Recent submissions

Comment · 1 year ago
I highly doubt it, Windows is known for its stellar backward compatibility. Code signing means a lot of older software, that is still in use, would not be able to install or run. This is not going to happen (at least in the enterprise).
Comment · 1 year ago
Check left menu for more details.

Looks like a cool project. We get a computer with VGA output, FDD and RS232 ports.

Comment · 1 year ago
- You can still learn from the best of the best, its called books, try to read at least one per month.

- Conferences, not my thing, but if you are new, you may learn a trick or two there. No just go there, try talking to the people. Approach a few senior looking guys and ask them for advice.

- Confs can be quite expensive, a cheaper alternative is local user groups. You can try to find the closest ones via Meetup.

- ChatGPT (yup, hallucinates but still has a reasonable answer for 90% of the questions).

As for your situation:

- You are responsible for hiring. Try to hire people with more experience than you.

- "to the highest standards of the industry" isn't that perfectionism? Most production code has much much lower quality than what we see in open source.

- I think for the time being (the job market is really bad right now), just concentrate on delivering stuff. Learn if you have some time left, but delivering solutions should be your prio #1 in my opinion.

Comment · 1 year ago
Blogs and small sites still show up when you look for obscure contents like "RS232 DTR line". So far when I had a very specific question related to hardware or software I could find it via Google.

I find that blogs and small sites do not have a chance when looking for a commercial products or when trying to find a review for a product. There is too much SEO spam and fighting for the top positions.

But if you are doing something that cannot be commercialised easily or is very niche your blog will have easy time on Google (programming is not a niche anymore).

Comment · 1 year ago
My bet would be to write a small program using your target language. With ChatGPT this is extremely easy as you will get a list of recommended libraries to use. Try to choose an app that requires some serious coding e.g. creating an image board like 4chan is better than coding a tic-tac-toe.

My recommendation is that the learning app should:

- Interact with an SQL database

- Expose an HTTP endpoint (REST or GraphQL)

- Use a logging framework

- Use concurrency

- Use a unit testing framework and a few integration tests

- Build should be automated using GitHub actions

In my opinion that's the fastest way to learn a language or more broadly a platform (as every language now is a kind of platform with its own set of libraries, conventions, idioms and untold rules).

PS. My list is probably not good for a system language like Rust or C++, but should work for languages from Ruby & Python, though Java & C#, up to Go and Erlang.

Comment · 1 year ago
Ad Scala - it depends if you already knew a JVM based language. If you are coming from Java you will have a head start: use Maven/Gradle instead of SBT, you will already know IJ, you will know your way around managing JVM versions and understand core concepts like jar files and class loading.

For me the most time intensive part of learning a new language is learning the new libraries. I don't mean here the standard library but rather things like library for interacting with SQL database, how mocking works in the new language, how concurrency works, web API framework.

Learning "just" a language can be done over the weekend. Learning to properly use its standard lib and the entire environment of libraries may take years.

Comment · 1 year ago
Let's hope it won't be Oracle.

ehm... jokes aside. I think a more reasonable way is to setup a foundation, composed of biggest players in tech, also companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Mozilla Foundation, Linux Foundation, Apple and EFF. The foundation should steer the further development of Chrome. In that way Chrome will be owned by community just like e.g. Linux Kernel or standards like C++ lang spec.

If Chrome would be bought by a private entity, that entity would probably start milking the current user base straight away. Expect adds in bookmarks bar, more address bar spyware (e.g. sending all phrases to the cloud) and paid extensions web store.

The most used and advanced browser that we have today must stay open source. It is more than a program, it is part of global internet infrastructure. We should not destroy it by a foolish political decision.

Comment · 1 year ago
This is not my domain so my knowledge is limited, but I wonder if the chip designers have some sort of a standard library of ready to use components. Do you have to design e.g. ALU every time you design a new CPU or is there some standard component to use? I think having a proven components that can be glued on a higher level may be the key to productivity here.

Returning to LLMs. I think the problem here may be that there is simply not enough learning material for LLM. Verilog comparing to C is a niche with little documentation and even less open source code. If open hw were more popular I think LLMs could learn to write better Verilog code. Maybe the key is to persuade hardware companies to share their closed source code to teach LLM for the industry benefit?

Comment · 1 year ago
I am a bit concerned here. I wonder how much time will pass before someone decide to use it to hack a computer?
Comment · 1 year ago
Maybe there were in the past, currently there is entire industry there to help you game the system.

- Cracking the coding interview.

- Elements of programming interviews in Java|Python|whatever...

- leetcode & other sides with paid premium subscriptions...

- mock interview bootcamps...

It's no longer about skill, it's only about gaming the system.

Comment · 1 year ago
Indeed you are right, there is syntax highlighting.

Also my last comment sounds a bit harsh. That wasn't my intention. It is a great project.

Comment · 1 year ago
When you dig into the code you can see that the author did the bare minimum to have a nice demo. For example only 2 functions are supported: MsgBox and InputBox: https://github.com/BAndysc/AvaloniaVisualBasic6/blob/383a005...

Still it is impressive to create something complex like this in a matter of 4 days (looking at the commit history). And it is a good start to develop a full fledged IDE.

The more advanced features like syntax highlighting & autocomplete unfortunately are missing. I did not run it (I am on macOS) but I also expect there is no debugger.

Now I also want to share my childhood story: I started my dev journey first by using Turbo Pascal and then by switching to Delphi 7. Delphi was pretty much like VB6, you designed an app by dragging and dropping components on a form. My first app that I have created was a Notepad++ clone, I still keep the code for it but it is so awful that I cringe every time I try to look at it.

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