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.

Hear hear! Now let's go turn ourselves in for infringing on Webster's famous API for the English Language.

Fucking lawyers - Do we think we can just go around using words without paying their rightful owner?

So overall the fast results are what we want out of a search engine- the answer.

This. Giving me the correct answer doesn't count as "anti-competitive", it means doing their job well.

I don't go to Google to save me typing in "www.m-w.com" and then searching for a word - I go to Google because it gives me more useful answers than searching directly on almost any specific site. Merriam-Webster considers itself too digified to define "blumpkin" for me; UrbanDictionary has no such qualms. UD doesn't do so well in explaining "Pepe" to me - KnowYourMeme has the whole history of it even giving credit to the original author. None of the above has a good definition for "Mary Sue", but TV Tropes nails it.

But, instead of searching on MW... Then UD... Then KYM... Then TT, and then who knows what else - I can just type it into Google, and bam! It gives me exactly what I wanted to know, and often does so faster than most ad-riddled pages can even load.

Companies need to quit whining about free exposure, and instead focus on doing their own jobs well. If anyone really want to vanish from the Googleable internet, they always have the option of setting noindex/nofollow on their pages. Huh, I don't see many of these righteously indignant sites doing that, I wonder why not?

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.

Does anyone have a plan for this?

Your phrasing implies that we need to have some sort of centrally managed plan to handle the fallout of disruptive technologies. We don't, and realistically, can't.


It's fine to say; "Well, just learn something new" when it's not you with a family and a tight budget having to jump into the marketplace and retrain while competing with people who've done that task their entire life

I run the risk of someone creating a "real" AI today that can out-code any human on the planet. That would instantly put my entire profession on the unemployment line. I have hedged against that threat by choosing positions that allow me to diversify my skillset (both in terms of experience and education), making me qualified to work in any of a dozen broad categories of "professional" positions.

I would recommend cabbies (and Uber drivers, as you point out) start doing the same today - They can already see the writing on the wall, and still have time to act accordingly.

The world changes around us. We need to adapt, or die - Simple as that, really.

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.

Wait... Some companies actually give programmers a drug test?

And they actually manage to find any? Wow, impressive! Or rather, can I get a list of these companies so I can short their stock, since they apparently resort to people that desperate for a job?

Our (illegal) drugs-of-choice vary, but I can count the number of programmers I know who don't use anything on one finger (and even she has "tried" weed, "back in college").

dimwit, how else will people pay attention? inconveniencing the idle rich IS THE WHOLE POINT of non-violent protesting.

"Non-violent protest" doesn't include flipping cars, burning tires, beating up drivers, and blocking emergency vehicles,

As for "the whole point" - Yeah, look how well shutting down critical infrastructure worked for PATCO.

I feel sympathetic toward cabbies, I really do - Their industry basically died overnight because someone came up with an alternative that makes them irrelevant. All the world's protectionist systems of placards and medallions and special licensing, "poof", suddenly worthless.

Finding new lines of work sucks, no doubt. But when you manufacture buggy-whips, you implicitly depend on the continued use of horse-based transportation to make your living. Similarly, when you deliver low quality rudely-delivered service at a high price and with upcharges for the top 90% of destinations - You implicitly depend on a complete lack of any viable alternatives.

I believe GP was talking about home users, and it seems pretty obvious that he was.

I am the GGP, and specifically mentioned "coworkers". The GP said nothing to change that context.

Yeah, fantastic suggestion! Say, could you just convince my boss, his boss, and three more layers up, that we need to:

• Scrap $300k in MS licensing and established server deployments,
• Spend a year or two rewriting everything we have in production that depends on Windows or IIS,
• Replace or retrain our entire netops, infosec, and helpdesk with people who know Linux,
• Retrain 15k users and watch their productivity drop to a crawl for at least six months...

...Just so we can switch to an OS that "cares"? ;)

I like Linux. I run Linux at home. But I make my living putting up with Windows.

This. People just looove it when their homepage or search provider changes. Why, just the other day, a coworker told me how much he loved Bing coming back after every round of Windows updates.

Oh, no, wait, he switched to Chrome because he hated it so much. Take the hint, Marissa.

As an aside, though - Does anyone actually allow Java to update itself? Of all the common self-updating software out there, Java easily wins as the single most obnoxious. Aside from hijacking the top result when I type "update" in the start menu's search bar... Aside from running all the fucking time rather than just when Java starts... Aside from nagging the user more relentlessly than even the far more legitimate Windows update (Bing aside) - It actively breaks shit every time it updates. You had one job, Larry...

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.