at least it's an ethos"). My gradual intellectual anti-conversion doesn't fit into this tidy taxonomy.

For regardless of my unbelief, I'm surely not one of the bogeymen in the scary third category. Sure, some of my politics and causes are different now, but I'm not aiming to overthrow the right to religious expression and culture, presuming there's no entanglement among important social institutions that should be neutral toward such beliefs. I'm also not against religious evangelism and conversions as long as there's no abusive coercion or exploitation. Frankly, my interest in which religion dominates dropped tremendously when I self-identified as atheist, for whom afterlife and divine judgment are nonexistent consequences of incorrectness. I don't even care about convincing other people of my atheistic point of view, as much as I care that atheists not be stereotyped or persecuted in the larger society.

Furthermore, my present sentiments regarding religion go beyond a lack of competitive zeal against it. I have a lingering appreciation for it. Although not all effects of religion are good, to say the least, I know many people for whom religion is an essential pillar of the mindsets that calm their psyches and motivate them to accomplish amazing progress in themselves and their surroundings. And I think it's baldly inaccurate to accuse the religious of widespread stupidity or weakness. Religion can at times demand either courage or intelligence. Besides, evangelistic atheists should keep in mind that shaming people into following your example is not a highly effective technique anyway, especially if the goal is willing long-term commitment. That tactic certainly played no part in convincing me.

Moreover, these conceded emotional comforts of religion tempt me as well, whenever I personally contemplate death. Given that life is an exceptional configuration of matter and not a separate substance that "inhabits" it, death is many other configurations of that matter. My consciousness requires a blood flow of necessary materials to operate; when this flow stop working normally, my consciousness will also halt. Life's fragility is staggering. Without the promise of an afterlife independent of the vagaries of complex biological systems which can forestall entropy solely for a limited period, the inestimable value of healthy living should be obvious. Responding to death's finality by living dangerously is nonsensical. I should think it obvious that the saying "you only live once" doesn't imply "risk and/or waste the only life you have". To an atheist, "you" are your body.

But if every human is a body and no more, then the fact of the terrifying impermanence of one's own life comes with discomforting companions: every dead human, in all of his or her uniqueness, must be irretrievably gone. The precise configuration of bodily matter that constituted him or her shall never arise again. It's no more likely, and to the contrary far, far less, than the chance of a thorough shuffle of a pack of 52 playing cards producing the exact same order as before the shuffle. Of course biological reproduction perpetuates a lot of the mere genetic bases, but a perfect clone would still develop differently than the source. Indeed, without the clone retaining an identical set of lifelong memories, it couldn't fool any observers. This is why the question of "legacy", i.e. the lasting consequences "left behind" by a human's actions after death, is extremely pertinent to atheists. In a highly literal sense, someone's legacy is the only "part" that can justifiably be termed eternal (although "his" or "hers" separated particles of matter and energy are conserved, but that's scant consolation at the human scale).

I understand if people choose to question my unflinching claim that bodily death entails total death. How can I certainly pronounce that all of the deceased, whether family, friends, or martyrs, haven't moved on to an unexperienced "plane", since I clearly haven't gone through it? Without direct evidence, isn't it more fair and conciliatory to postpone discussion? Well, my first, curt reply is the suggestion that everybody else postpone discussion, too. If they aren't, then I won't. My second, earnest reply is the blunt admission that evidence, as commonly defined, isn't the solitary foundation of my thoughts about reality. Evidence has a strong tendency to be patchy and/or conflicting. Therefore judgment is indispensable, and based on my judgment of the overall array of evidence, including the pieces of evidence that appear to be absent, death is the end of humans. This statement is the honest reflection of my outlook, as opposed to something comparatively half-hearted like "due to lack of positive evidence, I don't know". I profess a materialistic universe; so there's simply no room for anything supernatural, much less the person-centered afterlife usually described. I readily affirm the incompleteness and uncertainty embedded in my knowledge, but I don't waver on the central axioms.

Odds are, the open mention of the role of judgment/selection provokes objections from two diverging groups: 1) from people who see themselves as pure empiricists, because they say that evidence always "speaks" for itself and any evidence that isn't perfectly unambiguous is invalid, 2) from people who subscribe to a particular revelation of a supporting supernatural realm, because they say that people who use individual and error-prone ability to define ultimate truth will instead substitute their own relative, subjective, and quick-changing preferences. But neither objection adequately captures a holistic and authentic viewpoint of actual human activity. Perception, interpretation, goals, experiences, and actions, etc., feed and affect one another. Personal desires and idiosyncratic mental processing are intermingled throughout mental events. No matter which concepts people use to anchor their thoughts, the coronation of those concepts is not passive but active. Regardless of what they say in debates, the pure empiricist decides how to categorize and evaluate his or her valuable evidence, and the devotee of a supernatural dogma decides how to extrapolate and apply it to the modern situations thrust upon him or her. And the confident atheist is no different...

Except during an interval in which transforming thoughts rise in power sneakily like an unfamiliar tune one can't shake off, and the final remaining task is to put it into words: I am a Cylon.

persistence of private by the Nucleus pattern

The encapsulation of data by an object's methods is one of the foremost goals of effective OOP. Restricting exposure of the object's private information prevents other code from accessing it. The inaccessibility ensures that the other code can't depend upon or otherwise share responsibility for the private information. Each object has a single responsibility: a sovereign private realm of information and expertise.

However, this ideal conflicts with the reality of the need to give objects persistence because most programs require data storage in some form. And the required interaction with the storage mechanism clearly isn't the responsibility of the objects that happen to correspond to the data. Yet how can the objects responsible, often known as repositories or data mappers, mediate between external storage and other objects while obeying encapsulation? How can information be both private and persistent without the object itself assuming data storage responsibility?

The "Nucleus" design pattern, very similar to an Active Record, addresses this issue. According to the pattern, a persistent object, similar to a eukaryotic cell, contains a private inner object that acts as its "nucleus". The nucleus object's responsibilities are to hold and facilitate access to the persistent data of the object. Therefore its methods likely consist of nothing more than public "getters and setters" for the data properties (and possibly other methods that merely make the getters and setters more convenient), and one of its constructors has no parameters. It's a DTO or VO. It isn't normally present outside of its containing object since it has no meaningful behavior. Since the nucleus object is private, outside objects affect it only indirectly through the execution of the containing object's set of appropriate information-encapsulating methods. The containing object essentially uses the nucleus object as its own data storage mechanism. The nucleus is the "seed" of the object that contains no more and no less than all the data necessary to exactly replicate the object.  

Naturally, this increase in complexity affects the factory object responsible for assembly. It must initialize the nucleus object, whether based on defaults in the case of a new entity, or an external query performed by the storage-handling object in the case of a continuing entity. Then it must pass the nucleus object to the containing object's constructor. Finally, it takes a pair of weak references to the containing object and nucleus object and "registers" them with the relevant stateful storage-handling object that's embedded in the execution context.

The object pair registration is important. Later, when any code requests the storage-handling object to transfer the state of the containing object to external storage, the storage-handling object can refer to the registration list to match the containing object up to the nucleus object and call the public property methods on the nucleus object to determine what data values to really transfer.

Pro:

• The containing object doesn't contain public methods to get or set any private data of its responsibility.
• The containing object has no responsibility for interactions with external storage. It only handles the nucleus object.
• Since the nucleus object's responsibility is a bridge between external storage and the containing object, design compromises for the sake of the external storage implementation (e.g. a specific superclass?) are easier to accommodate without muddying the design and publicly-accessible "face" of the containing object.

Con:

• The nucleus object is one additional object/class for each persistent original object/class that uses the pattern. It's closely tied to the containing object, its factory object, and its storage-handling object.
• The original object must replace persistent data variable members with a private nucleus object member, and the containing object's methods must instead access persistent data values through the nucleus object's properties.
• The containing object's constructors must have a nucleus object parameter.
• The factory must construct the nucleus object, pass it to the containing object's constructor, and pass along weak references to the storage-handling object.
• The storage-handling object must maintain one or more lists of pairs of weak references to containing objects and nucleus objects. It also must use these lists whenever any code requests a storage task.
• The code in the storage-handling object must change to handle the nucleus object instead of the original object.

explicit is better than implicit: in favor of static typing

Right now, static not dynamic typing more closely fits my aesthetic preferences and intellectual biases. And the best expression of the reason is "explicit is better than implicit". The primary problem I have with dynamic typing, i.e. checking types solely as the program executes, is that the type must be left implicit/unknown despite its vital importance to correct reasoning about the code's operation. The crux is whether the upsides of a type being mutable and/or loosely-checked outweigh the downside of it being implicit.

Dynamism. I'm inclined to guess that most of the time most developers don't in fact require or exploit the admittedly-vast possibilities that dynamic typing enables. The effectiveness of tracing compilers and run-time call-site optimizations confirms this. My experiences with C#'s "var" have demonstrated that, for mere avoidance of type declarations for strictly-local variables, type inference almost always works as well as a pure dynamic type. Stylistically speaking, rebinding a name to multiple data types probably has few fans. The binding of a name to different data types is more handy for parameters and returns...

Ultimate API Generality. As for the undeniable generality of dynamically-typed APIs, I'm convinced that most of the time utterly dynamic parameters are less accurate and precise than simple parameters of high abstraction. This is seen in LINQ's impressive range of applicability to generic "IEnumerable<T>" and in how rarely everyday Objective-C code needs to use the dynamic type id. With few exceptions, application code needs to implicitly or explicitly assume something, albeit very little, about a variable's contents in order to meaningfully manipulate it. In languages with dynamic typing, this truth can be concealed by high-level data types built-in to the syntax, which may share many operators and have implicit coercion rules. Of course, in actuality the API may not react reasonably to every data type passed to it...

"Informal Interfaces". According to this design pattern, as long as a group of objects happen to support the same set of methods, the same code can function on the entire group. In essence, the code's actions define an expected interface. The set of required methods might differ by the code's execution paths! This pattern is plainly superior for adapting code and objects in ways that cut across inheritance hierarchies. Yet once more I question whether, most of the time, the benefits are worth the downside in transparency. Every time the code changes, its informal interface could change. If someone wants to pass a new type to the code, the informal interface must either be inferred by perusing the source or by consulting documentation that may be incomplete or obsolete. If an object passed to the code changes, the object could in effect violate the code's informal interface and lead to a bug that surprises users and developers alike. "I replaced a method on the object over here, why did code over there abruptly stop working?" I sympathize with complaints about possible exponential quantities of static interface types, but to me it still seems preferable to the effort that's required to manually track lots of informal interfaces. But in cases of high code churn, developers must expend effort just to update static interface types as requirements and objects iterate...

Evolutionary Design. There's something appealing about the plea to stop scribbling UML and prod the project forward by pushing out working code regardless of an anemic model of the problem domain. In the earliest phases, the presentation of functioning prototypes is a prime tool for provoking the responses that inform the model. As the model evolves, types and type members come and go at a parallel pace. Isn't it bothersome to explicitly record all these modifications? Well, sure, but there are no shortcuts around the mess of broken abstractions. When the ground underneath drops away, the stuff on top should complain as soon as possible, rather than levitating like a cartoon figure until it looks down, notices the missing ground, and dramatically plummets. Part of the value of explicit types lies precisely in making code dependencies not only discoverable but obvious. This is still more important whenever separate individuals or teams develop the cooperating codebases. The other codebase has a stake in the ongoing evolution of its partner. A "handshake" agreement could be enough to keep everyone carefully synchronized, but it's more error-prone compared to an enforced interface to which everyone can refer. During rapid evolution, automated type-checking is an aid (although not a panacea!) to the task of reconciling and integrating small transforming chunks of data and code to the overall design. Types that match offer at least a minimum of assurance that contradictory interpretations of the domain model haven't slipped in. On the other hand, unrestricted typing allows for a wider range of modeling approaches...

Traits/Advanced Object Construction. No disagreement from me. I wish static type schemes would represent more exotic ideas about objects. Still, most of the time, applied ingenuity, e.g. OO design patterns, can accomplish a lot through existing features like composition, delegation, generics, inheritance.

I want to emphasize that my lean toward static typing for the sake of explicitness isn't my ideal. I direct my top level of respect at languages and platforms that leave the strictness of the types up to the developer. I like a functioning "escape hatch" from static types, to be employed in dire situations. Or the option to mix up languages as I choose for each layer of the project. I judge types to be helpful more often than not, but I reserve the right to toss 'em out when needs demand.

foolish usage of static and dynamic typing

Whenever I read the eternal sniping between the cheerleaders of static and dynamic typing, I'm often struck by the similarity of the arguments for each side (including identical words like "maintainable"; let's not even get started on the multifarious definitions of "scalability"). Today's example is "I admit that your complaints about [static, dynamic] typing are valid...but only if someone is doing it incorrectly. Don't do that." Assuming that sometimes the criticisms of a typing strategy are really targeted at specimens of its foolish usage, I've therefore paired common criticisms with preventive usage guidelines. The point is to neither tie yourself to the mast when you're static-typing nor wander overboard when you're dynamic-typing.

Static

• "I detest subjecting my fingers to the burden of type declarations." Use an IDE with type-completion and/or a language with type inference. 
• "The types aren't helping to document the code." Stop reflexively using the "root object" type or "magic-value" strings as parameter and return types. Y'know, these days the space/speed/development cost of a short semantically-named class is not that much, and the benefit in flexibility and code centralization might pay off big later on - when all code that uses an object is doing the same "boilerplate" tasks on it, do you suppose that just maybe those tasks belong in methods? If a class isn't appropriate, consider an enumeration (or even a struct in C#).
• "Branches on run-time types (and the corresponding casts in each branch) are bloating my code." Usually, subtypes should be directly substitutable without changing code, so the type hierarchy probably isn't right. Other possibilities include switching to an interface type or breaking the type-dependent code into separate methods of identical name and distinct signatures so the runtime can handle the type-dispatch.
• "I can't reuse code when it's tightly coupled to different types than mine." Write code to a minimal interface type, perhaps a type that's in the standard library already. Use factories, factory patterns, and dependency injection to obtain fresh instances of objects.
• "I need to change an interface." Consider an interface subtype or phasing in a separate interface altogether. Interfaces should be small and largely unchanging.
• "When the types in the code all match, people don't realize that the code can still be wrong." Write and run automated unit tests to verify behavior. Mocks and proxies are easier than ever.

Dynamic

• "It's impossible to figure out a function's expected parameters, return values, and error signals without scanning the source." In comments and documentation, be clear about what the function needs and how it responds to the range of possible data. In lieu of this, furnish abundant examples for code monkeys to ape.
• "Sometimes I don't reread stuff after I type it. What if a typo leads to the allocation of a new variable in place of a reassignment?" This error is so well-known and typical that the language runtime likely can warn of or optionally forbid assignments to undeclared/uninitialized variables.
• "Without types, no one can automatically verify that all the pieces of code fit together right."  Write and run automated unit tests that match the specific scenarios of object interactions.
• "Beyond a particular threshold scripts suck, so why would I wish to implement a large-scale project in that manner?" A language might allow the absence of namespaces/modules and OO, but developers who long to remain sane will nevertheless divide their code into comprehensible sections. Long-lived proverbs like "don't repeat yourself" and "beware global state" belong as much on the cutting-edge as in the "enterprise".
• "My head spins in response to the capability for multiple inheritance and for classes to modify one another and to redirect messages, etc." Too much of this can indeed produce a bewildering tangle of dependencies and overrides-of-overrides, which is why the prudent path is often boring and normal rather than intricate and exceptional. Mixin classes should be well-defined and not overreach.
• "In order to read the code I must mentally track the current implied types of variables' values and the available methods on objects." Descriptive names and comments greatly reduce the odds that the code reader would misinterpret the intended variable contents. Meanwhile, in normal circumstances a developer should avoid changes to an object's significant behavior after the time of creation/class definition, thus ensuring that the relevant class definitions (and dynamic initialization code) are sufficient clues for deducing the object's abilities.