I dunno, smashing windows sounds pretty on brand actually

Buco seems to be having a good time. 9/10, unsure how Eaton feels.

Just cleaned mine up a bit recently!

PC on the left, RPi for simple stuff and an Odroid HC4 as my media and backup server.

Not pictured: another RPi dedicated to HomeAssistant, a magic mirror, and networking stuff.

Also not pictured: my workbench tools on the upper shelves, which have not been tidied recently.

In one sense, nothing is “free of politics”. Should your tennis club allow black people to join? There was a day and age when allowing them to join would have been considered a bold political statement. The rules and decisions your tennis club make are inherently political, whether you think of them that way or not.

That being said, more specific to software licenses, the question is whether we should be using verbage that restricts FOSS from being used for unethical purposes (such as military weaponry). There are cases to be made for and against that, and so far, it would seem most FOSS licenses tend toward a less restrictive policy.

So the “political” question in software licenses is: does it make sense to add restrictions in an attempt to promote societal well-being, or do we stick with the “free”-er approach? Both have political and societal ramifications.

Regular circuits: “What’s that? You want to hack me together with a breadboard from 1963 and a hodgepodge of old telecom wire and misc parts? Sure, sounds great!”

DSP circuits: “Being more than 2mm from the IC makes me feel icky :(”

Not specifically with a DE15 (for that I’d just chop up an old VGA cable), but I work with a lot of proprietary connectors. Some of the connectors are scarce, and sometimes we just wire them manually if the work isn’t too extensive.

As someone who works in R&D in software/electronics, I can say I do this kind of thing regularly.

That’s an interesting idea, but may suffer from the all-too-familiar programmer art (that is, most programmers aren’t great at art).

In its simplest form, it probably wouldn’t be difficult to use something like emojis to indicate state. Honestly wouldn’t be that hard to code. After a quick search, I even found a guide on how to do almost exactly what you’re looking for.

If your manager won’t hear anything negative about Vibelord, polish up your resume. There’s nothing you can do to change the culture of your team if the boss isn’t on board with it.

Not sure what kind of person your boss is, but if you want to try to win him over, try to figure out what might sway him. If he’s technically illiterate, talk to him about best practices (like, I dunno, code reviews) and cite reliable sources and data if you think that would help. Avoid calling out Lord Vibington, the main thing is to put a picture into your boss’s head of what this could/should look like. He might not realize that these issues are preventable.

The goal here is to get your boss to take more ownership of the team’s culture, and start insisting on preventative measures. Mr Viberator will either have to conform, or there will be increasing friction between him and the boss.

dessalines is known for questionable moderation. Avoid the .ml communities when possible.

Start by separating the files by namespace and class. Then, by method. Delete the first method, then the next, and so on. Then rewrite the code by hand as God intended.

They were so close to getting it

I would pronounce it “DEEmon” but that gets some religious folks all freaked out, so I usually go with “DAYman”.

Simmer down, Satan

No problem! I love chatting about this stuff, questions are always welcome!

Not sure what online retailers are available or what you have access to in Vemezuela, but something like this starter kit would be ideal. But anything you can get your hands on can be fun.

In general, you need:

• a microcontroller
• a way to program it
• hardware to control and usually some sort of input or sensor

Even if you can’t find a starter kit, finding a USB UART interface lets you hack into all sorts of devices (did that to reprogram a router a while back), as long as you’re handy with a soldering iron. And like another commenter said, hardware emulators would let you get started writing and running code if you can’t get hardware right away.

Hope it’s fun! Feel free to DM with questions if you’d like.

You’re looking for what’s called Embedded Programming, which is that low-level stuff where the software you create makes things happen in real life outside of just a computer screen. There are lots of hobby beginner kits that come with things like motors, lights, etc. That’s probably your best bet for actually getting some hands-on experience.

If you want something a little higher-level, go for something like a Raspberry Pi (a Single Board Computer or SBC). On these, you’ll have a full-fledged Linux kernel and operating system, but still have ways of interacting with hardware like lights and such. If you want to get lower level, try Arduino or something based on ESP32 (the key word here is microcontroller). On these, you’ll either use a smaller OS or go “bare-metal”. Though note that Raspberry Pi makes things at this level as well (their “Pico” line).

For making that connection between computer theory and programming, I recommend experimenting with microcontrollers. You can even do some projects in assembly and understand what all the key registers are doing. I started on PIC micros, which was a great beginner thing. Not sure if they’re still around.

If you want recommendations on a starter kit, let me know your budget and what country you’re in, and I can send some suggestions.

Source: embedded programming for 20+ years.

why not just skip the middleman

Because many people take for granted their advanced understanding of Unix systems that allows them to get into the “meat”.

If you’re the type of person that is excited by a terminal display and prepared to read a whole pile of documentation, then sure–go straight to Arch, or Alpine if you’re insane. But most people want something that’s familiar, easy to set up, and will never force you to open a terminal. That’s Mint (plus a number of other beginner-friendly distros). And most average people are perfectly happy to stay there. And that’s perfectly fine.

You’re not missing anything. Mint is perfectly good for the vast majority of users.

Linux distros are a bit like vehicles. For most people, a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla will do everything they need. But if you go onto forums of car-enthusiasts, you can probably find thousands of voices that say those vehicles have such low horsepower, or they’re not perfectly streamlined, or arguing about the buttons on the seat belts. Things that the average user doesn’t care much about.

I started 20 years ago with Slackware, tried out FreeBSD, and a number of others. I switched to Mint as a daily driver years ago. These days I found what I like (CachyOS), but I’m fairly knowledgable and quite comfortable on the command line, which is definitely not the case for most newer folks.

Mint is a great distro. When I put it on my wife’s laptop, literally everything worked right away. Have fun!

I use Notepad++ for coding daily. I’m not a fan of things like autocomplete, and the times I need to look up a definition, the search is fast enough to make up for a lack of indexing. And the regex implementation is great.