krellor

With coffee all things heart palpations are possible. It took me about a year and a half between work and studies. Definitely not a day. 😀

That’s awesome, but no, they made something far more useful, lol. I’m glad to see projects like that though; it’s a lost art!

Years and years ago I built my own 16 bit computer from the nand gates up. ALU, etc, all built from scratch. Wrote the assembler, then wrote a compiler for a lightweight object oriented language. Built the OS, network stack, etc. At the end of the day I had a really neat, absolutely useless computer. The knowledge was what I wanted, not a usable computer.

Building something actually useful, and modern takes so much more work. I could never even make a dent in the hour, max, I have a day outside of work and family. Plus, I worked in technology for 25 years, ended as director of engineering before fully leaving tech behind and taking a leadership position.

I’ve done so much tech work. I’m ready to spend my down time in nature, and watching birds, and skiing.

The article says that steam showing a notice on snap installs that it isn’t an official package and to report errors to snap would be extreme. But that seems pretty reasonable to me, especially since the small package doesn’t include that in its own description. Is there any reason why that would be considered extreme, in the face of higher than normal error rates with the package, and lack of appropriate package description?

I highly recommend Stephen Tetlock’s book, super forecasting, who is the sponsor of the project you mention.

One method of forecasting that he identified as effective was using a spreadsheet to record events that might occur over the next 6-18 months along with an initial probability based on good judgement and the factors you quoted. Then, every day look for new information that adjusts the forecast up or down by some, usually small percent. Repeat, and the goal is you will trend towards a reasonable %. I omitted many details but that was the jist.

Now, that’s for forecasting on a short ish timeframe. There is a place for more open ended reasoning and imagination, but you have to be careful not to fall prey to your own biases.

This particular forecast of OPs feels like it is ignoring several long running trends in technology adoption and user behavior without giving events that would address them, and forecasts something they care about doing better in the long-term, a source of bias to watch. I tend to agree with you that I think elements of this forecast are flawed.

I use a terminal whenever I’m doing work that I want to automate, is the only way to do something such as certain parameters being cli only, or when using a GUI would require additional software I don’t otherwise want.

I play games and generally do rec time in a GUI, but I do all my git and docker work from the cli.

For most people computers are just the same as cars. People want a car that will drive them from place to place, are easy to refuel, easy to operate, and can be taken to an expert for anything difficult or that requires specialized knowledge. Same for computers. Most people want a computer to navigate the web, install the apps they are used to and that their friends use, is easy to operate, and can be taken to an expert for any involved work.

Even the friendliest of Linux distro don’t check all those boxes. You cant get ready support from a repair shop, many of the apps are different or function differently, and it doesn’t receive all the same love and attention from major third party developers as Windows does.

Most people could learn to use Linux; it’s not that hard. Most people could learn to change their own oil. But for most people, it’s not worth it. For most people it’s not the journey, it’s the destination and cars and computers are just tools to get there.