Not necessarily! I always run ln -s '/usr/bin/$EDITOR' $(which $EDITOR) after a fresh install, so I have a valid executable on the path called $EDITOR.

Of course, then I have to make sure to add export EDITOR=\$EDITOR to my .bashrc. (Obviously.)

I haven’t done too much work with WASM myself, but when I did, the only languages I saw recommended were Rust, C++, or TinyGo. From what I’ve heard, Rust and C++ are smoother than TinyGo. Garbage collected languages usually aren’t great choices for compiling to wasm because wasm doesn’t have any native garbage collection support. That limits your selection down a lot.

But another option you may want to consider is Nim. As I understand, it compiles to C, so any C->Wasm compiler should theoretically work for you as well. I did a quick search and wasn’t able to find any great resources on how to do this, but you might get a bit more lucky. Good luck!

I fantasize about being one of those extremely well-paid Cobol consultants when I reach the later stages of my career. Hoping that I can earn a full year’s salary in 3-4 months and take the rest of the time off as a semi-retirement. It would be easier said than done, but it’s a dream that helps me get through the days when I get sick of the daily grind.

This is quite cool. I always find it interesting to see how optimization algorithms play games and to see how their habits can change how we would approach the game.

I notice that the AI does some unnatural moves. Humans would usually try to find the safest area on the screen and leave generous amounts of space in their dodges, whereas the AI here seems happy to make minimal motions and cut dodges as closely as possible.

I also wonder if the AI has any concept of time or ability to predict the future. If not, I imagine it could get cornered easily if it dodges into an area where all of its escape routes are about to get closed off.

Yeah, I knew someone was going to say that. Usually it’s more likely that Python is installed than jq - especially on servers. But yes, that would definitely work too.

I use json.tool a lot to format JSON directly in vim. Simply highlight the text you want to format and run :!python3 -m json.tool. There are probably plugins to do this too, but doing it this way is probably the simplest, unless vim has a built-in for it.

Agreed overall, you will still be competent switching from one language to another, but intricacies and nuance matter a lot here. You may have enough knowledge to solve problems, but will you have enough knowledge to avoid creating new ones too? Like performance issues, or memory leaks, or other unwanted behavior? C++ is a great example here: someone that’s smart but inexperienced might just be dangerous enough to start writing classes with dumb pointers without overriding the copy constructors, and this is just a recipe for disaster.

I think it would take more than a few months to develop the kinds of experience that you need to be aware of these issues and avoid them. And while C++ is a very easy example to point out here, pretty much all languages have their share of footguns to be aware of, and it just takes time to learn them. A “deep knowledge” of a language is not just about being faster and more productive; it’s also about not creating more issues than the ones your solving.

This one might be a bit controversial, but has rung true in my general experience. Probably a lot of exceptions to these rules, but here goes:

You don’t really know a programming language until you understand a fair amount of the standard library and how packages/modules/dependencies work. Syntax is pretty easy, and any mainstream language will work just fine for solving basic leet-code style problems. But when you really spend a lot of time working with a language, you’re going to spend more time learning about common libraries and how to manage dependencies. If you’re working with a language like C++ or Java, this could also include build systems and how to use them.

Another precursor to being able to say that you know a language is that you should also be familiar with best practices (ie. how to name modules, how to write documentation, etc.) and common pitfalls (undefined behavior, etc.). This is one of the hardest parts about learning a new language in my opinion, because the language may not necessarily enforce these things, but doing them the wrong way can make your life very difficult.

the only annoyances are that to use the slash you need to use shift

Oof, that sounds really annoying. I can’t possibly imagine how I would use the terminal that way

But Swiss, that’s the stuff of nightmares!

Ha, that sounds funny (in a morbid kind of way…). What’s so bad about it?

If you want to see what the world would look like without the GPL, just look at how the BSDs are getting shanked by Apple (and many other companies too, but they’re the biggest).

If it weren’t for him, I have no idea what Linux would be today. No doubt in my mind, RMS is #1 on my list of most important software developers to have ever lived.

Same here. Sure, KDE and Gnome may have great Wayland support by now, but what about other DEs? The situation in XFCE seems to be pretty grim:

It is not clear yet which Xfce release will target a complete Xfce Wayland transition (or if such a transition will happen at all).

MATE seems to have piecemeal support. No idea what the status of LXDE/LXQT are. And there are plenty of other window managers that don’t have the manpower to support wayland either.

The deprecation of X is going to leave a lot of dead software in its wake.

Why is it your responsibility to pay the creators? Google is a trillion dollar company and makes billions off of what people post on youtube. Shouldn’t they be paying them instead and not you?

Besides, it’s only a matter of time before Google takes more and more of the cut that you think you’re paying them.

You say that today. Give it a couple years. I’m pretty sure that by 2030, the cost will be ~100 dollars/euros/whatever per month and you’ll see 2 minutes of ads for every single minute of content you watch. (Okay, maybe the number of ads is an exaggeration, but I don’t think the monthly cost is.)

Don’t pay the Danegeld. It never makes them go away.

when it means they will not sell my data and will allow me control over my algorithm to prevent it from playing to my vulerabilities

The problem is that this will never happen. That boat has sailed - companies will never give up on their existing revenue streams. They may say that paying today will exempt you from the ads, but it’s only a matter of time before they ramp up the cost and start showing ads anyway. That’s how cable television started, and it’s how internet streaming will end as well. And as for the not selling data/controlling the algorithm, well you have no way of proving that they don’t do that so they’ll do it no matter what they say.

There’s no reason for google to do this whatsoever. They have their business model - any new revenue streams will 100% definitely not reduce the other ones at all. It’s just gonna be another giant dump into the pile of enshittification.

Off-topic, but I’m curious why you would put Nim in that list. While I absolutely love the language, I’ve never heard of anyone using it for anything serious, especially compared to Rust or even Zig. I’d even be surprised if it has more mindshare than D.

(An absolute shame by the way. Nim looks like an absolutely fantastic language.)

First thing is to not mount it at all. Any writes to the overwritten partition will corrupt your data.

Second thing: install system rescue cd to a live usb and boot it. Look into testdisk and photorec. It’s been a while since I’ve had to use these tools, but I believe testdisk can restore the partition and photorec can find files in a file system that has been deleted. I would try running photorec first to save the recovered files to an external hard disk, and then testdisk to try restoring them. But disclaimer: it’s been a while since I’ve had to do this, so my memory is foggy here.

Good luck!

“Waste your Money” Day

It would be interesting to see a breakdown by region on that statistic. I would say I work with about 80% Americans and 20% Europeans and Linux is definitely more popular amongst the Europeans. That said, a couple of my American colleagues have also switched from Macs to Linux, but not many people on my team use Jetbrains products (VS Code is more popular here). Overall, I would guess that Linux is more popular in Europe, South America, and Asia, while Apple is more popular in the US, but that’s just a pretty rough speculation.

I’d really like to do some personal projects, both to learn new stuff and scratch my digital itches.

Likewise. There are so many things I’d love to do. Hell, I’d even love to just practice and improve at things that I do in my day job. My current job requires golang and while I’m competent, I’m nowhere near the level of comfort that I want to be. And that’s just the language, there are other libraries, technologies, etc. where I’d like to improve too.

But unfortunately, I have to pace myself. And that basically means I can never do anything computer-related in my spare time. A part of me hopes that some day, I can reduce my hours, or just find a very chill job that still pays decently so I can do more important things in my spare time. But for now, this is the choice that I’ve made.