cartoonfoxes

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

And yet my licensed Visual Studio 2026 that's supposed to be for serious-face commercial development is rife with Copilot.

You may stop using Copilot at any time.

But how? Microsoft has shoved it into so many products that I don't see how it's possible, without dropping them alltogether.

Some of what I learned from a decade of keeping up with the perfusion of JS libraries and frameworks seems relevant to AI:

- anything with good enough adoption is good enough (unless I'm an SME to judge directly)

- build something with it before considering a switch

- they're similar enough that what I learn in one will transfer to others

- everything sucks compared with 2-3 years from now; switching between "sucks" and "sucks+" will look silly in retrospect

Try the "Paste as plain text" tool in PowerToys - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/advanced....

Every time I start playing Factorio it's always a matter of time before I'm trying to figure out how to solve factories with VHDL and how to interface Magic VLSI with the game's blueprints. From there it's another day or so before I'm reviewing EE graduate programs and working out how much math I would need to grind.

I had this experience with Eve Online back in the day. The optimization limit horseshoes back into the real world.

Case in point: just reading this thread started me learning about discrete event simulation. Damn you Factorio.

The industrial hubs I'm familar with use optoisolators to separate the host and attached devices, I think. Advantech has a USB-3 version (P/N USB-4630), but I can't speak to these personally.

Absolutley. In a hardware-development context, we use them to stop frying computers with broken devices. I've had good experience with the BB-UHR304 from Advantech. They're expensive and occasionally sacrificial, but cheaper than replacing an average pc / laptop. https://www.advantech.com/en/products/c9300564-0829-46eb-955...

HN has a high concentration of above-average salaries, even within the US. It's tough constantly hearing how many multiples more my southern equivalent at FAANG is earning without it affecting my sense of self worth.

I've always just used the palm of my hand. You can work a keyboard with more surfaces than just your fingertips.

Most definitely. I've been playing with using ChatGPT to generate proof texts in Isabelle/HOL, since it lets me verify the correctness of the output before code generation.

After receiving an aggressive call from Embarcadro's license compliance team for installing Delphi "Community Edition" registered with a personal email address, on a personal laptop, to the effect that I could not use it because they somehow managed to connect me with [Employer] which also has Embarcadero commercial licenses killed that experiment really quick. This was in mid-2022.

Delphi is a neat product, but fuck Embarcadero - their business model is to extract revenue from the long tail of old Borland customers who are locked in for one reason or another, not grow the product.

If its furniture you're thinking of - people want custom hand-made things now, they just can't afford them. That trend isn't going to change with increased automation.

NIF is still doing fusion research? I thought they pivoted to materials research in support of stockpile stewardship years ago.

I'm aware of it, and I'm not aware of anyone using it for proprietary software in the kinds of projects where Ada would come up in discussion. FSF GNAT + Alire are fine as a hobbyist toy and for open source, but they're not in contention for [workjob]. FSF GNAT isn't just unsupported, but also very thinly documented. And that's if you're only targeting Linux or Windows on x86, and not embedded devices with a cross-compiler you need to build yourself.

The basic Windows / Linux versions of the cheapest commercial Ada package only recently dropped to high 4-figures / seat. The equivalent cross-compilers are still $$,$$$.

Same here. I keep eyeing Ada and waiting for the compiler prices to drop.

I recently learned of Dysgraphia from an interview with Eric Weinstein. For some, writing notes on paper actively destroys recall. Western education pretty much forces students to take notes by hand, which is understandably a nightmare for those afflicted. I wish I could find the specific clip I'm thinking of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia.

As a developer, the only reason to use Windows today is if you need Visual Studio for .NET development.

What do you mean by developer?

Lots of embedded systems and industrial automation development is Windows-only, as a random example. Not everything is webdev or mobile. Lots of vertical markets have development environments which are essentially Windows-only.

Early history of artificial intelligence research, maybe MIT CSAIL specifically? https://projects.csail.mit.edu/films/aifilms/AIFilms.html

There were a few decades of research into symbolic AI and expert systems - "Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence" before the modern deep-learning revolution. Lots of promise, interesting research, and very cool (and esoteric) hardware came out of it, which never found wide application outside the lab. You could pitch it as a sort of analogue to Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006).

BRL-CAD is CSG instead of B-rep geometry. Different use-case.

Every new hire

In what industry?

Here's a modern example of a Jig Grinder. https://mooretool.com/jig_grinders.html

Currently, I'm not currently working in a dedicated modeling tool at all - just draw.io. We started with Enterprise Architect from SparxSystems - it's a bit janky and covers a lot stuff beyond SysML, but it works fine. Cameo Systems Modeler is good too - it omits the non-SysML garbage that the other platforms include, and has the best Model-to-Html rendering I have seen, but was double the cost of EA so did not use it for work. The open source tools, Modelio etc. were all a broken waste of time.

For my use, there is a sweet-spot for "models" spanning only a handful of diagrams (5-10) where any drawing software with SysML templates will do. The dedicated modeling tools like EA or Cameo become relevant once you're trying to keep model elements consistent across a large number of diagrams. Draw.io is free so the whole team can use it, and the the lack of model representation keeps diagram count low and not over-specified.

Cool products, btw.

Despite being mostly a subset of UML, SysML is a more cohesive and useful design and modeling tool. Unlike UML, I've actually used SysML on real embedded systems projects and like it. It lends itself well to model refinement, wheras UML encourages Big Design Up Front.

I'm not sold on the idea of capturing an entire design within SysML, but using it instead as a diagram format with defined semantics for situations where group discussion or communication with third-parties calls for some graphical aids. I think as long as you're not trying to make executable models, do code-generation, or replace a formal specification tool like TLA+, there is real value in it. The documentation and training ecosystem around it is pretty decent, as well. The SysML books I've read have all been way more pragmatic and grounded in actual engineering practice of building systems from many components sourced elsewhere, for which design capture is necessarily incomplete.

You sure? For a cloud-hosted app like Fusion/360 I would expect that you're only entitled to 3 years of access to PRODUCT_NAME/CURRENT_BUILD, without an option to rollback to older versions (eg. at time of purchase) on request, and almost certainly without reference to specific functionality. Unless they specifically inform you that older release are available, your contract with them absolutely would allow for removal of features.

With a fat EULA attached. Insert obligatory

definition of product applies to current billing period only, Autodesk reserves the right to add or remove functionality without notice

No-one in these spaces was using Fusion/360 to begin with. Aero and defense are mostly CATIA 5 and Pro/ENGINEER (Creo), with offline PDM.

Inventor is their direct competitor to Solidworks, which afaik can still be run offline.

Lately? Autodesk has been a user-hostile company for a long time.

When working with the huge amounts of embedded silicon that is supported by C libraries and toolchains only.

It does, or ignorant at the least. All the auto manufacturers use clay, not just for Italian sportscars.

Automotive technical surfacing in CAD is stupid hard, and is a waste of time for the design staff. The clay models are easier to work with in every sense - easier to change, easier to refine, easier to show and discuss, etc. Designers can apply reflective film to the clay which shows reflections much as the finished product would, and can even be painted. The final surfaces are reverse-engineered from scans taken from those clay models.