spain

So much this, and it applies to things other than editors too. I used to constantly look for people's opinions on all kinds of software to decide which one was best for me due to a belief that if I used something that I didn't end up liking then that time would have been wasted. I've now mostly reversed that habit because trying something out for yourself is the only way you'll know if you will like it, and the time invested isn't a waste so long as you come out with a better idea of what you prefer.

I feel like I'm in the "Desert of Despair" and I'm not quite sure where to go. So far I'm self-taught in C, C++, Python, Lisp (a few of them) and some shell stuff. I have the basic syntax nailed in all of those. I don't know any of them well enough to be able to write simple programs without constantly looking up StackOverflow articles or reading references. I haven't even touched GUI programming.

It doesn't help that I always try and obsessively look for the "best" or "proper" way to do something. I know this is a good virtue to have but I also feel like it also gets in the way of getting things done.

It's such a weird place. On one hand I feel like I know a lot more than before but if any of my friends ever mention how "good" I am at coding I am quick to correct them by saying I'm really not. I could really do with some sense of direction, but I suppose that's on my shoulders since nobody else can decide for me what sort of developer I ought to be. I'm not sure what to focus on.

I initially got interested in coding just because of how interesting and fun it was in itself. I want to continue to pursue it because I feel like it's the first thing I'm really good at. I always got mediocre grades in school, I didn't learn any instruments or have any hobbies, then I started learning how to code and it just clicked with me and for the first time in my life I had an idea of what I might do for a living.

Sorry if that strayed a little too far from discussing the article, I wanted to try and write my thoughts down.

I'm doing the same in Oulu and I am optimistic. Things will change and there's reason to believe it'll get better:

http://teknologiateollisuus.fi/sites/default/files/file_atta...

I'd be interested in knowing how this compares to the Silver Searcher [0], I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned at all since they're similar.

[0] https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher

I think it might be an issue with codecs which is why it works with some browsers and doesn't with others.

Seems like it isn't perfect yet. At least on Firefox I don't get to watch videos in 1080p anymore on Youtube with the HTML5 player.

> I used to think we could escape surveillance using technology. Fool's errand. We'd need an entire culture change. It's gone.

I seem to remember one of the Pirate Bay founders said something along those lines. Not even because it's "already lost" but because we need to start treating the cause and not the symptom. Yeah it's great that we can use encryption to avoid government snooping for now, but how long will that be feasible? The long-term solution would be to stop them from doing it in the first place.

They do have colored e-ink displays on the horizon too, but yeah that would be nice until those become mainstream.

If you don't trust Kim Dotcom to deliver, there's always Tox.

https://tox.im/

You're right. That was actually a bad example, I admit. A better example would be the bottle of soda that you might see on a store shelf.

I've updated the reply.

> We called the project Brand Killer.

Ah neat, that certainly is a lot more fitting of a description.

That's pretty cool but I feel like they're mixing up ads and brands. Like I expected a real life adblock to say, blur actual advertisements in a magazine or billboard. Instead in this video they show it blurring brands like on the soda bottle (which isn't that useful). I'm sure the tech could probably do it but the demo could be better.

How about an embedded Lisp interpreter?

I know right? I'm running my Nexus 7 2012 and I still haven't gotten the Android Lollipop OTA, but then again considering how many people say it makes the device even slower maybe that's a good thing.

I had always though the SR-71 was the fastest airplane, and it turns out I'm right (sorta). The X-15 isn't an airplane, apparently (hence why it's only referred to as an aircraft). I'm not sure why but probably because it's just a rocket and it doesn't actually "breathe air", nor does it seem to be able to take off on it's own?

Thankfully whitelists are a thing.

You're right, it's been a while since I used it.

> so many things are built with QWERTY in mind

I found this to be the biggest issue with using Colemak or any other alternative layout. I use my own computers exclusively so I had complete control over using my layout, but it just got so tedious having to rebind everything all the time and I would often run into games and programs where you couldn't rebind keys at all. Trying to rebind keys to work in a sane way in Emacs was an uphill battle that never ended.

Add indexing from 1 and it would be perfect.

You mean just like "the worst programming language ever"? Because I actually think the title should be "BS: The Worst Programming Language Ever" because it isn't really about Intercal but his made up language BS.

I find it funny that it seems like any conversation about a particular tiling window manager will eventually turn into a conversations about window managers in general.

So to continue the trend, I used to use tiling wm's until I learned about Emacs. Emacs lets me do away with tiling mostly because it itself supports it in a way, namely C-x 2 and C-x 3. I can run all my shells and gdb's right inside Emacs. Nowadays I usually either have one fullscreened Emacs window, Firefox, 1 external terminal, and maybe LibreOffice open on my laptop. I don't mess around with moving them around and resizing them. For me, it's enough to simply have workspaces to manage all of them (I use C-M-[np] to switch back and forth through them, Caps Lock is remapped to Control).

It's true though that the benefits of tiling window managers isn't just the tiling itself, but often that they're programmable and configurable through plain text files. There's also the benefit of lower resource consumption if you run it bare.

As for what I actually use? Xfwm4 gets the job done.

> I'm thinking about trying the new Guile window manager that popped up here a few days back, it looks like it has a StumpWM-esque style and maybe Guile is a little more light-weight/less flaky than most Common Lisp implementations.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention! I'm a StumpWM fan too and it looks like Guile-WM has promise. Here's the homepage for anyone else interested:

http://www.markwitmer.com/guile-xcb/guile-wm.html

i3 is pretty easy to learn and configure I'd say having dabbled with most of the popular window managers bar Xmonad. Nowadays I just use the Xfce window manager.

I think both are valuable and I often scribble things if I'm working on something challenging. That said being able to write or type faster has its place because at the end of the day your program will require typing out in its entirety on a computer and nobody wants to do that by using an on-screen keyboard on their smartphone, even if the hardest part is coming up with the actual solution.

I'm curious as to where you get your news instead. I feel like you do and I've been looking for more thoughtful places to get news.

The two screenshots really do a great job of explaining what it is.

>I've heard about "the autist spectre"

Now I want to see someone draw this.

"How to make Debian sorta more like Slackware?"

I just thought it was funny how much the end result resembled the default Slackware install. Also for power management I'd recommend tlp[0] over laptop-mode-tools.

[0] http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/tlp.html

Looks cool but it froze my browser...

Now that's what I call a clickbaity title.