Upgrade to Linux and don't look back.

You have to look at how each gender interviews and balance that with qualification, the same has to be done for each time of ethnicity that applies. You can't get mad at them saying, "They're sexist and a white majority company!", when you don't know the information stated above. If 90% of the women who apply can't interview very well or can't show there qualifications then why would they deserve a job? You should never be awarded a job because you aren't a while Caucasian male.

I find web development rather simple in comparison to trying to write a basic thread manager for a PIC18F uC, not saying you're wrong, just different views. I also would hardly call something this:

$window = new window("title", 640, 480).show();
$window.thread1 = new Thread(attach(Serial.IO.Ports.serialPort));
$window.thread1 = Start();

Real programming, That is kind of mock-up of PHP mixed with C# but my point is clear. A real programmer can write the thread manager and a developer just calls the start function. The amount of new grads who I interview that can't write something as a simple as a splay tree with lists at the nodes, in C, in under an hour, is frankly disappointing.

In the embedded world I often use Assembly and C, even on the desktop it's not rare for me to C in order to avoid pointless overhead with weighty languages like C# or Java. A real programmer interfaces at the hardware level and tells a computer how to do it's job without having to use bulky objects, interfaces and abstraction. "Modern" programming bears little resemblance to programming because modern programming isn't real programming, it's falling back on managed, bulky overhead that does all the work for you. I wouldn't call a developer who uses C#, Java and basically sticks in object land a programmer because they don't program, they don't interface to the hardware to make a computer actually work. As a good rule of thumb, the more you get abstracted from memory, the less of a programmer you become.

Hey!

I'm going to be completely honest that I didn't try to many middle of the road products before jumping over to the enterprise / small business line. I tried a high end gaming dlink router with dual 2.4 and 5GHz bands, I tried a higher end Linksys E series router and that's about it. What really bugged me about the consumer grade products was the total lack of support and the lack of quality. Personally I don't think one year is accept for any product to last, yet alone networking gear. I have the UniFi AP AC right now and paired with a higher end AC card I'm getting literally 1300 MBPS, which is awesome!

I don't want to push you in any one direction unfairly so if you read / watch some reviews you can draw your own conclusions. All I know is I've been rock solid with my setup and I love it. I don't think twice and usually not even once about it, I've had stellar WiFi performance and when I need the extra kick I use my wired connection.

Don't bother screwing around with anything less then AC and enterprise grade AC at that. What you should do is buy a good quality small business Gigabit router with management and POE+ and get something like: http://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unif.... This will provide your house with excellent full speed Wifi, suitable for almost anything you can throw at it and the wired router will allow you to have an almost no downtime wired solution for when you need extra juice. This is the setup I use and honestly for 10 months of the year I don't even think about it because I never have to.

Automate what you can, but even with automation in place, someone who understands what's being automated and how automation works still needs to be around to monitor and improve the system. Automation should only ever replace tasks with are safe and repetitive, to free up time for people, such as IT staff, or engineers, to focus on much more important tasks.

The way I would spin it to a boss ( and have before ), is this way: "I made a spread sheet and pie chart outlining where my time is spent each week on tasks X, Y and Z. As you can see I spend 10 hours a week on X which really has no reason to be a manual process. Which causes Y and Z to only get 30 hours of my attention, which I feel is to low. I was wondering if you I could look into automating X so that I can free up time to implement better monitors and issue resolution."

Generally the boss will be impressed, mostly at the chart and let you move your effort into something more meaningful without replacing you. Of course make sure to pad the chart so you look awesome :P

Yep, I'm running the 4.5 patched compiler, works great.

Vim, GCC and GDB, the best software development system on the market.

Why on earth would you recycle code, that is rookie programming error 101. Every program you write needs to use a fresh and clean set of functions and structures, because how else can you get everything to fit together perfectly.

Go with a smaller ISP, I live in Toronto and we have 0 throttling, I get 5 MB/s at all times.

Write a full RTOS in C with support for logging and debugging in the course of 4 months. If you can do that you pass, other wise you fail and you aren't a programmer, you're a code hacker.

What's wrong with VIM, GCC and BASH?

Then don't buy a smart phone or don't use the play store, problem solved to an issue that didn't exist.

No but it does tell you that the app will transfer data. If you're that worried about the amount of data transferred then use the application for a minute or two and reference the data usage screen.