Sadly for the MBAs, it will turn out that the Programming AI requires twice as many administrators and coders to maintain as the coders it replaced.

Yet this will be seen as a good thing by the business, in a fit of self-denial.

I wrote one last week in a single line of BASIC running on a 4MHz Z80 system. Admittedly the level size is only 80x24, and it is more random than procedural (i.e., rooms can be left isolated), but that's the nature of trying to fit that into a single line of code (monster placement and gold placement take up another line).

It takes a few seconds to complete - mainly due to it being interpreted BASIC on a 4MHz Amstrad CPC.

I figure that most "dungeon generating algorithms" are quite unrealistic anyway. If you are going to build a dungeon, you're going to start somewhere, and excavate from there in a fairly compact manner (dwarf fortress/dungeon keeper style), not subdivide a massive open space, or make long tunnels into very isolated rooms (although in mines that could be viable). A realistic dungeon would also probably be quite boring to play.

As long as they can be uninstalled, great. If they're always installed then boo.

I've got a long term investment in the Google infrastructure, for better or worse. I don't want to be directed to use a different infrastructure (OneDrive, etc), and I don't want that cluttering up my phone. Luckily I expect it is easily fixed this time round via installing the correct apps from the Play store, but what about the future?

Some major money must have passed hands. Shame.

In the post you hurried to reply to:

Coming from a Java background, I have found it very refreshing to start coding Clojure (which is a lisp family language that runs on the JVM).

It does appear to me that it becomes possible to write extremely compact code in Clojure compared to the equivalent Java code.

Also, the language really encourages you to just deal with the built in "primitive" collections (obviously behind the scenes they aren't primitive, but at the syntax/function level they are) - sets, maps, vectors, lists, etc for your data structures and passing data around. Java, even with Apache/Google collections help, is often a load of collection herding, shuffling and copying, which comes for free with Clojure (and will become a lot more concise with Java 8's Lambdas too).

Modern programming practices (separation of concerns, patterns, etc) also means that code often has a lot of the same boilerplate structure around it, with a little functionality in the middle. The benefit is, of course, maintainability and clarity.

Yes, this is totally a problem. Also people writing their pin on their card...

Exactly.

To join a startup, you need to know several things you need to know in addition to the usual job stuff - how much finding does the company have (i.e., how long will it last, who is backing it, etc), will I get equity, and how much (usually in exchange for a lower salary because the funding isn't infinite), and how the team is structured.

Don't join a startup that wants you to earn less than elsewhere if they are looking at getting fun rooms, nice desks, top notch offices, etc. Join a startup that can offer you other benefits that other companies can't - working from home (save on commuting costs and time), better/flexible work hours, and so on.

The startup should offer a sizeable portion of the company as equity amongst the team. I don't know what the going rates are, but if n% of the company was given to the initial team then you would be wanting to look at n/10% for a senior dev, n/30% for a junior dev. This would drop as time passes (hires become less 'foundery' - so don't join a startup that's past the initial equity handouts unless they give even more away (and this is worrying in itself). If it's old enough to get more funding, it's not a startup and you should expect standard job benefits.

And, of course, the whole point of equity is to make a real gesture regarding the company being "your startup", beyond words. The vision is important and needs to be sold, but it means nothing without actions. Sadly I think this guy wants the benefits, and the long hours, and the low wages, without any such actions.

Found this...

http://makezine.com/2015/02/02...

And even if not, hopefully the faster and quad-core CPU will be able to respond in a more timely manner?
As they would have had to do a new layout for the SoC, I hope it was another aspect that was fixed in the redesign.

The ARM Cortex A7's in the new Pi have Neon.

But yes, ARMv8 is a significant clean up on old ARM cruft (usually exposing too much of the underlying hardware in the ISA, or design decisions that in the long term weren't as useful as they seemed at the time (like a 4-bit predication field in the ISA)).

It's just that there aren't any $5 ARMv8 SoCs available right now. I'm sure in a year or two they will appear with the A53. Right now, 4 A7s is a massive step up.

What happened to VC5?

Yeah, I was expecting either the Model C, or the Master myself.

I hope that means the Master is still to come. Probably in 2017 as rumoured before. This is more of a "pin compatible SoC upgrade" path.

I doubt it fixes the USB issues, although maybe the additional CPU resources will improve overall USB2 performance to meet the theoretical capability.

I think other boards are better for NAS usage.

Most ARM SoCs advertising high clock speeds are actually advertising max turbo speeds - just because that TV stick is saying it's running at 2GHz doesn't mean it gets there often.

Turbo is a great thing, but it's not for long workloads, it's for "race to sleep" workloads.

This is a $5 SoC, so you've got to expect some reduction in specifications given the rest of the board, and the large amount of support for the ecosystem.

People have said this new Pi is overclockable to 1100MHz too, more seems likely (very early days).

The A20 has half the A7 cores that this new Pi has.

The good thing is that this new Pi will force all the competitors to bump their specs a little where they are weaker. Maybe the next Cubieboard will use an A80.

But having a board where everything just works and is well supported is well worth it when your free time is valuable.