sai_c

No, I actually have a bunch of older Macs I keep running for certain experiments.

Whoa, thanks for the heads-up. I've been reading news about Zig from time to time, and planned giving it an honest try at 1.0 (whenever that may be) but it seems I'm out of luck.

Do you, by chance, know the reasoning behind this step?

If I were a Rust user, I'd be really afraid of what will happen to Rust when Microsoft gets hold of it in any way. Just look at what happened to C++ after it got popular because of Windows/Visual C++ and the strong ties between Microsoft and WG21 in the 90s/00s.

To quote Steve Jobs: "They just have no taste."

Sounds like there is money to be made, no?

I can't help it, but reading Dom McLaughlin's testimony (scroll down to the examples) "...let's just say I'm not the most photogenic person..." makes me want to instantly go out and hunt down every picture of me ever made and nuke it from space :-).

I love vim. It's a fantastic OS. Unfortunately it lacks a good editor.

Does anyone know what "Outside the US, we’ll support employees in line with local practices." exactly means?

In Germany I could imagine it to be "You're fired. Go to the Arbeitsagentur and find a new job". Of course within the legal forewarning period.

The premise of a space craft traveling the long distance from earth to Mars and then crashing because of a unit mismatch is very amusing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_...

There is only one point around the whole Oumuamua topic for me, that makes me a bit sad. Extraterrestrial or not is not it, but that we had no means to just fly there (with or without humans) and checkout what it is.

Even worse, it seems no one in the scientific community (please correct me if I'm wrong) stepped up and said "We need to change this!". And it seems we will not have those means in the coming years/decades.

Honestly, if we can't do this in our own neighbourhood, because we simply lack the will power and consensus to do it, it says a lot about the future of space exploration.

This has nothing to do with C, and everything with its intended problem domain.

You can get into pointer and memory errors in C++, Rust and Ada. All of them low-level system languages. Sure, those errors might be harder to produce, but not impossible, and definitely easy enough to still trip you up.

I programmed in all of those languages, except Rust (just don't like it). At least in C you pretty much now WHY (not necessarily where in the code) things went south, without consulting a thousand page specification or having to remember the myriad of language feature interactions that could have triggered those problems.

Moreover, C being small, it's a good on/off language. Try doing a code review for a C++/Rust/Ada code base which uses features heavily after not having touched the language for a year. I bet it is not as easy as C.

You know, some things in life are just hard. And low-level programming is one of those things. C is only honest about this.

Not to be nitpicking, but there is a free(), and it is called "Unchecked deallocation".

See https://www.adaic.org/resources/add_content/standards/05aarm....

As someone who started his own company fifteen years ago I can relate. Being german, the process itself was not that much of a hassle. But the financial aspect of having to pay for so many things i do not need or want (IHK membership, Genossenschaft membership) was mind boggling.

There is a joke they tell you in Germany when you think about creating a company:

How do you make a million Euros in Germany? Take two and create a company.

From the front page:

"Your program will also boot on bare metal too. In other words, you've written a normal textbook C program, and thanks to Cosmopolitan's low-level linker magic, you've effectively created your own operating system which happens to run on all the existing ones as well."

Have an upvote for making my day :-).

Made my day :-).

I hope i did not understand you wrong, but what I meant was the following. We create electric energy from source X. The electric energy is mutated to heat, or mechanical energy or what not (computers produce heat, electric cars mutate it into kinetic energy and so on). Energy is never destroyed, it just changes its form. So if we produce/consume more energy than now (yes that's just theoretical) would that contribute to climate change in a significant manner?

Could someone please enlighten a physics noob?

As i understand it, nuclear fusion could (as soon as really achieved, i.e. there exist commercial plants) provide more energy than we are currently producing by all other methods. And if we can produce it, I have no doubt we would use more and more energy.

Which would mean that all this energy must end up somewhere somehow. What I would like to know is, don' we then (just in another form) contribute to the heating of the planet again? Are there any studies/theories about that? What would the impact of the ever increasing energy release/production be?

I'm honestly curios, so please bear with me.

All the HN threads about recruiting mention this. I get the argument, and yes, there seems to be no better way than to test the candidate (no matter if it is a take home test, online, or onsite). As I see it, most of these tests are about algorithms and data structures, not real, practical problems the company has/had.

What I do not get is the following. Most companies (especially FAANG) demand a CS degree and then give you those coding tests about algorithms and data structures your degree actually proves you know about. If the candidate got the degree thirty years ago, then (maybe) fine. But even candidates fresh out of university? And even if you do not recall them in an instant, your degree should prove you can successfully research and understand them. Is a CS degree actually anything worth then, if I still have to prove this knowledge every time I apply for a job? And if it's not about theoretical things, why demand a degree and test for theoretical knowledge instead of practical problem solving skills?

This person should already have enough of a reputation to get a job at many companies, if their work is public enough.

But then why do people with that kind of reputation still (at certain companies) have to jump through these hoops?

https://www.theregister.com/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our...

What do you suggest for the 99%+ other candidates?

What about (instead of forcing a months long decision process upon the candidates and the company) bringing them into the company after a short interview (maybe 2hrs), and making sure they can afford housing, food and everything else they need. If you like their work, they stay employed. If, say after one month, you do not like what you see, you can easily let them go. Of course you tell them upfront what the deal is.

We could call it, I don't know, maybe trial or probationary period.

That's why you don't use it on small microcontrollers (8/16 bit). And if you absolutely have to, use it once on startup to implement a dynamic memory pool.

If you ask an embedded developer (as in bare metal, no OS), who is also into electronics, instant gratification and especially instant feedback, is what actually makes you choose this path of interest in the first place.

It's a matter of style and character how you cultivate new skills, and Rust wants you to cultivate them in a certain, some people are just not made for. YMMV.

"2. Society stopped valuing education as much. While once educators traded lower pay for the prestige of being a professor they can’t really say it is a worthy trade anymore as a vocal minority do not value education at all."

I can totally see why that is the case. Raised in a classical worker family and observing how my peers from childhood are doing, I can imagine where this is coming from.

Most of them were also raised as workers kids (i.e. both parents working in mindless jobs in a factory and earning barely enough to raise the kids), but some had the chance to go earn a BS or MS. Yet, they are financially struggling for severals reasons. Also, they have a hard time explaining to their parents why they can't afford a house, vacation, a new car and all the things their parents never had, but wanted their kids to have. So all the reasons their parents fought to get them a good education are nullified.

I know getting a good education is of value in and of itself, but the reality is, that most parents want a good education for their kids because they want them to be financially successful, not for humanistic reasons (remember who attended universities in their beginning and why, it was aristocrats with a lot of time and money).

So to play the devil's advocate, what value has this education, if my kids still struggle in life, just they way I am? And why should I have "high esteem" for the people teaching, if what they offer has so little practical value?

Simple. Not to fall for marketing slogans and false promises, and not to rely too much on the results of technology. If you know (at least basically) how the sausage is made, you will know it does not work without meat.

Thank you very much for answering, although it is a very personal thing to ask about.

I guess I should get an official opinion. Nevertheless, diagnosed or not, virtualizing people seems like it could work for me, although it seems to take a significant amount of time for each person to work.

Have an upvote from me and thank you so much for this comment. This describes perfectly my own state of mind. I've noticed having problems communicating my thoughts about my code in meetings, but simply could not point a finger at the exact reasons. But this describes it perfectly. If I may bother you, could you answer two questions?

- Were you officially diagnosed with ADHD. I never went to a doctor, but in the last years I had growing assumptions I might have ADHD or Asperger (or both).

- Do you follow certain strategies which made communicating your thoughts and ideas easier and/or better?

How many people live in poverty, sickness and war in this day and age despite all scientific progress. Also, how many have no hope for the better ever, despite scientific progress. How many of those people will get the vaccine you mentioned. I talk about "mere mortals ", not privileged people from the western world.

I said "mere mortals " in my initial post. Scientists are not mere mortals. Me, the little not-scientist is ;-).

Same question as to another poster. What if we are, by definition, not smart enough to ever understand those new physics. If we humans simply aren't that smart?

Okay i see. But how would it change your life? How long would you be excited?

Anti-intellectual? Oh come on.

I didn't talk about things we don't understand at first, but about never ever. Simply because we might not be capable of that. You seem to think we humans are so smart, that we can understand everything given enough time. I think we maybe aren't THAT smart.

Furthermore, I think the thought that new technology makes the life of mere mortals better, is just that. A thought. We have so much technology today, yet most people on earth are poor, sick and just miserable. Without any hope for the better. I think your viewpoint is from a privileged point. The life of mere mortals (see my initial post) might not change at all. So why bother?