“Every dependency is an asset. Every dependency is a liability.”

I’m a teacher at university and I run Arch, BTW. 😁

I definitely use them a lot, but I think “very” is too strong a word. It’s pretty easy to get confident, contradictory information from them. They’re a good place to start and brainstorm, but all the information has to be verified either by running and testing the code, or by finding a human source.

I hate to do this, but AI chatbots are typically pretty good at giving examples for things like this and you can learn from it.

The one thing that would drive my parents over the edge is ads in Windows. They already use Firefox and Libreoffice.

Unix has been my favorite dev platform since I first used it 30 years ago. I’m typing this on a Mac, which also does just fine. But I’m happiest on my Linux box. Even WSL was OK, but the bloat of Windows overpowers the hardware. My Linux daily driver is a 9-year-old laptop that couldn’t handle Windows any longer.

Since I moved my stuff off Google Drive, Libreoffice has been super useful. Great work.

The networked software is free, but the hosting is paid seems to be a great model for promoting interop and avoiding single points of failure.

Related: Internet Archive hosts zillions of abandoned games. Publishers are currently trying to sue it out of existence. They accept donations.

I always left it open-ended and that seemed to work. Part of the interview was seeing what they’d come up with. I’m pretty sure people always brought things they’d already written.

It never happened–since they knew in advance, they had time to whip up something cool if there wasn’t anything else. It didn’t have to be massive. I just wanted to see some clean non-trivial code and a clear understanding of how it worked. Fizzbuzz wouldn’t have impressed. :)

But how do you handle candidates who say something like “look, there’s heaps of code that I’m proud of and would love to walk you through, but it’s all work I’ve done for past companies and don’t have access (or the legal right) to show you?”

It never once happened. They always knew in advance, so they could code something up if they felt like it.

I asked candidates to bring me some code they were proud of and teach me how it worked. Weeded out people really quickly and brought quality candidates to the top. On two separate occasions we hired devs with zero experience in the language or framework and they rocked it. Trythat with your coding interview, eh? 🙂

The double-edged sword of isolation.

On the one hand, poor communication between apps and waste of storage.

On the other, relative safety from malicious applications, or from otherwise-safe applications built on top of a thousand libraries none of which have been audited by the dev.

I don’t know how it’s going to go down, but I suspect something will come along to address these issues and snatch the market away from Flatpak.

Hadn’t tried it before, but went through the tutorial. Seems like a good editor; only modal editors for me, you know? :) I’ll probably stick with Vim for now, but it seems like something to watch.

Use the right tool for the job, I say.

I made a decent chunk of change with capitalism. I have a modest house and am well positioned for a middle-class retirement.

Now I work for the government in a field for which I find the capitalist options wanting.

I give away my programming guides for free online with no ads, but sell paper copies of the books for profit.

Could I make more money by charging for the online versions? Sure. But some things are worth more than money.

The quest for money doesn’t ruin everything, but it sure ruins a lot of things.

Bell Labs of yore would be my dream company to work for.