I wouldn't run GNU\Linux in a VM unless I really had to. It runs well in a Hyper-V VM, but honestly, I would rather run GNU\Linux native and then run Win 10/11 in a QEMU/KVM host. I would run it as the Host OS and avoid MS Windows. The only think I really need MS Windows for is Cubase and AquaKitty UDX. AVLinux used to be a really good GNU\Linux distro until the maintainer switched over to the enlightenment engine. His old engine that I think was based on XFCE was better IMO and there were less bugs. Now I just use Debian which isn't as good as the old AVLinux that was based on Debian. I think Pipewire might already be installed and somewhat configure in the new AVLinux and that's a massive plus, but I like the old window manager.
Shawn Eary May2021
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Linux distro selection, I just have to laugh at stuff that is so wrong... -
If you could run all your apps (games too) on Linux?Wish it was possible and legal to viably run Cubase 10.5 (or higher) and Native Instruments Kontakt on GNU\Linux. Ever since after Build 1809 of Windows 10, Microsoft has become a poor choice for professional audio. While Macs are rumored to run both of the above products flawlessly, there are stupid expensive. I've actually briefly uses Macs for Garage Band and simple things, and the experience was good, but I've never really stressed it out like I do with Cubase on Win 10. Unfortunately, Windows 10 these days does dumb things like freeze for seemingly random reasons for several seconds at weird times or just drop audio packets. Driver support (while probably better than on the Mac) is also starting to wane and semi-pro amateurs and practicing musicians are sometimes forced to upgrade their expensive audio interfaces for no other reason than the vendors and Microsoft refuse to support or rewrite the old drivers. I've had OS crashes because of old drivers, and I've had audio glitches in situations where I shouldn't because MS Windows decides to do dumb background tasks at random times. Steinberg ASIO under Windows XP 64 Bit uses to be a solid platform bot Win 10/11 are not glitchy IMO. The audio dropouts and glitches seem to be worse when Microsoft pushes out their regular updates. Fortunately, my Win 10 hasn't received updates in quite a while (LOL).
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Can a student that can't even handle freshman calculus possibly be a good programmer?Most everyone else will probably say similar, but if the student goes the business route, the student likely won't need anything more than algebra for many tasks. If the student wants to work for Lockheed Martin, Boeing or write modern video games, then the student should probably master differential equations. Passing calculus is easy. Application of calculus is harder. Of course, I think many gaming engines handle physics for you.
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Windows 8 vs. Windows 10 resource requirementsNot sure, but Windows 10 these days brings very little value other than DX12 and WSL2 enhancements. Back in build 1809, Win 10 used to be pretty solid but builds after 1809 seem kludgy and have problems with many expensive pro audio interfaces that are used for recording bands in studio level music creation. Generally speaking, I have better reliability with GNU\Linux Debian than I do with MS Windows. The big exception is that GNU\Linux won't run Kontakt and Cubase without Wine. For a window manager or low-end or older machines I find that XFCE is the best Window manager for me. XFCE had adequate features with low bloat and doesn't have all of those irritating snapping/docking behaviors that modern MS Windows GUIs seem to have. I've seen several instances where many games would run better in Steam OS (GNU\Linux) than they would in MS Windows but that's not always the case. Sometimes it's the other way around. On thing that REALLY annoys me about my Windows 10 partition that is that it will often "freeze" for a minute in several places and just sit there "thinking" for no reason whatsoever. This seems to happen the most often when Microsoft is pushing down automatic updates that I usually don't want...
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Why is javascript so dislikedI'm absent minded, but I often spend hours debugging stupid things that C# would flag instantly. Also, the VSCode Intellisense and code navigation in JavaScript projects tend to be sub-par when compared to C# projects on Visual Studio.
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I find it really satisfying to contribute to open source projectsI find it really satisfying to use Open Source projects :)
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Put your hands up if you are pissed with hearing about AII use Bing Chat GPT for help, but yeah, I think I would be better off if we could go back to the 80's man. One of my favorite games as a child was Neuromancer. Wish they would bring the original version back so I wouldn't have to do the "dark room" emulator gig.
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The end of the world...I barely use my $11 a month Tello Mobile cell phone plan. My life would probably be significantly better if cell phones had never been invented. I've seen cell phones do REALLY bad things to several close family members.
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I did it, I cured my addiction to browser tabs...Do you have any tips on how to cure Side Meier's Civilization addictions?
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Can someone be a good data scientist without knowing Calculus?Calculus is actually pretty easy. One thing that really surprises me is how many music majors claim they don't like math. In reality, Calculus I and Music Theory Two are probably about the same level of difficulty. Things really don't start getting ugly in the math world until you reach junior level ABET engineering courses and apply the Calculus you learn. Calculus I-III and even DiffEq generally aren't that hard depending on *where* you take them, but at some point, you will be expected to apply it and things get more difficult there. To answer your question, I'm guessing one can skate by in the world of Data Science without knowing Calculus and used pre-boxed algorithms and/or numerical analysis techniques to make observations. After all, a person can write a 3D game now without necessarily knowing classic Physics or Linear Algebra since that person can likely rely on a gaming engine to do that "hard stuff". I think much of Data Analysis these days might be in using low-level Tensor Flow or higher-level Auto ML or super easy regression analysis packages. You don't necessarily need to have a deep understanding of how these things work to use wrapper libraries. With that said, don't avoid Calculus. It's much easier than you think and there are probably software tutors out there...
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Computer Science ranked as one of 20th most useless degree majorBachelor degrees in Computer Science are mostly "useless" today due to Artificial Intelligence. In order to succeed in CS these days, you almost need to have low-level Electrical Engineering driver development skills or the ability to not just use AI but to create AI. Without a strong understanding of how AI works and the ability to train new models without Auto ML, you may find yourself taking a backseat to those with very little IT training as they use ChatGPT and/or Low-Code/No-Code tools. This isn't necessarily in the best interests of the corporations embracing these new technologies, but Low-Code/No-Code is the trend. More than three decades ago, my Birth Father warned me about the dangers of AI and the Communist Party of China. As a young child, I had no idea what he was talking about. I just figured he was overreacting. I was sure the world would be destroyed by nukes and even had nightmares about ICBM nukes landing on U.S. soil. Turns out, I should have listed to my Birth Father more. I did try getting a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, but I washed out and almost became a music major. My Birth Father got pretty irritated with me about that (and other things). Ultimately, I graduated with Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and it has been a mostly "useless" degree [1]. If you want to go the CS route, you should probably at least get your Master's degree. Better yet, go Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering or BS in Electrical Engineering, BS in Physics or BS in Mechanical Engineering. Sure BS in Physics is hard to market, but as far as I know, it's still one of the few degrees in which you can actually demonstrate you know something that most people don't... NOTE: Code Project will probably flag my post as SPAM for review. As a loudmouth conservative Republican that desperately needs a good Grammar/Spell Checker, I get censored a lot. [1] - I don't think Snowden graduated from college prior to getting hired on at the CIA...
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Fix my "AI"!My personal favorite fix for a malfunctioning AI program is a really big hammer slammed directly against CPU bank. A few knocks and the emotion circuitry should be back to normal...
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Almost nobody knows how to write software anymore.Noone knows how to write software anymore because managers force employees to use shiny new no/low code and AI tools even though those tools produce results that are inferior to what can be built and maintained by a trained engineer with traditional robust languages.
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How reading books could (likely will) destroy your careerYeah, "2001 Space Odessey", "I, Robot" and "Neuromancer" should be banned from all public schools effective immediately. We can't have young children polluting their minds with such extremist nonsense. The very thoughts that a benevolent charismatic rich guy would try to put microchips in people's brains or that robots and AI would try to take over the world is absurd.
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Honest Question: What do you do when you lose motivation to code?1. Switch languages (The swearing is a bit offensive but Learn a Haskell for Great Good is entertaining and Haskell is a great language.) 2. Write video games or Physics simulations instead of boring business code 3. Create art with your code 4. Create virtual instruments for Cubase/Garage Band/Fruity Loops or create Blender/KDENLive Plugins 5. Find a problem you are passionate about or that really annoys you and fix it with code. 6. Write *short* YouTube posts or blogs about a very specific problem that you can explain better than anyone else. Last but not least - don't touch no-code/low-code with a ten foot pole. Unless you see an obvious application where no-code/low-code is the easy way out, stay away from that stuff because I believe low-code/no-code drains most passionate developers... Blender geometry nodes are an exception to this. Blender geometry nodes seem to use a no-code/low-code "IDE" that actually makes sense and "gets you results". NOTE: Code Project will probably flag this post of mine as SPAM. I don't know why but the Code Project algorithm is really bad about flagging me for unknown reasons. Is it a political thing?
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any old games to suggest?My biggest issue with this is that they still haven't completely worked out the legal issues with emulators. It's really hard to find real Amiga 500's and C64s these days and original copies of corresponding games like Neuromancer (Amiga - Think the Matrix Movie before it's time), WhizBall (C64 Version is Best) and Midwinter (Amiga). Sure, games like Myst, Sid Meier's Pirates, Kings Quest and some older games have been licensed for sale, but many older games will not run on new hardware and they haven't been legally ported yet because there isn't a "market". Microprose Falcon 4 is an example of an brilliantly efficient and well written game, but it runs like garbage on many version of Windows 10 because the DirectX9 emulation is so awful on Win 10. Falcon 4 runs way better on Steam Proton OS (Wine), but it's not 100% certain that GNU\Linux Wine is completely legal. Also, there are mild incompatibility issues running Falcon 4 under Wine instead of native Windows even if the frame rate in Wine is blazingly high and the frames are smooth.
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I absolutely hate no-code systems.You aren't the only professional developer that has a distaste for low-code/no-code. I recently did something in low-code/no-code just to try to please management. The program ran horridly slow, had poor version control and was difficult to debug. Now, I'm nearly finished rewriting the equivalent program in a conventional language and the former issues are gone. In this particular case, the conventional language solution is far superior to the low-code/no-code solution.
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I'm starting to really dislike Windows as a development platformThe only big thing I have against GNU\Linux is that it names it's background drivers daemons. This drive me nuts. I wish they would stop that and name them services. I agree, I'm a former .NET Developer and I've been booting into Debian 10 lately because a client of mine wants me to work with Node.js. Debian 10 boots faster and seems to have better tools for Node.js development. Also, my hard drive isn't getting constantly hit up like it seems to have been in Windows 10 Version 2004. I also don't get hit with stupid updates. Debian tends to update quickly when it does and it often shuts down fast; however, I need the Global Protect client from Palo Alto for work and the GP client stinks in GNU\Linux. It barely works... I still believe that C# and .NET Core are the most efficient ways to create Line of Business applications for businesses that are maybe a 1/10 of the size or Walmart or smaller, but yeah, I think you are right about bloat in MS Windows and a maybe flaky Microsoft C++ compiler implementation. I have almost no non-trivial experience with it but DirectX12 is an absolute nightmare BTW. I'm thinking I should have tried to learn Unity, Vulkan or OpenGL. From my experience OpenGL is really reliable even if ASIO and DirectAudio might be better for latency than ALSA. Don't get me wrong, JACK has unlimited potential, but I've had issues with low-latency audio programs in GNU\Linux distros. In general, high performance DAWs and audio programs like Cubase and Emulator X seem to work better in MS Windows. Strangely, however, an older Direct X game Falcon 4 runs faster in Steam Proton (Wine Layer on GNU\Linux) than its does on Windows 10. There's something wrong with that... Also, Steam Overload seems to perform better in Steam OS than it does in Windows 10 while Civilization V seems to perform worse in Steam OS than Win 10 and Civilization 6 seems to do about the same in Win 10 as it does in Debian on Steam with the nVidia proprietary drivers for GeForce GTX 710. Another thing that really bits my hide about MS Windows is that I recently had two hard drives crash on me and I lost some family pictures. I have not yet put them in the freezer in a desperate effort to try to get the data back or send them off to data recovery services. The *other* parent of my children should have a back up, but she is not cooperating... GNU\Linux game me some warning that the drives were about to fail by reporting bad sectors. No where did I see Windows 10 2004 report any of that to me other than an