If this means:
1) Running native code (C/C++)
2) Running a regular Windows 8 Modern binary
3) Running DirectX 11

I'm in. They got me as a customer from day 1.

For almost a decade, Qt has been the superior choice for developers.

I used GTK for several years (probably up to version 2.2). The mindset back then was that the minimum functionality should be provided and the developer should build what he or she needed around it. For even a simple item list you had to use the treeview, which in turn was really complex to use. I wonder how much of that remains today.
When I discovered Qt, I ran constantly into the situation of thinking "This behavior I want to do sounds like a common case, i'm sure there is a helper/shortcut to implement it", and 99% of the time there was. Maybe it was more "bloated", but it definitely did reduce development time by a large factor.

Also, if you are doing a desktop app, you are most likely wanting to go cross platform. GTK is terrible at that.
The main disadvantage back then was the license, but that's ancient history. Qt has aged well and moved to mobile without much of an inconvenience. Besides Desktop, It runs on Android and Blackberry 10, and will soon be running on iOS too.

I'm currently using it for complex templates without issues. Maybe the problem is that it can't find the respective std headers?

For all of those that love Visual Studio for C++ programming, and having used eclipse for some time, I believe Qt Creator is by far a much better alternative, as it has around the same level of functionality of VS+expensive commercial plugins.

Even letting the Qt integration out, It has excellent code completion, shows warnings and errors as you type, provides great refactoring tools, It's extremely lightweight, works with any compiler and any build system, in any platform, integrates with a wide array of debuggers and profilers, has a high degree of customization, and some unique features like the best search/replace I've ever used and the locator (ctrl-k).

The only reason it's not more popular is that most people believes it's only useful for writing Qt applications, which couldn't be further away from the truth. It's simply awesome. If I worked for Digia, I'd try to change the name and promote it to something unrelated to Qt, that way it would be really easy to bring new developers to their platform.

Maybe and just for some people, a lightweight Linux distribution might work.

I moved grandmother from Outlook/Word on a 486 to Gmail and Docs on a 2ghz athlon and she adapted fine. She is 92.

I fully support Linus on this, years of project management helps you realize many things. This is one.
Being verbally abusive like this basically helps you to tell more objectively how much people does actually care about something, and it works very well with people who just likes to argue for the sake of being right.
You are serving them on a plate the perfect excuse to walk away with the moral high ground. If they take it by becoming offended or complain, you immediately can tell how much did they care to begin with.
When they answer back and keep on topic, they definitely might have a point.

Ah, I understand. You are completely right..
except this has nothing to do at all with my original post, nor the article, both about processor usage.

I'm so sorry, I'll never do it again!

So, what's the difference then, that your phone battery will last 18 hours instead of 20 because you didn't optimize more than the critical tasks?
It seems much cheaper to solve this by adding a little more battery capacity, yet keep your phone OS and applications easier and cheaper to develop.
No matter how you look at it, I can't see the scenario you describe as being a tragedy..

I understand your point, but I believe it's a little too extremist.
In the real world, It is always possible to write more efficient code, but the more you optimize, the more difficult to develop, maintain or port it becomes, exponentially.
So in the end, it's always a trade off between performance and cost of development, added to the fact that not all code needs to be optimized, only the little portions that perform the most critical tasks.

Even though it's unrelated with my original post, you are saying that not going native is worse because it uses more CPU cycles/battery?
Explain to me why, for decades, the industry used J2ME, Java (Android) and now ObjC (Apple). I guess the entire mobile industry is selfish and greedy?
You probably didn't understand GP, though, the message is that you don't need to optimize something that doesn't consume enough cycles be a performance problem.

I'm probably going to get downvoted as troll, but my experiences with most console developers were often strange (as a developer myself).
Talks usually end up in most of them dismissing scripting languages, higher level APIs (such as OpenGL), or certain algorithms as useless because they are slow, use too many instructions unnecessarily, waste cache, etc.

Any attempt to raising a point about how you don't need to optimize everything but only few critical zones of your code (what matters), or that a cache wasting algorithm can end up being faster anyway just because it's more efficient, immediately results in myself being dismissed or treated as ignorant because, something inefficient is obviously inefficient and I must be stupid for not realizing that.

This article reminds me of that. The author claims (in his first claim) that he is determined to prove that something is less useful because it's slower, and nowhere in that huge long piece of text there is anything useful offered as proof, instead he keeps posting data about how slow Javascript really is.

It's not ridiculous at all. The outsourcing industry took decades to take off in most of the world due to the lack of know how and the fact that those talented would rather leave the country for someplace with better working conditions. You may not be familiar with the concept in the US, but in the development world this is called Brain Drain, and it is the major obstacle to developing an industry. Right now the US is experiencing something similar in the VFX and Videogame Industry due to the better economic conditions and subsidies of Canada.

As a South American, I know more about the effects of currency devaluation than most of the world. It just doesn't work the way you describe. It's much more complex than "economy 101".
I think you should first ask yourself why hasn't the US devalued its currency in a significant way in such a long time. You make fun of me saying I don't understand economics, but your point seems more headed towards your own country.

In any case, once you devalue your currency, prices will adjust over time and go back to the reference value, and the government has absolutely no way to control this. No government in the history of humanity was successful at keeping prices and labor costs low after a devaluation for a long time. This measure is used applied after an economic crisis that has left a lot of people unemployed, because it creates plenty of jobs and allows the country to go back to being competitive.
It's also not free, because once a generation learns that prices can rise significantly over a short period of time, higher inflation becomes a more serious risk.

It's also pointless for the US to devalue the currency, the US dollar is the main reference currency in the world. At best, the world will just adapt to it, at worst the world will move to another currency for reference and then you will have to sweat your ass off to import oil, because emitting money will no longer do.
So, not ever going to happen.

Your government does everything to represent the best interest of its citizens. It may go overboard or paranoid with some issues, but the high quality of life in America is only possible because of the control it exerts over the rest of the world. The problem is that, sometimes, some things go wrong, specially this "Globalization" thing the past decades. That was meant to be a tool to not allow the industry in other economies to grow, by bilaterally lifting trade restrictions and forcing them to buy from the US instead of producing themselves. But in the end, it went wrong, because several countries learned to be more efficient at producing the same things the US did.

Increasing H1Bs quotas is a way to allow more brain drain and hamper other countries industries, which are growing quickly, (at the cost of work plaza becoming more competitive in she short term). As I said, several other countries are doing the same, so it's logical that the US government is realizing this just now and wants to do the same. Germany is by far leading brain drain in the west, I see the most talented engineers here constantly moving there from here, and they don't have the unemployment rates the US has.

So, all this points to me that you are so afraid that foreigners will come and take your job that you can't rationalize that it's good for your country in the long term. Irrational fear against an external human factor is xenophobia.

No one is asking you to self sacrifice, you are screwed anyway. This comes from someone who already outsourced plenty of work from American clients, and knows how much american management cares about patriotism or meeting clients face to face (hint: zero.)

What i'm trying to say is really simple, the person that will take your job, will do it anyway regardless of where in the world he or she is, it's not like that person will no longer exist if H1Bs disappear. It's like the opposite of Muhammad and the mountain.

But if you can manage to lure the talented individuals to your country, with the excellent standards of living in America, they'll flock to your country and your industry and your jobs will be benefitted in the long term, because you will get less cheaper competition outside, allowing you to keep your high income.

But yeah, keep with the xenophobia, no one in America believed that Asians could do electronics, or the Japanese cars. When most of the American engineering industry becomes outsourced in a few decades, you'll probably remember this.

No, because it IS xenophobia in most cases. There may be a few exceptions, but most of those against H1Bs don't really understand how the outsourcing industry works, and how the economy of the country depends on competition with the rest of the world, as evidenced by most posts here, it's just anecdotal evidence and pejoratives on how Indians are incapable of replacing American workers.
Just ask around, or see by yourself, most Americans cite H1B as the main reason they are losing their jobs.

It's not an issue of being the only reason, it's the *closest* reason. The one Americans can see with their own eyes, while they don't have a clue on what's going on outside the country. If a bussines went offshore, it's a business that never existed to begin with.

At the same time, you could bother travelling the world a little more. Any country except for the US welcomes highly skilled workers or creative talents with open arms. From Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Japan, etc down the ladder. Even americans themselves are flying to work in Montreal and Toronto, because of subsidies and benefits offered.

No, because H1B, despite what it is, is the easiest way for skilled people to emigrate to the US and get a green card later.

In any case, your government is not stupid. H1Bs allows for American companies to spend less on the highly skilled workers (which are unproportionally well paid compared to the rest of the world), remain competitive and keep functioning.
So, in the end, it keeps more American jobs than it takes away.

I can understand that those who paid a fortune in education and spent a long time developing their skills are bitter because they can't earn what they believe they deserve, but it's simply best for their country if they don't.