A good honest changelog.

Just spent 15 minutes trying to explain Unix time and Y2K to a liberal arts major who wanted to know why 2038 is such a huge deal. It was technical, frustrating, and challenging. Kinda like debugging

Computers are like cars. If you're into them enough, you'll spend hours on end working on them, fixing them, upgrading them, and taking pride in them.

Controversial tech rant begins here:

You know, I'm sure a lot of you guys know that it is pretty uncommon to encounter a woman who is who is into tech (and ranting about said tech). This has always made people question why. I personally feel like that is the case because those that do like tech, and those that don't just find a different interest. I thought that would suffice, but now Google and Microsoft are advertising their diversity programs. I was fine with all that until I was personally affected by it. I intended to apply for scholarships from Microsoft. They turned me away because according to them, they began giving them only to people who were "marginalized". That and their commercials trying to pressure young girls to join the STEM field. Again nothing wrong with women in the tech field, but now that this is turning into favoritism I have to fight harder battles to compete in the tech industry. Not only that, but now I read a study about their employment. Despite the number of people they turned away and the money they spent on these programs, thr companies STILL haven't become any more diverse, and from what it seems, their reaction lately has been to double-down and try harder. I just want an open, honest, and fair tech community. Has anyone else felt the affects of this situation?

so my friend made manga edits today

Do ya ever hate how often people use the term "AI" so loosely. It's like saying your thermostat or your "smart oven" (or "smart"-everything) is "AI-infused" because it can regulate the temperature. Unless the machine actually learns something for next time around, a bunch of "if" statements isn't truly AI in my book.

Ok this is freaking creepy. I searched for information about login systems on other websites for some time. Not once did I touch Facebook. Then Facebook show me targeted ads when I hoped on 30 minutes later. How the heck does Facebook get that data in the first place? I'm starting to get pissed that my data is just handed out to everyone, even by search engines.

Minecraft mods get me into programming. I used to spend hours yelling at Eclipse for not making that stupid JAR file! 7 years later, I'm pursuing a career as someone who spends hours yelling at a CLI assembler for not making that stupid ISO file! Good times.

Getting out of my forsaken house. Can concentrate on campus and at work. But NEVER at home :/

Next generation programming language

When some random Assembly code I got off the OSDev Wiki actually booted on real hardware. This is where I'm meant to be.

Cat-warming solution when the power goes out

Problem: Your power goes out in the middle of winter. Your cat is cold and will not leave you alone. You are her only source of heat.

Step 1: Find battery-powered laptop.
Step 2: Power on laptop and turn off sleep/hibernation in the settings.
Step 3: Open up 5 instances of Minecraft and load a single-player world in each.
Step 4: Close laptop and flip it upside down
Step 5: Place cat on computer above the fan. Cat will begin to purr.

(Yes this works)

Well, I wanna specialize in low-level software as I get older. Everyone is telling me to go out and learn a processor architecture. I'm willing to be patient, so I do what people recommend to me and I download the Intel x86_64 manual. I was excited... UNTIL I REALIZED THE MANUAL WAS 4474 PAGES LONG! Like, how am I supposed to jump into assembly, machine language, and low-level programing with a beginner's task like that? I cannot find ANY resources online to simplify the transition, and college sure ain't gonna teach me anytime soon.

I've been laughed at a lot for thinking this way, but I'm honestly frustrated by how little information exists on the web for people who want to take Operating System development a step further. I mean, the OSDev Community is amazing and offers pretty, much everything one needs to know at the system level. But my issue is: What if someone didn't want to use existing compilers and assemblers like GCC and NASM, and do everything from total scratch? I mean, the original Unix came from somewhere, right? I know you're going to think "Why not? It works.". Well, I just think it's crazy how few people (such as Linus and the GNU foundation) are out there that have the ability to create such things without help from existing software tools. Sure, it could take me decades of careful practice and experience, but my passion is for creating software at this level and becoming one of those people is very strong. I just wish I knew where to begin and who to learn from.

If you saw my last rant, you'll know how much I hate Calculus. I decided instead of trying to learn this foreign topic, I'd instead translate it into a language I DO understand: C. The irony is that we use Calculus so we can learn to code easier, but I'm using code to learn Calculus easier. Funny if you ask me.

I just discovered D. How is it not popular?

Slipping a cheeky '#define true (rand() > 5)' at the top of your code because you're edgy and like to mix things up

Ok, so the new programming language Q# is out. VERY exciting for me! I love the idea of quantum computing! Then I realize that developers will need to know the basics of quantum physics to use it effectively. Yay or nay? Welp, those extremely big, expensive machines won't program themselves (yet).

You know, I've really been thinking about renouncing my love for Microsoft's products. I got into the tech world through them, so their stuff was all I really knew. It's like a non-dev growing up using Mac and iPhone. You don't really know what other hardware and software can do (especially since Microsoft is now acting a LOT like Apple nowadays). Ever since they killed Windows Phone, I started seeing past the rose-colored glasses. They've annoyed me with one slip-up after the next. The only things that have kept me tied to them are my Windows Insider membership, and their developer platform. Now that I've seen things like Fuchsia and Linux, I realize that the way Microsoft is going about technology is painful to developers and consumers alike, and this is now beginning to hurt their bottom line. I'm sick of it.

The issue is that if I leave the Microsoft platform, I will have no time to waste. I spent the last 2 yeas cozying up to them, and now I will need to find other platforms, languages, and utilities to build a portfolio from. This also means that I will despise pretty much every major tech company for different reasons (Apple for locked-down hardware, Microsoft for locked-down software, Google for it's monopolistic actions and its unfair policies and terms, Amazon for its invasiveness, etc). If things get worse, I'll probably end up going to Linux and joining the open-source community. The only worry I have is what I'll do for a career. I'm almost halfway to getting an Associates in Computer Science, but where do I go from there? Can't make a living open-source (unless I get patrons, which is unlikely), will probably abandon my dream of joining Microsoft or Google, and I don't currently specialize in any particular area of development yet. I want to spend my life dealing with tech and software. But right now, I've got next to no plans. I've got a lot of thinking to do...

"Describe your profession in the worst way possible"

I'm a software developer. I work really hard to create solutions that will make everyone else lazier. At least until I help make sentient AI that ends up replacing me (or killing me)

You know, I read so often about people out there who don't have WiFi or don't have cell service for miles, and until today, I had little considderatoom for how truly tough that can be. I grew up during the cell revolution, but I didn't use smartphones til I was 16. But now that I went to visit relatives in the country, we went over a hundred miles without cell service. Where was I? New York. Now this may sound whiney or petty, but for people who live out here (and especially people in third-world countries), they are missing out on the many benefits of internet access. Connectivity is good. I support it now more than ever.

Ah, so the great war I my head has begun. When you're a CS major in college, you can't help but realize that knowing everything about computers and how to develop everything on thrm is next to impossible. So you start to question "what will be my specialty?". "Web dev or Low-level? "swirl through my head. I work on projects when I should be writing that 5-page essay for that College Composition course I care nothing about. Then on my own time I need to openly practice and refine my craft, and studying. Sheesh, I hate time (or the lack thereof). How do you do anything major on your own these days?

Everyone was joking about how no major innovations are really being made for front-end. Then you get Microsoft saying they want native 3D model support in browsers. Like, for what?

I see people posting pictures of computers (ATMs, ad screens, digital signs, instruments, etc) failing and instead showing some Windows function, update, or the desktop. Makes me wonder: WHY would you use Windows this way? Think of how many product keys you'll have to buy and how many systems you'll need maintain to show a stupid sign? There's GOT to be a cheaper way of doing things like this.

This is the reason I will never be with IT: I recently got hired as an IT assistant at my college. I was in charge of solving issues in an entire building actually. I was so excited to be able to go around to resolve and troubleshoot problems with people's computers. The responsibility and pay were good, but the fact that people had next to no problems, but I had to be in the same room with students during virtual tests and lessons just in case. I had to stand in the same spot for 2.5 hours watching people take a test. Whenever they DID have a problem, they just had to refresh the page! People gotta learn that I don't have to be in the room in order for people to decide basic troubleshooting. Extremely boring and tiring. No challenges and barely any problem-solving. This is why I'm on Devrant and not Fixrant.

One of professors has an interesting philosophy in regards to how software is planned. He makes us forget that we dealing with a computer and has us write instructions as if we are teaching a human (no optimization, binary, or unnecessary numeral variables). Then we change it into code, then we optimize it. Every time. It freaks me out, but it gets us thinking. Not sure. If that is genius or insanity.

Linux, Linux, Linux. That is ALL I hear around these parts! If ya think about it nobody makes a dime off of Linux instead of the end-user. Well, unless that user is a developer. In that case, OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING boi.

Tried an ad blocker for the first time yesterday. Well what do ya know? Websites I use will not let me access them unless I turn it off. I KNEW something like this would happen. When they were first coming out a few years ago, I said to myself "If everyone is going to be blocking ads, how will we be able to go to these sites for free?"

I expected the worst. I thought they'd put free websites behind a pay wall, much like ad-free mobile applications I would make. Thank GOD that didn't happen. This system is a lot more fair in my opinion. I'm just glad they don't do the same with popup-blockers. Then we would have an issue.

In all seriousness, as annoying as some websites are with their trashy, misleading, or fake ads, they (kinda) have to be there in order for devs to make money and for consumers to be somewhat happy. That is why I personally will not use ad blockers.

Got half my college calling me "Pennywise" cause I work at the "IT" department. Thanks Saturday Night Live!

I am looking for new programming language to learn and I found D language. It looks interesting but I think that community is weak and there is lack of some usefull libraries.
For example I can not find secure PRNG.

So my questions are:
> Have you any experience with this language?

> It is worth to learn?

You know what I'm CONSTANTLY trying to improve on? Time. With my career out ahead of me, I feel like I gotta get a stopwatch going for myself on my personal projects. It took me hours throughout the weekend to get a stupid table UI and JSON serialization system working on a small project. Meanwhile I remember two guys created a Pokémon Go client in a couple days (back when I had a Windows Phone that didn't have one). Like, how important is time in the industry? A lot according to the memes.

I like Xamarin, but they treat Windows like crap. What is more ironic? EVERYTHING Microsoft creates or sells treats their own platform like crap! Skype on my Android has been updated constantly while Skype on PC absolutely sucks. Every developer tools like Visual Studio don't target Windows apps as much. You spend YEARS hyping us up for the Universal Windows Platform, then toss it to the side and give away Android apps. What's worse is that all of that was preventable. They could easily improve the UWP and build an ecosystem around it, but nope. They kick their fanbase, and every other end user involved in the platform, to the curb. Microsoft, nobody trusts you anymore! I've been a fan since July 29th, 2015. I owned a Windows Phone. I own Mixed Reality headset. My Android has every one of your services on it. Why? Because I spend day after day hoping for your reception. But while you are busy "Hitting Refresh", thousands, if not millions, are being ticked off by how we enjoyed the Windows platform more than you did... Get your head in the game! Your developers hang in the balance.

What fo you think, is it still a good idea to learn fortran in order to learn programming concepts?
I don't know what else would be nice...
I only had experience with shell scripting, which is rather functional.
Other languages i considered were dlang, c#, go and rust.
I have no explict application, which bothers me a lot.

When you jokingly suggest overriding MAX_INT32 to be something 10x larger to accommodate larger trades, then come back to numerous messages about how "the number wouldn't fit into a signed int anymore" and "you can't just do that wtf", you really start to question who you're talking to 😂😂

I'm a brand-new employee for my college's IT service. During my training, I was given a briefing on their security system. After something broke, he tapped into an administrative database on his chromebook, then he went to go check something while leaving the chromebook alone with someone he just met for over 30 minutes.

Best Experience: When I finally got my own machine so I could do whatever the heck I wanted to it. Learned and applied more than ever.

Worst Experience: Being an idiot and getting kicked off the only dev team I have ever been a part of because I asked too many questions and did no actual effort...

Well, first off I want to actually pass my college classes. You know, the classes I barely find interest in that seem to be very minimal in my coding skills.
Next, take up or join a project for the summer. You know, get my name out there.
Third, make money
Fourth, make something significant in the OSdev community. I absolutely love low-level dev. Now (to myself) Let's do this!

You know, in my limited experience, I find the whole CS degree debate to be quite unnerving. I mean, if you can teach yourself to be a computer genius, I greatly respect you. You're really going placed. Sadly though, learning everything on my own is a bit of a challenge for me. I just find this whole degree-holding VS non-degree-holding conversation to be very confusing. I'm currently enrolled in a 4-year CS program. I personally have learned more there iny first week than I have in months on my own. Now I know all too well that development is often more of a craft or a trade than it is a typical procedural job, but I'm honestly really anxious because I have half of the world telling me to pursue a degree (which I am) and I have the other half telling me to gain experience (which I did). The thing that is stressing me out is the continual pressure to do all of one option instead of a little of both. My life is changing faster than the tech industry, and boy is it a bumpy ride. So unless there is good advice to be said regarding the path you take to become an amazing developer, why fight over the need for a CS degree?

Today is one of those days where I realize there are hundreds of free APIs and tools to make something amazing and revolutionary, but you can't think of anything that isn't already done or is too advanced for an indie developer. Seriously, I watched Microsoft's Connect event keynotes and demos for these easy and amazing structures, but not a single app idea comes to mind. 😐

If I'm going to make a profit and a good resume, somethings needs to happen.

I dunno if this is a rant or an anti-rant, but for some reason, Assembly and low-level development hardly ever tick me off. It absolutely dumbfounds me how what many regard as the most frustrating and difficult ways of programming a binary digital computers is just so enjoyable. I spend hours per day teaching myself C and GNU Assembly and how it works with little actually getting done. It just rarely gets frustrating enough to rant about. Ladies and gentlemen I think I have found my calling!

What I should be doing: Playing around with it and working my way up, usually by reading the docs and putting together a "tutorial" in my head.

What I actually do: Get overhyped think of theost complicated thing possible and figure things out bit-by-bit

Meh, I do both nowadays. Slowly buys surely.

!rant

Another day, another weird trend that's come up on devRant. Today it's Light Theme vs Dark Theme. Take your pick and place your bets! 'cause after setting Windows to dark theme, I ain't leavin' it! What about you guys?

When my friend finishes an amazing project and I can't even decide which project to pursue and can keep myself stuck to whenever I code (having college rarely helps with timing and such). Meh, that's gonna change soon. Gotta exercise some good ol' responsibility.

TWENTY GIGABYTES!?!? I go to install Xamarin so I could work on a cross-platform project. My C drive is minimal in size and Windows doesn't let you install programs on the D drive. This is madd a billion times worse because Windows 10 treats secondary uard drives just like SD cards! Seriously? TWENTY for that framework?

Today I decided that I will learn the D language because why not

I graduated from my High School last Spring, and since then as a part of a huge overhaul of the education systems, they decided to put the school into the 21st century. The problem? They're doing it all wrong. Every school in the district is acting on its own, making transitions from one grade to another painful. The middle school purchased a cart of iPads despite the fact that Elementary schools use Surface, and the High School uses 2-in-1s. But what makes it worse is the services. The High School used Office365 and OneNote, while the Middle School uses Google Classroom and cloud storage. If the school board wants to make education simpler, modern life, and efficient, the least you could do is have everyone on the same page. Right now, costs are higher, grades are confusing, and efficiency is lower. Each teacher pretty much fends for themselves. I volunteered to help them sort this out by being on the educational committee in charge of the decisions, but I graduated and they felt like they were doing fine. Seriously?

For those who graduated, how the heck do you people do it? I'm on the verge of failing and/or having to retake Calculus AGAIN! I thought that if I could retake it, I would do better. But nope, now instead of getting into that really good tech school in a couple years, I'm a fledgling developer stuck in commonunity college with a 2.9 GPA and not a single project finished. Every decision I make has an exponential affect on my future, but right now, I got nothing. I can't see myself going anywhere else or doing anything else than software development. I'm not quitting, but that isn't enough anymore. This is a nightmare.

The Hexadecimal Editor built using the Universal Windows Platform. Tricky, but doable.

Guys I need your help.
Im a guy used to java development, so used to nice assisting IDEs.
Turns out my boss has a very complex and not very organized server written in Dlang which im supposed to add a semi-complex functionality in.
So far I have a Linux-Mint VM running a docker container able to build the system. Now I'm really not used to editing code without an IDE and all IDEs I tried on windows or Linux dont seem to work (maybe due to minimal knowledge in Linux and D).
Furthest I got was to get Visual Studio set up with Visual D, but it wasnt able to import the dub
project giving weird unsearchable errors.

Is there anyone out there able to get me started with an IDE? The server is on a github-repository, is a dub project and has a few dependencies.
I'm just totally lost.

I'm more pissed than I've been in awhile. With classes coming back soon and having to catch up to my classmates in college and as a developer, have to work part-time to pay off debt. Now I just found out that I have high cholesterol at EIGHTEEN and need to exercise regularly. All this putting off has now crashed down on me and I have no idea how I'm going to do this all at once. For the sake of my future (and my heart), how the heck am I gonna do all this?

I'm midway through summer with an internship and college coming up. Yet I haven't finished a single personal project cause I get lazy or frustrated. Yay destruction of my future!

Forced Updates...
A lot had changed in computing over the last few years. One thing people seem to HATE for varying reasons. I personally don't mind, since they won't be going away and I can handle their little screwups when they happen. But now EVERYONE is doing it. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and their partners have ushered this in era where machine control is placrd in the hands of the OS developers. What I find funny about that is that they say they are doing it to help less tech-savvy people stay safe, yet a good portion of problems people ask me about come right after a forced upgrade. Come on! If you're gonna do it, at least make it worth the problems!

I'll have to make some tough choices over the next 6 months. With my tech career beginning and my college education ramping up, time is of the essence, and the skills I develop now will be at the forefront of my future. So what does this have to do with Microsoft?

Well, the story begins in the Spring of 2016. Social Forums was about to turn a year old, Trump's campaign was ramping up, and I had just found my love for technology. With all my friends having phones, I had to get a phone and get working on development. The year before, Windows 10 was launched, and I was psyched. I found Microsoft's products to be underrated with potential. That day, I purchased a Lumia 640, upgraded it to Windows 10, and immediately began working. After another year-and-a-half gone by, I went from loving Microsoft, to defending Microsoft, to tolerating Microsoft. I could go on and on about the lousy structure, the privacy issues, the forced upgrades, the redundant developer platform, and other such issues that is leading me away from them. But if there is one thing they have proven over the years, is that the they are completely out of touch with its developers and its customers. They spent years ramping up their phones. They failed. They spend years ramping up their phones. They failed. They spend years ramping up their semi-annual OS updates. They failed. So why did they fail? It's not that they made the wrong prediction out of chance. They legitimately don't care about feedback. It's their way or the highway. This sounds vaguely familiar. They have been spending a decade ignoring feedback from the community because they want to become just like Apple. Right now, Apple LIVES off of brand loyalty and its stable, useful ecosystem. This cannot work for Microsoft as they don't have a lot of brand loyalty. But most of all, they don't have a working ecosystem. They have Windows Insiders, which provides them with hundreds of feedback messages per day. These include suggestions, bug reports, and constructive criticism. The feedback is public. You can have several pages of the same complaint, and they still won't do anything about it. They say they have a good relationship with their community, and that this Beta program helps Windows become better for all. But in the end, we are nothing more than a glorified unpaid labor force. They fired hundreds of professional debuggers just before the Insider Program took off. We are only here to provide bug reports for free. Now that their phones, AR headsets, browser, online services, and VR headsets are failing for all these reasons, I see little reason to develop for Windows anymore. I don't just mean their UWP and App Store platforms, I mean Windows as a whole. I'm definitely not a Mac guy either. I never see myself going to Mac either, as they are really no different in terms of how they treat their Developers and PC users. If things continue down this route, I will leave the platform all together. I've always wanted to be a Systems Programmer, so I don't really need an established paid platform to be successful. Even now, I'm not certain about leaving Windows altogether but as a developer, I need to find my place. Time is of the essence in my life, and I need to find out my place in the software world. Now I think it isn't on the Windows platform like I had dreamed it would be. But where do I go?

!rant
Stupid licensing issue.
I have a licensing question/problem.
I'm porting Lemonbar (the fancy GNU/Linux X11 statusbar) to D (which is awesome imo).
I'm adding Wayland functionality and since D is part of the C syntax family some code is just about exactly the same (the XCB libs are protocol-generated external imports).
Also, the X-specific parts are in a specific file.
What do I license the project against? My own license (I prefer Apache) or Lemonbar's? What about the X-specific file?
BTW, it's a full rewrite using the same concepts, object-orienting the whole thing.

Learning system development. Period. Heck, I'm still looking for resources that don't cost hundreds of dollars, require me to open-source everything I want to make, require that I read a 4000-page Intel manual, and/or ask that I be in a graduate program or have a degree that I am still earning.