tl;dr read the whole thing you lazy goat-molesting arse.

People. It's unpopular opinion time!
Windows is brilliant.
There. I said it.

Why? Because it has the balance of user-friendliness and customisability that is great for most workloads. Its enormous user- and developer- base allow almost anything you want to be done on it.

For instance, a few years ago I hooked up a MIDI synth pad to my PC and found an obscure program to use MIDI events as macros. I did not have to write any code, compile anything or any crap like that. (If you're a developer then you'll have no problem with that kind of thing, but not everyone's an über-technical nerd like you. Deal with it.)

I don't like Windows. But it's still brilliant for most people. All you Linux fan- boys/girls/helicopters are right to advocate it, but it will never expand its market share to more than the percentage of people who are developers, (unless it turns into a corporate enterprise (which it probably won't)). It has its flaws, but most of them will never affect the average end user. OK? Thanks.

!dev
Seriously I suspect something boiling in Germany... I may just be getting paranoid, but lately I have seen an unusual amount of helicopters above Hamburg even at night. And not rescue helicopters or TV or anything, dark ones with all lights off in the night. That one night I noticed a distant hum in the air and looked outside. I may just have been tired but I thought I saw helicopters with only red lights on in the distance above Hamburg. It sounds impossible, but I even heard gunfire (a rattling popping sound) and saw light stripes in the air which looked like legitimate shots to me (and I played Arma so I know what I am talking about👉). But it was too far away to be sure and honestly I cant believe myself because other people should have noticed. But no lie, there is something going on. Just saw a helicopter again.

Shady business practices. You see a lot of stories of people getting fucked over on here. Companies giving applicants a "coding test" to get work done for free, or guys promising to pay when the work is done(and then bailing), deserve to be thrown screaming from helicopters.

Some quick advice for people starting out:

1. If it's important, get it in writing. Promises are worth precisely dick, unless it's legally binding.

2. Exercise caution in interviews. The shadier companies know a lot of applicants are desperate, and they take advantage of that fact if they're allowed to.

Not sure if I'm rambling at this point, but fuck it. 🤣

I legit had this dream early morning today.

A bunch of kids (grade 10ish) were stuck somewhere and helicopters had been sent in for rescue. Strings were thrown down to airlift 'em and just like that, one kid was being pulled up. Everyone was horrified to see that the strings were giving way for just this kid while the others were being pulled up easily. The rescue team attempted the act multiple times but no go.

After all the hullabaloo it turned out that the pen-drive in his pocket had a node_modules folder. Deleting it made him lighter and that saved his life omg. :')

What would be the best "hot"/upcoming languages for a final year college project?

The project will focus on reverse engineering.

Basic Example: Intercepting signals from products such as a toy helicopters/drones/etc, reverse engineer the signals and try gain control of the device from that.

That's just a very basic function and there will be much more to it, but I'm struggling to decide on a language to pursue hand-in-hand with this project!

I hear Rust, Go, Julia and co being tossed around a lot.

Any suggestions would be helpful!

Cheers

My dad used to make me draw things on Microsoft Paint when I was 4 to 6.

I'll never forget all those "firefighter helicopters"

From the window by my desk I can see helicopters, jet planes and the occasional bird attacking people.

What do you see out your window by your desk?

Anyone else have nightmares about building other people's c/c++ codebases from source? *napalm, helicopters, gunfire, screaming civilians etc*

!rant

Looking for some guidance on a final year college research project:

I was going to look into hacking drones/toy helicopters/those Fitbit watch things or whatnot, but I'm not sure if it would go down well! Some technologies I'm looking to explore through this project include reverse engineering, machine learning and container technologies (docker, rkt) if that helps?

Am I along the right lines or should I take a different approach with different topics? If so, an update on what's "hot" or upcoming at the moment would be helpful.

Cheers!