First place I worked at had a huge codebase, where files between 100k-200k lines were the rule, rather than the exception. And no, that's not a typo, I'm talking six figures line count - and with pretty much no comments that could take up space. This was code that, before my time there, went through at least two translations from different programming languages, done by automated tools and only touched up where it broke after that. I don't know if it was a direct consequence, but there were also a lot of constructs like

function a(x, y)
{
return b(x, y);
}

function b(x, y)
{
return c(x, y);
}

function c(x, y)
{
return d(x, y);
}

function d(x, y)
{
//do something with x
//maybe do something else with x, if the 4 lines of if conditions happens to come out true
//ignore y because who needs that apparently
return mysteriousStuff;
}

which added some, but not all of the length. There's a *lot* more there I could rant about, but I'll stick to unnecessary length. Suffice it to say, there's a reason that a) I went somewhere else and b) the company apparently doesn't exist anymore.

Nope. I basically only use Rider these days, and I haven't looked back.

It works!

Place I used to work at used such tools twice. Once from [insert obscure language I forget the name of] to VB.NET, and then from VB to C#. I wasn't there when it took place, but from what I heard (and saw in the code) results were mixed. The resulting code would most of the time compile, and also most of the time do mostly what it was supposed to do (although some debugging was required), but the big problem was the readability and maintainability of the code. It would use almost none of the specific language features (probably because it would make conversion a lot more complex), ignore best practices, make variables global that didn't need to be, and all kinds of headaches ranging in size from minor annoyance to "I swear to god I will set fire to my computer". To be fair, that took place around 15 or more years ago, so maybe there are better converters today, but I doubt it. At best, it's a start point from where you can develop the new version. Depending on size and complexity of your code base and requirements, it might be faster, cheaper and more future proof to redo the system from scratch in your tech stack of choice, rather than try and convert the existing code base.

GitHub isn't as big as it is for nothing - I think git is pretty much the de-facto standard in a lot of the industry. It can be difficult to use, but once you get the idea of how it's supposed to work and, more importantly imho, use a tool like Sourcetree so that you don't have to remember all kinds of cli commands, it's pretty manageable. Especially the easy forking and merging is great, or even just switching branches near instantaneously if something comes up. I can also continue using it even if I can't reach my "central" repo (i.e. I can't connect to GitHub for whatever reason), and I can just push my commits later when the connection is back (don't know if TFS can do this these days, haven't used it in quite a few years).

I think GameMaker is a good suggestion. Other than that, have you looked at RPG Maker? Sure, it's a lot more restricted than GameMaker, let alone Unity or Unreal, but it's also a lot easier to handle for a kid, I think, and it requires very little in the way of actually programming. It also has a lot of built-in assets that can be used to make a game. I have fond memories of messing around with it when I was younger. Back then, there was a pretty big community, which also provided free spritesheets, music and other assets - don't know how it is these days.

I've been using Backblaze for a while now - not free, but pretty cheap. I haven't needed to restore yet (aside from a couple of specific files here and there), so maybe I'm not fully qualified to recommend the service, but I've heard good things from other users.

I am so glad that I'm out of web dev for the moment...

One or more large bottles of whiskey to numb the pain.

Germany, 400 down, 20 up. When it doesn't decide to just give me 30% of my bandwidth suddenly.

I don't know what kind of machine you're working on, but I really have more than enough system resources available that a transparent bar here or sliding animation there in my OS do not make a noticeable difference in overall performance. If you don't like the modern look, that's fine, personal preference and all, but the argument about system resources being wasted seems pretty out of date in 2017, unless company politics force you to work on a toaster that someone soldered a VGA port on. For screenshots, I'd see it as far easier to just turn off transparency, because that's the only thing I can think of that might influence the result of the screenshot, depending on the background. That way, you also don't get the "but my screen looks totally different!" support calls from the people you make the screenshots for and who might not be using that theme. You wouldn't believe what non-tech-savvy people get stuck on. Also, if anything makes you look professional, it should be your skills and results, and not your toggling a setting for Office or which theme you chose for your OS.

In case you are not a human, this might help you: JavaScript for Cats[^] :-D

This is one of the many, many reasons to use some form of source control. With modern editors and IDEs, the overhead is negligible and it saves you so many headachese - this scenario being just one of them.

As far as I know, Community Edition is identical with Professional when it comes to features. I remember reading that the only difference is the license. I haven't used WiX, but I have no problem installing all other kind of add-ons, free or paid. I see no reason why Windows Installer should behave differently.

Well, ever since upgrading from 7 to 10, I'm having trouble with standby. The machine would go into standby, but when I later fiddle with the mouse or keyboard to wake it up, it tries, but then shuts down completely. I haven't invested enough energy into figuring this out to say for certain whether this has anything to do with Windows 10 or not, because I never used standby all that often anyway.

Somebody does need to tell him, apparently. This has nothing to do with Windows.

What exactly is it that you guys miss about it? Not saying that I'll get around to it soon, but I've been thinking about building a similar thing for myself for a while. If others have use for it, all the better.

I've encountered a similar, but annoying variant of this. There were a whole bunch of functions in my old employer's code base which did nothing but call an almost identically named function, such as:

someFunc(int a, string b)
{
return some_Func(a, b);
}

In some cases, this went on for a step or two further, with some_Func calling some__Func (I HATE double underscores in code), which then again finally called the 'real' function someOtherFunc. I suppose it was the result of a messed up attempt at refactoring. It was hugely annoying when debugging.

That is actually a really good idea, and there are several people in the office that need to see this. Now I only need a witty comic against the "hover-over-your-shoulder-for-an-eternity" people...

Colborne_Greg wrote:

I can not do what I can do in windows 8.1 in any other operating system.

So, what are the things Win8 lets me do that I can't do in any other OS? The problem I have with the start menu for example, is that I have to move my mouse very precisely because the area that I have to click is only a couple of pixels max, and there is no indication as to where it begins. It's not a natural "move to corner" motion when working in a windowed RDP, it's a "move awkwardly slow and don't sneeze because you might shoot out of the window" motion. Not impossible, but slightly annoying. That's my experience with pretty much all of the system - you can handle it, but there are some annoying tidbits and edge cases that just weren't there before and give the OS the impression of being a compromise between desktop and touch, while not being perfect for either. And while there are some good bits in there, I haven't found enough to justify putting up with the things that I don't like.