I hadn't given much thought to those finer points, but that certainly makes sense.

I for one don't care very much for apple and their development philosophy. They're kind of the anti Microsoft in that they seem not to care at all about backwards compatibility. Whenever a new OS version comes out, it WILL break something and keeping up with those changes is painful.

If you backup your data you are newer totally screwed. Worst case scenario, you just reinstall Windows.

And you can try it out first on a live usb before doing any changes to your system:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_t...d_use_Live_USB

New OS versions period will always break something. They care but only so much. Microsoft is the same way. Upon further review though what about Linux?

Linux is a collection of systems, not a single entity. There is no "new version" of linux. The closest you come to that is when distros release new versions. If a distro breaks something that you want left alone you can always choose another one or roll your own.

But in general, I think linux is more backwards compatible, especially if you are willing to tinker around under the hood.

Not a big Linux buff but have been doing some research as I want to convert and the impression I get is that it depends on the distro, the philosophy of their community, and by extension their largest user base.

Distros like centos, debian, redhat etc tend to be more stable. Distros like Gentoo and Arch can cause more problems. That's just been my impression though so take it with a grain of salt.

I think Apple users find bugs so jarring because they get fed the marketing that Apple products are simple, elegant, and easy to use. Everything 'just works' so when it doesn't 'just work' it's an assault on a belief system they hold. Speaking mostly of the populace at large here and not necessarily the tech savvy among us.

Oh and iosys drinking alcohol in moderate amounts actually has net health benefits.

I feel like eventually stuff like react-native will suffice for most companies and native app development will get pretty niche. There is too much demand for it not to get perfected. Look how popular even ****ty versions like Xamarin and Cordova are.

I know what you mean about web dev Barrin but we are getting there. When I was first in web dev like 10 years ago it was a couple orders of magnitude worse.

Yeah, but I don't recommend the Stanford 106A course. I learned a lot from the MIT 6.00SC course and the assignments were interesting. Harvard CS50 is also okay, but I only completed the C assignments and found the pedagogy to be lacking.

You're only thinking business to customer. Business to business lags behind and still has a lot of apps that probably wouldn't work well as web apps.

Agreed. It's a common pattern repeated throughout time.

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.
Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

not this, since I don't play games or use MS Office...

Really concerned about not being able to get on the internet or use the USB drives. I don't use the computer for much, but I need it for work.

This is a great idea! I think I'll head to Best Buy tonight and get an SDD. The 250g is less than $100. The 400g is about $175. Any brands I need to stay away from? The seem to carry Sandisk, PNY, and Intel.

Myself and business partner have some ideas that we have done a little research on that we think will do well and being that we both have iPhones we decided to start there. Really we are both new at this and just picked something we were familiar with as a starting point.


I started the CS101 course through Stanford yesterday because it seemed short enough to get through in a few days. Will probably do the MIT course next as it looked more in depth.

Dave they will all work great.

agree with all this

Don't worry. The big name distros all have pretty hassle free installs these days that should work without issues on 99.9% of hardware.

And if you run into an issue a quick googling will usually show you an easy solution (mostly involving copy-pasting a one liner into terminal). Google has really made running linux a breeze.

daveT,

Can't you partition your hd and use some of it for windows and some for fedora so you can switch back if things go badly?

Anybody else feel like we are near a peak in terms of tech hiring, investments, etc? There's a longer-term realignment, a secular trend in IT driven by mobile and cloud that's going to soften the blow on the technology sector somewhat, but in terms of business cycles, I don't see how it gets much better from here. 2015 feels like a less insane and a more depressed version of 1999.

This is definitely what I'd do but for fairness, I'll add that there's always a risk of this going wrong somewhere (partitioning, installing a bootloader, etc) in a way that destroys data.

this sort of thinking stopped me pursuing computer science back in 2002 or so. Super scared jobs were gone and not coming back, and that outsourcing would doom any new programmers.

I'm not making that same mistake twice.

Stuff is going to change, just like it always does, and some people will be able to keep up while others won't. Same as it's always been.

yep, i feel it

Totally disagree. Despite HN types saying things like "you have to have an active github account to get a job" it is a complete talent wasteland out there onshore and off. Maybe silicon valley bubble but there is way too many jobs for too few good programmers.

not just programmers, but sweet christ do you see terrible IT practices all over the place

just discovered something at school that would give underhanded students access to privileged information that apparently no one was aware of. Really basic setting, but there you are.

And how many companies does my business work with who do things like give us accounts where every password is set to the same thing, such as 'password123'?

Even where I work, if a stranger wants access to secure locations, do they need to provide proof that they should be allowed, like a work order?

Nah, completely unnecessary. Here's our server room, have a blast!

Yes, we know there have been strings of thefts in the area using scams just like this, but do we change? Do we work out a secure system? Naaahhhhh.

*edit*

Also, I saw some interview questions on glassdoor. Some were simple things like "design a person class with info like name, address, phone number". Very basic questions these people were given in what was an easy interview.

No job offered.

Make me think they couldn't even do a simple thing like put a basic class together. Maybe I'm wrong and there's more to it that they didn't post about.

Does really make me wonder about the average applicant for programming jobs.

That is what the job market looks like at the peak.

I'll add that tech looks better than other industries right now even assuming a downturn. Some niches are going to get hit worse than others but you're absolutely right about:

I know at one time Intel was way overpriced. I have a crucial that I bought at Amazon. I haven't kept up with latest reviews. KatoKrazy might have some insight.

Crucial or Samsung evo i Believe.