In my city (Minneapolis) Java (and other JVM languages) completely dominates. I would guess most cities end up leaning one way or the other.

You do know what "nationalizing" means, right? It's flat out theft. And no country would be happy about that. If they would have covered the cost of all the confiscated infrastructure, they would be much better off right now. Again, I'm not saying that they should continue to be punished the way they have. In fact, I think it's gone on way too long. I'm just explaining why it is the way it is.

Actually, it has nothing to do with being treated as a colony. They're being punished for nationalizing US corporate infrastructure (not just some but ALL of it). It's the real reason rather than the bullshit reasons given in the past (like communism and they're a threat to the US because of their relationship with Russia ala Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.) I'm not saying this is a good reason, just trying to make it clear why they are being treated the way they are. Cuba is our example to the world of what happens when you do that shit.

The bottom line is that a small screen results in a subpar user experience, no matter how good the scaling is. I tried the SP3 and didn't like it at all because 12" just doesn't work for real work. If you're going to hook it up to a real monitor, then it's fine but it sucks as a laptop.

The industry was never regulated. I know, I've been in it for over 25 years. As for fattening, each generation makes more than the last. I make a lot of money but I see kids fresh out of school getting paid 80k+ at places like Amazon and Google. It took me 15 years to get that. Granted, I make a lot more than that now but I have no doubt that kids today will laugh at what I'm making now when they're my age.

They're the happiest because they don't have to do jack shit. Every mainframe or AS400 group I've ever dealt with takes FOREVER to get anything done. It's why most shops have been getting rid of them. If I could take ten times as long to do what I do, I'm sure I'd be pretty fucking pleased with my situation, too.

If you can't get Rails up and running, I weep for you. I'm hardly a fanboy (and have never used it to build a real app) but it's pretty braindead simple.

Sadly, this is common. A lot of companies won't hire people fresh out of school and only want people with 10+ years of experience. Then they bitch about how hard it is to find people with 10+ years of experience when nobody will give people fresh out of school a job. Since they can't find that, they go for the cheaper H1B people rather than higher locals. When I first started in programming, I remember how companies used to actively engage in internships and bringing in fresh blood. Unfortunately, that idea has largely died. These companies are fucking themselves and then blaming schools for not cranking out enough CS majors. The truth is that they don't want locals because they know they will ultimately cost more and no executive gets a fat bonus for hiring more expensive resources.

Frivolous? Their designs were a blatant ripoff of Apple's.

I prefer 4:3 over 16:10 for everything but video. It's simply better all the way around. I've tried 16:10 android tablets before and I can't fucking stand them.

It's been this way for a very long time. It's easy to tell good ice cream from crap just by checking fat content. Higher end ice creams have much higher fat and calories. They also cost more because cream is a lot more expensive than air.

Remove the word "american" and you're spot on.

lol...Apple is nothing like Microsoft and you clearly have no understanding what they were in so much trouble for in the 90's.

If the only thing VS catches are compiler errors, then it sucks and is at least 10 years behind other products like IntelliJ, which catches a crazy amount of shit and it's stuff a compiler can't catch.

You mean other than the fact that they bailed on it?