aceperry

"Windows 8 wasn't all that bad"

That's funny, because ALL of the non-technical regular people that I know of hate windows 8. A lot of them downgraded to Windows 7.

Great post, mirrors my experiences as well.

I hadn't thought of how great package management was on linux, there are many systems and the ones I've used work very well. Installing software on Windows is positively scary. You can't really remove programs completely unless you do some registry hacking... fun, fun, fun!

This is the best explanation of linux in terms of where it sits with respect to other operating systems. I've had a pretty similar experience as yourself with linux on laptops. Sometimes there are surprises, especially when upgrading, but nothing that the community can't handle. And usually the experience is much better with linux than Windows. I bought a Win8 machine last year and the wifi stopped working due to a bad driver. At the time I thought it was bad hardware, but under linux it worked flawlessly. Just recently, with the latest win8.1 updates, the wifi started to work again. Yeah, yeah, I know, the windows apologists will blame the wifi manufacturer, anyone but Microsoft. I got you. BUT... it worked for me under linux!

"If you are looking for a locked-down consumer appliance of a computer then linux really isn't for you." LOL, I was going to say, what about chromeOS? That's a locked down distro based on linux. Luckily it is very easy to install a linux distro on it, as I have. You can have the best of both worlds, a locked down simple to use computer, and a tweak to your heart's delight linux distro.

Absolutely, windows is still a disaster. For developers working with open source technologies, windows is a difficult platform to use. I was attending a workshop on Angular.js and rails where I had the misfortune to have brought my windows 8.1 machine with me. Everyone, including myself, who had a windows machine could not get going with any of the workshop material.

It's interesting to hear about OSX crashing. I didn't think that was common. I've been a linux user for the longest time, and have always had to tweak something to get it running the way that I wanted to. That doesn't bother me since I like to do that kind of stuff. That and the fact that I've never had any problems with linux crashing, especially compared to Windows, has kept me on linux. But I know a lot of people who left linux for OSX because they didn't like to tweak things and just wanted to get things done.

A friend recently switched from a mac laptop at work to a windows laptop which surprised me. While she has always been a windows user, I was surprised that OSX didn't convert her to the platform. I also noticed that as more and more people start using macs, I hear more and more grumbling about them.

I'm tempted to do something like that. One thing you should be wary of is not leaving anything that can be taken off easily. If they don't take the bike, they might steal your lights or something small instead. Make sure that easily removable items are not left on the bike.

It's mostly younger people ride bikes, but because of the availability of bike lanes and public bike racks, more and more people from all incomes are riding bikes.

I really have to wonder about the amount of time to setup your own servers. I like to setup and tweak hardware for fun. But the time and starting costs seems way too much compared to spinning up a few instances to get something going quickly. Looking around here, San Francisco bay area, I can't find any way to host a server as inexpensively and as quickly as I can on the cloud. Plus there are lots of alternatives to AWS which promise better performance.

BTW, tweaking around with servers can also be a major time sink.

The author shows a lot of love for his laptop.

dang, as many others have pointed out very well, pg's post contains "low quality," and in my view inflammatory comments. You refuse to call him out on it, not a peep at all. Instead, you call out others for responding in disagreement. Would you apply the "Principle of Charity" to the remarks of those that you think to be low quality? If not, can you justify why the "Principle of Charity" should not apply to pg but to everyone else who disagrees with him?

You say, "the onus is on all of us to contribute substantively even in response to something we consider unsubstantive." How about the responsibility of the original poster? Is it acceptable to write that way? Can he be legitimately criticized for that? If you don't accept that, then you've created an unfair situation.

(regarding your refusal to criticize pg) "I think that would be a mistake" The real mistake is the way you try to shut down dissent by painting it as "uncharitable" or misguided/mistaken. Can you point out the many examples of "much of this thread is of low quality" ? I don't think you can make that case, because it seems that you disagree with the opinions more than anything else.

Some of the dissenting opinions are passionate. And there is nothing wrong with that. Just look at pg's original post, there is a lot of passion there. I would suggest that you be an adult and understand that there are controversial topics which will cause passionate discussion. It makes no sense to a accuse everyone of being wrong in their interpretation and to scold them as if they're children. Just read the comments and you'll see that a lot of people here have unique knowledge and understanding of the topic. Your point is incorrect, and adds nothing to this very important (and passionate) subject.

"PG's point is that a lot of people from outside the US (including from Europe) currently would prefer relocating to the US but they have difficulty getting a visa"

No, from my reading of pg's point: Most of the top programmers live outside of the US, so we should make it easier to get them by changing immigration policy.

dang, what can I say, you seem to have missed my point. You're criticizing the way people have responded to pg's post. While that may be valid, you fail to criticize pg's 'quality' of writing, which can also be considered inflammatory. How about a little balance here?

That's not how management sees talent like programmers and engineers. Management sees them like another commodity labor resource.

Hey dang, maybe you should write a critique of pg's post, and how it fails in so many ways with the principle of charity. Just to give this discussion more balance since you've been criticizing other people's responses.

The working assumption is that anyone who has a problem somewhere along the software chain will have access to the source and have the ability to fix problems when they need to. They're not dependent on one company to make fixes when there is a problem.

I know that you can run Windows on a mac, but you can't use OSX to develop for Windows.

As another poster mentioned, the latest eclipse version "Luna" is much faster and better than previous versions. It boots up faster than the beta versions of Android Studio.

Pardon me? I wasn't aware of any other platforms that you can use to develop for windows phone.

Sounds like a ripe opportunity for "disruption."

What's new? Facebook has changed their policies so often, that I don't even bother. In fact I don't use Facebook much because they keep changing so much that I get this sneaking suspicion they are slipping in something nefarious and hoping that you won't notice. It's like the auto insurance companies. I keep getting thick envelopes in the mail about changes in my policy every few months. I don't know why that's necessary, but they keep doing it. ???

That IS a surprise. Maybe Nokia can finally rise up on its own after all.

The fashion type ad is very good, and very different from most of the other smart watch ads that I've seen. The other ads focus on the watch and technology. The LG ad emphasizes the fashion aspect of the watch and is more consumer oriented which is probably the best thing to do when expanding the market to beyond the early adopters and techno types.

The moto looks pretty good on the thin wrist of a girl though.

Awesome, I wish I had a system like that! Doesn't seem to run on my chromebook though. :-(

I got to wonder about the downvotes that I received. I've noticed that there are some guys (mostly) who will reject anything that a woman says, no matter what the message. Glad to see that most of the posters on this topic are in favor of asking for a raise, unlike Nadella's statement.

Great perspective and advice over Satya Nadella's recent gaffe about advising women to not ask for a raise. Roizen's article explains and examines some of the issues behind compensation and raises. She weaves in her own experiences to make the case that asking for a raise is one of the better things to do, from both the employees' and employers' perspective.

Pease and Widlar were two legendary engineers who ruled during the birth of the analog integrated circuit.

I heard an interesting story about Pease from someone who worked at National and knew him by sight. During the last great recession, around 2009?, my friend (another engineer) was using the services of California's state unemployment agency, when she saw the great Bob Pease walk into the EDD office to apply for unemployment. He had been laid off from National Semiconductor. The shock of this news spread throughout and a little later, National rehired Pease. But this event signaled to me that the sanctity of analog IC engineers had been pierced and no one was spared from the crushing recession. To me, it was the passing of an era, hardware engineering was losing it's prestige and dominance. Today, software has replaced hardware as the most vibrant and lucrative field in engineering. I can see that the brightest students are entering computer science, instead of going into electrical engineering.

I sometimes wonder who are today's engineers with as much influence as Widlar and Pease. Or if any engneers could be as dominant as those two in today's world where there are so many different technologies and directions in software.

I guess that means he recognized that he put his foot in his mouth.

LOL, very cool. But I think my eyes would hurt if I looked at it for too long.

This is huge, no matter what kind of technology or compromises being made, it shows the acceptance and maturation of chromebooks in the general public.