In my perception jQuery has basically become the JavaScript standard library.
Basically any combination of frontend toolkits has it included somewhere, so you don't even have to worry about doing that. It's the default for Joomla and Wordpress and there are a measurable amount of functions that take care of the gruntwork and normalize utility across browsers.

On top of that, the amount of JS projects relying on jQuery as a foundation is staggering. The secondary market has tools built around the jQuery ecosystem and the project as a whole does an excellent job at marketing and advocating.

I personally see the next generation in such avantgarde stuff as Googles Polymer (pretty amazing) but until everyone has moved to SPAs and web components - which is not happening any time soon - but until then it's not the worst idea to familiarize yourself with the concepts and the utility funcitons of jQuery. ... *After* you've learned JS itself properly, that is.

My 2 cents.

...you insensitive clod!

In my experience the biggest problem in software development is people (developers, PMs, stake holders, etc.) not talking to one another. And not talking about the next concrete steps to solution of a problem.

Anything that mitigates this problem is a good thing.

Wether it's pair programming, Scrum (formalised rituals of talking to one another) or this "mob programming" stuff. The problem with these methods is, you always have to keep in mind why you're using them: To solve problem #1 mentioned above. Forget that, and you're back to square one, only now you're wasting your time with rituals no one understands or fails to use productively.

*Tadum* *Crash* *Thud*

Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week.
Tip your waitor and try the fish.

Neat idea. But please ditch the old keyboard light. It was cute back in the 90ies, but seriously not anymore.
Individually lighted, dimable keys please. If Apple can do it, so can you.

If you suddenly had a few billion dollars at your hand that you specifically had to put to use for developing an open source hardware architecture and producing the first line of hardware, how would that look like? How would it differ from x86, PPC or other system architectures you've come accross? What's most annoying to you about existing architectures you've come accross, that you would like to change?
Any features you'd like to combine in one, perhaps?

I've tried to get myself around to learning C++ since the early 90ies and really never made it just yet. I find your comments on C++ interesting and wouldn't be suprised if they had a grain of truth, if not more. To be honest, I've been second-guessing my C++ ambitions since I've read your comments on it.

Which brings me to my question:
I know you're a plain-ol C guy, but do you see a point in recent attempts to build a new Systems language, particularly the Go project from Google and the Rust project from Mozilla? Do you think this is just a fad or do these projects have potential? Are they adressing real problems and doing something useful or are they just a waste of time in your opinion?

And if you would differntiate, what do you think in particular about Go and what about Rust?

Can you picture yourself using a different language than C for programming a thing such as Linux or Git?

That's more than one question, but since they're related, I believe you can answer them in one reply.

All that aside:
Thank you very much for your and the Kernel teams great contribution to society. Very much appreciated. Your straight-forward approach to things at times serves as a concrete role model for me in my daily work as an IT person.

Since you're not saying what kind of tool/programm you're trying to build I presume it's some kind of performance critical focused but non-trivial application. So a compiled language probably is the best choice - you won't be dependant on some VM stuff or an interpreter.
The real C family of languages (I'm excluding C# with the 'real') isn't the worst choice for this sort of thing. In fact, it's just about the only choice. With C, C++ and Objective-C left to choose from, C++ comes to mind as a tried and true systems language.

Long story short: You can't go wrong with picking C++ - just don't expect your code to be the cats meow from the get-go. Once you're finished you'll know enough to rewrite the entire app again. But we all know that's how it goes with new PLs.

I still do have to important pieces of advice for you:
Did you check the existance of FOSS Unix tools? It could be that your problem can be solved by doing some tricky CLI and scripting stuff with a set of specialized *nix tools - perhaps just compiling them into a single binary. ... Check that to save yourself tons of work.

Something else: If you're in it for the learning experience consider those new hip system PLs Go and Rust. They look promising ... or at least interesting.

Good luck.

Why do I get the impression that these NoSQL guys know even *less* about proper programming than the PHP crowd?

The problem with NoSQL is, they threw out SQL (well done) but they throw out relations and proper archtecture along with it (WTF?). I'm all for ditching SQL as an apps means to access persistance. It's stupid and wasn't meant for that. Even the SQL DB engineers tell us that. But if you don't understand relations and proper application models, you have no business building webapps or - heavens forbid - database servers.

As for "MEAN" - call be back when you've got a project like Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal, Typo3, Neos ... errrm, scratch those last two ... please DON'T call me if you have a project like Typo3 or, heaven help, Neos ... EZ Publish, MOD X, TextPattern, Plone, or something along those lines to show. Even better, call me when you've built a clone of Wordpress, with something like TAL for templating, sans the crappy software architecture that come with the big PHP projects and have an installer that sets it up in 5 minutes (which the PHP projects actually have).

Until then I'm sticking with this bizar but working contraption called LAMP. Other then you academic mastubation projects it actually gets the job done.

Thank yooouuuu.

Just asking. :-)

I work on one of the telescopes that is on Mt. Graham. My father was an astronomer who did the initial site surveys for the Mt. Graham observatory and spent a good bit of time on Mauna Kea as well. He took his family to several observatories in Arizona and Mexico; I never thought of observatories as "desecrating the land". Rather, they are quiet places in which solemn work gets done to better understand our place in the universe.

My current boss's husband is the guy who made the special legislation happen that allowed the scopes to be built. He's proud of his underhanded accomplishment. I'm also friends with several Earth First!ers who were on the other side of this fight.

I think both sides on this war are assholes.

I've said it before: Homeopaths actually can be useful, if they are well educated (medically) and do take their time speaking to a patient. I've met doctors I wouldn't trust making a relyable anamnesis and I know homeopaths whos diagnose I would trust. At least more than some of those doctors.

The medicine of course is bunk, but here in Germany it's partially justified by some as a cheap means to get to placebos.

London is Berlin plus extra dirt, pricepoint and noise, minus the vibe. At least in Berlin you get the all-out hippster flair, although gentrification has pushed that out of the door quite a bit already. However, Berlin is spread out so far and has so many green areas it's hard for it to gain the solid all-through gentrification and establishment in top-tier living costs that London or Paris have. Which is a very good thing IMHO.

Bottom line:
I'd probably choose Berlin over London. But then again, it also depends largely on the people you're with and the job you have. With the right people around you and the right things to do, such a drab town as Düsseldorf can be fun aswell.