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.

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'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.

MS didn't kill Java - Oracle did. ...
And on a sidenote:
You might want to consider abandoning Windows as a plattform.

If you're looking for something stable with a brand and a future, perhaps you should try the Google ecosystem. With either web or android. I see Windows on the downslope. It only takes a critical mass to see Exchange as a dated groupware model and moving to Google and to see a subscription to office software for the bizar contraption it is and moving that to Googles free version aswell. Once that happens, Google will have taken over the planet for the foreseeable future and MS will be lapping up its dribbles it leaves behind.

.Net, from day one, was a vehicle for clueless middle-managers to justify sitting around blabbering web-economy bullshit and spending ginormous amounts of money for their consulting buddys to scoop up because they have a few devs at hand that are willing to play along and develop under-performing, non-future-safe, overpriced superfluos crappy MS-lockin middleware and shoddy MS SharePain intranets.

I said it when .Net came out, and it holds true to this very day: With Java and other toolsets being FOSS, there was no point whatsoever for .Net - a Type A MS plattform login, no matter how MS marketing bullshit tries to spin it.

*Everyone* with more than 2 braincells saw this and still sees this. If they'd've FOSSed .Net 10 years ago, like I and many others, even right here on slashdot said they should do, they might have had a chance. This way .Net, like all proprietary closed source software, is a dead end, and everyone with a brain stears clear or just does it for the quick cash and doesn't expect it to be around in the long run.

MonoDevelop/Xamarin Studio FOSS Edition is the key point here.

I have to admit, I resent MS just as much as the next guy and I consider C# a half-assed cross between readability of C, speed of Java and portability of Visial Basic and unlike some MS fans do not consider the PL the second coming of Christ. ... But (you did see a big "but" coming up there, right?) I have to say that MonoDevelop is an impressive FOSS product. It works out of the box on Linux, OS X and Windows, it's actually a pretty good IDE and it makes getting up and running with C# GUI/client development a breeze.

You can get from zero C# experience to an own feasible GUI app in a matter of hours.
Something I can't say of other great toolkits, such as Qt.

In a nutshell, MonoDevelop is the only reason I would actually even consider C# as a PL for a project.
And now with major components of the .Net ecosystem available as FOSS, I wouldn't completely dismiss C# for non-trivial infrastructure and middleware either.

My 2 cents.

Dystopia? We are living it and don't even see it.

The problem is powerful tools in stupid hands. Or greedy hands - greedy being a subset of stupid.
If we'd take a measured approach to tech advancement - which might even mean an accelerated approach - we'd all be living in a utopia already.

The US has no or only very little means of wealth distribution, which is why life can suck so hard over there. But even a bum doesn't have to starve in the US and child labour and epidemics are basically history there too - so I'd say all in all that we're headed in the right direction in that dept.