ppog

They di seem to have fixed this, at least as far as WSL is concerned. If I open a bash shell on Win10 and do `echo foo >/mnt/d/temp/like:this` then I can open the resulting file in Notepad and see the content `foo`. `mkdir like:this` works too. The file or directory name does appear a bit mangled in Explorer, but still works (and still looks like a colon from inside bash).

I think you are right that this used not to work in earlier versions of WSL. You could use colons within the WSL home directory, but not on the mounted NTFS drives. But it seems sorted now.

New Zealand's timezones are full hours, not 45 minutes. You might be thinking of Nepal? (Picky - your broader point is of course right.)

Draft can watch for code changes via a `watch` setting in draft.toml. (Disclosure: I work on the containers team at Microsoft.)

It seems like this relies for some of its safety guarantees on checks in (their fork of) the C# compiler. For example, owner non-copy guarantees seem to be enforced at the C# front end level rather than in the CLR. That could cause problems for getting it into CoreCLR (and much more so the desktop CLR), as this is meant to support multiple languages; relying on a specific language front-end for safe use of a feature feels at odds with the 'common language runtime' philosophy... It would be great to see it though!

Auckland has had a few for at least 10 years. They are used for some of the very busy intersections on Queen Street (a busy shopping street that also carries a lot of cars and buses), and seem to work well. Regarding Wellington, I can think of only one, which I think was put in a few years ago at a 5-way intersection that had a lot of foot traffic and was quite accident-prone; I think it's been successful in simplifying how pedestrians use the intersection and reducing accidents, and doesn't seem to have worsened traffic flow.

"Scanning a cond for me is almost instantaneous." This is a very subjective concern though. Consider the subtype example. For me, reading that 3x3 table, especially with the grouping of blocks, was a lot easier than mentally parsing a big pile of 'and/or' expressions, or nested switches, etc. And my impression is that a lot of programmers do initially visualise some parts of their work as tables or diagrams.

Our tools on the other hand are indeed 'so finely attuned and specialised to text' that other methods of representation have and will struggle to get traction...

"They are able to do it so well, so quickly because Windows Visual Studio has much of that functionality already in it." I don't believe anything is shared between Visual Studio and VS Code except the branding (Microsoft playing to their traditional strengths in confusing marketing). Where I do agree is that VS Code drew on a lot of the institutional expertise and design learning from the folks who develop Visual Studio and Visual Studio Online. Perhaps also there are shared editor components across VS Code and VS Online, I'm not sure - but again this is _not_ the same editor as Visual Studio's (again with the confusing branding).

(Disclosure: I work for Microsoft, but not on VS, VS Code, VS Online or VS Floor Wax.)

"Everything is contracted out to Datacom, Catalyst, Frondie, Solnet, etc. etc."

It's true that there's a big services sector, especially around government work. But there's also a lively startup/R&D scene. I worked 4 years for Mindscape (a dev tools startup, later to become Raygun), and then moved to GreenButton (HPC in the cloud, later acquired by Microsoft; the R&D team is still based in Wellington). Xero is a thriving, lively product company, although now large and mature; same with TradeMe. Weta Digital has a lot of in-house tech. And there are companies like 8i, just kicking off doing amazing things in motion capture and rendering.

So what you're saying is fair for "IT services" tech - if you want to do that, then yeah, Datacom is it. But there's so much more to the Wellington tech scene than IT services.

That's fine for US citizens entering the US, but any 'travel mode' needs to work for the outbound trip too. If the country you're visiting has adopted a US-style border stance, then you're in no better a position than a non-US citizen visiting the US: the border forces of that other country can detain you until travel mode expires if they want. It seems like "They can't hold me for days while they wait for the mode to expire" only works for citizens returning to their own countries.

I think MichaelGG is thinking of the Rotor "shared source" implementation for BSD, which was released around the same time as .NET for Windows as a proof of concept for implementing the .NET standards on other platforms. (These standards included CIL and the Common Type System, not just C#.) But as Michael says though it fell way short of full .NET, lacking many libraries and a lot of the optimisations of the Windows .NET implementation; and it wasn't open source in that you couldn't fork it, you could only look at the code 'under glass.'

They've said that the first version isn't targeted as a consumer device. They initially see it as a professional piece of kit for use by, for example, product designers. (At least that's how it was presented at the New Zealand MS conference.)

Of course, then they show it off using Minecraft demos, recipe books, and a parent helping their kid in another city fix their sink. So sure, marketing it to consumers is the long game. But I'd guess that's some way off.