knightni
Anecdotally (I work at a large corp), slightly under half our devs use Linux. You only need to look at the array of software-for-programmers that's available under Linux to see that it's an extremely popular choice - the availability of programming software and libraries is generally better under Linux than it is under Windows.
While linux is certainly a bit more hassle to maintain than windows (I use a mac when given the choice, which i find gives me the best of both worlds), it's still a clearly superior environment for highly technical users. It's only recently with the introduction of Powershell that Windows has stopped being a substantial handicap for developers, imo.
Personally, when I'm not using a unix-y environment, it's because I've been forced. Using windows as a programmer feels like having one of my hands chopped off.
- Firstly, I definitely notice the difference. The higher res screen is noticeably nicer to read. Sure, you don't need to go to the crazy extremes of some newer high res phones, but standard desktop monitors are noticeably ugly by comparison.
- Secondly, the res is high enough that you can finally change (apparent) resolution. My parents are in their late 60s and have bad-ish eyesight, so they lower the resolution on their screen. The result is incredibly ugly. Unfortunately resolution independent display seems to be a forgotten goal in modern OSes, so having screens that can change res is definitely worthwhile.
> In general, if you are a man with type 1 diabetes, the odds of your child getting diabetes are 1 in 17. If you are a woman with type 1 diabetes and your child was born before you were 25, your child's risk is 1 in 25; if your child was born after you turned 25, your child's risk is 1 in 100.
Even if both partners are diabetic, the risk is only 1 in 10 to 1 in 4. This strongly implies that what is heritable is the vulnerability to getting diabetes, rather than getting diabetes itself. There is, presumably, some trigger that also needs to occur.
Honestly, I really fucking love optimising databases. I can't believe my luck that people want to pay me to do that sort of work for 8 hours a day.
To me, hell is having to define and defend my own problem. I would loathe running a startup - I love the feeling, instead, of having people come to me to solve their problems. Fortunately, I've managed to arrange a situation where enough of those problems are reasonably interesting to my apparently unusual tastes :-).
This is not meant as a dig against those who run startups, just a note from someone with a very different perspective.
Time intervals are also in the SQL standard as I recall (although not in the format listed here - postgres supports standard syntax too though). Not sure how fully supported it is cross-database, though.
In fairness, that often depends upon the intelligence of the planner. A lot of sort-limit-offset queries can be reasonably easy and not generate too many rows if the planner works correctly and you have the right indexes.
edit: Assuming you're mostly picking up early pages as opposed to getting late ones, anyway - which is usually the case for, say, a comment system.
It's one thing that I find it frustrating that Postgres (which I otherwise love) doesn't offer - I understand that they don't like optimiser hints, but at least the ability to say 'keep using the current plan until I give you permission to do otherwise' would be invaluable.
Unfortunately unless you're on windows it's not that fast compared to Java.
I actually leave my LCDs at a redder tint most of the time now, as I find it more comfortable. This is particularly useful as most desktop LCDs won't adjust their brightness down far enough for me. Laptops are better, since they actually bother to adjust the power of their backlight.
I guess my point was more about the statement that there's no need for customization if the OS is well-designed - to my mind, there may be no need for customization for many (or perhaps even a majority) of users, but there is for some. An OS that tried to serve all niche needs without allowing customization would likely be a confused mess - and yet, for those users, having their niche need served can be extremely important.
If the lock screen gets/has that functionality, I'm not sure what the real difference between that and a widget is - except that mine displays on the home screen while yours displays on the lock screen.
This means that I can have a list of (for example) upcoming birthdays on my phone that I see over and over again, enough that I will eventually see the reminder at a point when I am in a position to do something about it. Alarms are useless by comparison, because I will inevitably be busy with something else when they go off. Calendars/todo apps are equally useless to me, because they require me to remember to open up an app all the time.
I realise my use case is relatively niche, but I imagine there's a lot of different niche users out there that benefit from customisability.
I also read Black Like Me, which seems to be required reading in the US, but I only recently became aware of it. Definitely worth a look.
Equally, I don't think that the opposite end of 'hacked together' is some kind of AbstractAbstractFactoryFactory extravaganza - that's just a different kind of bad code. To me, good code is code that is simple for other people to understand, and takes basic precautions with respect to being not-too-brittle to change. Every so often, I find that once the code has received enough alterations, it needs a bit of TLC.
This is a fairly natural series of events that can be helped by periodic refactoring. Unfortunately, because each change is small, none of them on their own justify the time required for the refactor. That's when you've got to hope you've got a management team that trusts your judgement, and is willing to carve out the time necessary for this stuff. Most people, alas, don't have that.
I'm very attached to really good, big touchpads though - losing gesture support is hard!
A couple of years ago an issue with the USB3 driver broke suspend on laptops with USB3 for quite some time, requiring workarounds. Multi-touch trackpads took some time to get full gesture support. Auto-switch between paired graphics cards still doesn't work.
That's not to say things aren't pretty good now - but to imply that linux doesn't require some fiddling about under the hood hardware-wise is stretching a lot.