The state of office desks has been continuously getting worse my entire career.

The very first place I interviewed had small private offices with a door for everyone. They weren’t any bigger than a decent sized cubicle but were real separate rooms and most of them had exterior windows. I didn’t get that job though.

My first desk at my first engineering job was in a cubicle with real six foot tall walls, a window with a nice view, big L desk, shelves, filing cabinets, etc.

Then I got the same setup, but in a fabric cube. Honestly, not really a downgrade. I had that setup three times, and the only difference was how good the view was.

Then the same but no windows.

Then a smaller cube with a simple 6 foot desk and a single cabinet.

Then a line of 6 foot wide desks with privacy screens on three sides.

Then privacy screen on left and right only.

Then no screens.

Then four foot desks.

My current office is four foot desks that are hotdesked for most people. But we are also completely remote if you want, so I use my nice desk that I built at home 90% of the time.

This is it exactly. When I was using Npp, Windows didn’t have anything resembling a package manager. Does it even really have one now?

Fuck. I haven’t used Npp in a long time, but that’s awful. Glad they were able to get it fixed and their transparency is to be highly commended. But damn does it make me worry about other projects. Npp isn’t exactly obscure, but it’s also not exactly a massive target either.

Yeah, the libraries are pretty great. I’m working on a kinda personal kinda professional project right now. Ideally it would support reading and writing about seven different sorta obscure file formats. For a bunch of reasons I’m writing it in rust and there is a good library for one of them, multiple half assed libraries for another, and none for any of the others. There is excellent support for all of them as a single Python library. My first step has become writing a comprehensive rust library for all of them.

Nope, not an IDE thing. I’ve never used a Python ide, and have the same issues as well.

It looks like that is Windows only?!? So there is yet another incompatible tool?

I have been using Python as my second language alongside whatever system language I was using professionally as well as for a variety of personal projects for about 20 years. I’m quite fond of the language for the sorts of things I use it for, which is either scripting glue or doing serious math because I hate dealing with Matlab licenses.

And you are so fucking correct it isn’t even funny. Not only is the tooling a disaster, but it seems like every few years there is a new tooling scheme that doesn’t work quite right with the old one and is a disaster in its own unique way. And

I know people get annoyed by rust evangelists, but I started using it six months ago and god damn does cargo slap. Want to initiate new project? One command gives you the complete boilerplate. Adding a new dep? One simple command. Want to pin or unpin a version? One simple command. Want to update all the deps to latest? One simple command. Want make a release package? One simple command. Want to update all your installed packages? One simple command. Want to keep every project tied to a different version? You guessed it.

I definitely have some issues with Rust syntax, but I want cargo to manage my life.

Really, the a Python project needs to take a look at the Zen of Python and apply it to the tooling. And then use cargo to do it.

Edit: And, all of those simple commands work across all platforms the same. None of this, “Everything is perfectly cross platform and is the same anywhere. Unless you’re using a Mac. Or Windows. Or the wrong Linux distro.”

Edit x2: There is, of course, an XKCD for that.

Edit x3: And it’s not just venv. I am constantly struggling with which pip to use on which machine. Is it pip, pip3, pipx, uv pip, conda pip?

So my oldest is almost to the point where I’m going to want them to have something for schoolwork and writing. They use a classroom Chromebook at school, but I have no idea what would make sense for them here at home. I’m an engineer who daily drives Linux, so I’m probably overthinking it. I do have an old laptop that will easily handle a lightweight distro, and as long as I don’t give them sudo it will probably be ok? Though I haven’t looked at parental controls for Linux accounts.

What do you recommend?

That looks pretty fun to me. I’d use it.

Of course, my favorite UI theme was the Winamp skin that made the whole thing look like it was hand drawn in pencil. Now I’m wondering if there is either a fuzzy or hand drawn Gnome theme.

I recently read this blog post and gave it a try. After a little bit of tweaking, I found that it became a useful tool for me while still letting me enjoy coding. It doesn’t fix everything that is wrong with AI development but it does help a lot in my day to day.

TLDR: Add this to your copilot_instructions.md or whatever you use.

When the user gives you a task specification:

1. Explore the codebase to find relevant files and patterns
2. Break the task into a small number of steps. Each step should include:
    a. a brief, high-level summary of the step
    b. a list of specific, relevant files
    c. quotes from the specification to be specific about what each step is for
3. Present the steps and get out of the way.

When the user says "done", "how's this", etc.:

1. Run git status and git diff to see what they changed
2. Review the changes and identify any potential problems
3. Compare changes against the steps and identify which steps are complete
4. Present a revised set of steps and get out of the user's way.

Important:
- Be concise and direct, don't give the user a lot to read
- Allow the user to make all technical, architectural and engineering decisions
- Present possible solutions but don't make any assumptions
- Don't write code - just guide
- Be specific about files and line numbers
- Trust them to figure it out
- Do not offer to write code unless the user specifically requests it. You are a teacher and reviewer, not a developer 
- Include checks for idiomatic use of language features when reviewing 
- The user has a strong background in C, C++, and Python. Make analogies to those languages when reviewing code in other languages

The last three points are my addition as I am currently do a lot of development in Rust which I have no experience with.

I’ve never used IntelliJ, or Java for that matter. I’m primarily an embedded robotics developer, so most of the time I’m writing C or a subset of C++ for uC/DSP target, or using SciPy for data analysis and algorithm development. I recognize that probably puts me way outside of the norm for most people and software engineers in terms of process preferences.

I’m a “serious professional” who has been developing for over 20 years and I’ve generally prefer a text editor the IDEs that I’ve had to use at work. I find that most IDEs are slow resource hogs that don’t give me features that I actually care about over a fast text editor.

The singular exception was Cider when I was at Google. It was fantastic at wrangling their massive monorepo, and integration with their code review and ticket system was nice. Somehow it was snappy and reliable even though it ran in Chrome.

Nowadays I’ve switched to Helix and use LSPs for the languages I use most. For what it’s worth, those are C, C++, Rust and Python. Mostly Rust and Python now.

gdb works great without an IDE, and many text editors have autocomplete.

I would also add that the presidents party almost always loses votes in the midterms. This is particularly true for republicans since 2016 because a lot of trump’s supporters only care about him and won’t bother to fill out a ballot without him on it.

I can’t get the Windows based firmware updaters for my motorcycle helmet Bluetooth headset and joystick fully running under Wine/Lutris/Whatever. They both use USB and just will not connect.

Also, once a quarter I have to use an archaic Excel sheet that is heavily dependent on some VB Script. This file absolutely will not open correctly in anything other than a locally installed version of Excel because the script needs a real local printer and Open/Libre/Whatever cannot handle the insanity of the VB Script. I have a Windows VM just for this one thing.

Nice

I drove a truck with four pedals in high school. Leftmost was the parking brake.

I remember my copy had Buddy Holly by Weezer, and I think something called Good Times. What was the third?

Take your pick: oil, trumps feeling were hurt by the Peace Prize committee, oil, trump trying to shore up support, oil, trump seeing just how much he can get away with, trumps ego, and maybe oil.

Oh! Planet Money just did a really good episode on this exact topic.

It’s complicated and I recommend a full listen to the episode, but the big two reasons are:

1. The cost of building out all the new infrastructure is partially paid for by the data centers, but the majority is paid by all customers.
2. The demand for electricity is growing much faster than supply can be built.

Those two, combined with the deregulation in most markets, has meant that the price for everyone is going up.