alxlaz

34 ms·

301.
by alxlaz 6y ago
The (unfortunate, I guess?) consequence is that GTK seems to move, slowly but surely, to a "niche" role. 10-15 years ago it used to be the natural choice for Linux GUI development -- people were still reticent about Qt, plus KDE 4
302.
by alxlaz 6y ago
> I understand your frustration, but it seems clear to me that there is difference in what you consider high level technical skills, and what others might perceive as such. Or the person who did the interview is an asshole. It's pr
303.
by alxlaz 6y ago
I know about that book, and it certainly fills a big void (but it is an early draft -- 3-4 years ago, when I had to learn it, this wasn't around). It's good introductory material, IMHO, and it says a lot about the priorities of th
304.
by alxlaz 6y ago
Parent is probably thinking about the books in this series: https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Manual-Version-Definitive... , although the "official" X11 documentation, in the form of man pages and other docs, was
305.
by alxlaz 6y ago
I used to hate those eleven bloody manuals back in the day and didn't lose a single chance to complain about how the whole thing is a big designed-by-committee mess. Count your blessings though: Wayland has pretty much no up-to-date do
306.
by alxlaz 7y ago
That's not an estimate based on archaeological discovery, it's the classical date given by Varro Reatinus, which he took from Titus Atticus (I'm mentioning Varro Reatinus simply because this timeline is now called the "V
307.
by alxlaz 7y ago
That's the FVWM window manager. His FVWM config (or at least some version of it) is available if you're curious: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/.fvwm2rc .
308.
by alxlaz 7y ago
Why would it be challenging anyone's judgement? Just because it includes the word "why"? If the mere fact of asking an open-ended question, in an interview setting, offends the interviewer, or makes them uncomfortable, to the
309.
by alxlaz 7y ago
Maybe I didn't get what you were saying? > If your requirements for joining a tech org are that you expect them to have made all the same decisions you would have made if you were in their shoes, without error, then a) your bar migh
310.
by alxlaz 7y ago
Nine times out of ten, when someone asks "why did you pick redux?" they really do mean some, or all of those things. Sure, they could phrase it better, but their immediate professional future is literally being decided right then
311.
by alxlaz 7y ago
No no, I mean, if they’ve already got a team that can do everything you could bring to the table, why have an opening in the first place? Why try to hire someone? (and, therefore, why is someone sitting in a room being interviewed in the fi
312.
by alxlaz 7y ago
> what the hell do they need you for, they’ve already got a team that can do everything you could bring to the table. If that's the case, then why are they conducting an interview in the first place? I guess an argument can be made
313.
by alxlaz 7y ago
Many hyped development and administration practices make me snarky, too, but let's not take it out on random (young) people on the Internet. There's a great deal of history and best practices that are being ignored not just by ADH
314.
by alxlaz 7y ago
It's been so long I really can't recall anymore. (Edit: but just like you, I do remember that I had the ICQ window visible at pretty much all times, and I could comfortably fit an Emacs window, the contact window a chat window on
315.
by alxlaz 7y ago
> - dense UI (less whitespace meant more information packed into a smaller window that took up less of my screen) Yesterday's thread about DECUS and HP's OpenVMS hobbyist program opened a can of nostalgia worms so I remembered
316.
by alxlaz 7y ago
> In the last years more than 50% were open source contributions. At Nokia times they were only 10 to 20%. Oh, okay, that's grown! I was still thinking of Nokia-era figures :).
317.
by alxlaz 7y ago
Just to add a little: there's some concern, including among commercial users (including yours truly), that this is a Very Bad Idea (TM). Thing is, non-commercial and free software projects (KDE is one of the biggest ones, but not jus
318.
by alxlaz 7y ago
OpenVMS has an enduring fan base -- maybe who knows enough to make meaningful contributions is reading this!
319.
by alxlaz 7y ago
Yeah -- when I saw a redesigned website at freevms.net, my heart skipped a beat, I thought FreeVMS might still be alive. I couldn't track jkb's original tree anymore and figured I'd link to that Github project instead, as it
320.
by alxlaz 7y ago
Oh, damn. The OpenVMS hobbyist license is actually why, a long time ago, I joined DECUS Munich. It was a very complicated affair: DECUS Munich was one of the few DECUS organizations that accepted members from outside their area (I was nowhe
321.
by alxlaz 7y ago
A long, long time ago, there was a project called FreeVMS which aimed to do that. Sadly, it didn't get much further than booting. Edit: https://github.com/rroart/freevms . It's definitely not big and professi
322.
by alxlaz 7y ago
> Maybe it's just because I learned with the stuff? Quite possibly. I learned to solder last century, using leaded solder, which was available in copious amounts in my dad's workshop for a long time, throughout my high school a
323.
by alxlaz 7y ago
I got your point, but I am not at all convinced that sending in people who have nothing but good intentions and 30 days of training, at a scale, and over a long period of time, will result in less harm (including among those with good inten
324.
by alxlaz 7y ago
I'm not an MD but I've had contact, on-and-off, with mission-critical equipment in the energy sector (according to my university I'm an EE but I was cleverly disguised) and then I've worked in the medical equipment indus
325.
by alxlaz 7y ago
Reading the comments here, I find it very distressing that people in our industry can simultaneously say the following two things: 1. Consistency is extremely important for UX and one of the cornerstones of user-friendliness 2. Users who
326.
by alxlaz 7y ago
So what other word would you have used for an article about a statistical prediction ? This is a scientific text, "to predict" has a well-understood meaning within the field of statistics and it's not a synonym for "cau
327.
by alxlaz 7y ago
You don't need to disable the compositor. You can set its speed to "instant" and it won't do any animation.
328.
by alxlaz 7y ago
One of the things I love about nethack is that these things effectively amount to magic . Arcane knowledge of how the (virtual) works underneath beneath that which is (virtually) physical allows you to manipulate the world in strange ways
329.
by alxlaz 7y ago
> If you leave it to the engineers to write about interesting things, and get the approval process out of the way then you might put up something of interest to engineers. True, but there's also a good chance that you will get somet
330.
by alxlaz 7y ago
> They -are- essentially tech illiterate once they step outside of google sheets, etc, or the web browser in general. 25 years ago there were people who were essentially tech illiterate as soon as they were put in front of a computer, no

More ›