What? What editor do you know that just messes with the amount of whitespace in files? It's clearly not designed for programming with. The only common change that is done is to change the width of a tab character, which doesn't affect the code at all, just how it's displayed. It'll run fine either way. I don't understand how you would break a Python program in this way, and if you did, it would be the editor doing something insane.

That is not considered a bad design choice by the PSF (or me, for that matter). It's a great idea that increases readability by decreasing excess clutter in your code. I simply don't understand how people can not like it.

I haven't seen that shift of programmers at all, and I completely disagree. They fixed a lot of core issues such as print being a statement rather than a function, loads of the core types returning lists rather than generators, division being float by default, annotations, extended iterable unpacking, nonlocal, and much more. Unicode was a big one and it's excellent - modern languages need to work with Unicode, it's crazy that the kind of built in support that 3.x has isn't standard across the board.

Please, tell me what 'really poor' design decisions were not fixed with 3.x?

Python breaking compatibility with version 3 was a brilliant idea. It meant they could fix the (few) poor design decisions they made early on. This means instead of getting yet another language or having to deal with annoying stuff, instead it's just a small move to 3.x, which is excellent.

If they emit warnings, that annoys the rest of the users who don't need them. Why does every distro have to suit everyone? No, Arch is not designed to be user friendly, but that's the point - it expects you to know what is going on and deal with it, that way it can be simpler and more efficient for those users who are happy with that. If you don't like that, use a different distro - that's not being lazy or rude, it's just making the operating system that certain people want, not yet another one aimed at the average user. There is nothing wrong with doing that, but it's not what Arch does.

As to your examples, it's entirely possible that the first case could have broken stuff, I guess. I'm no expert, although the second case doesn't make sense as Arch doesn't ship with any audio system by default, so 'switching' doesn't make sense.

Thanks for restating the same argument everyone always gives. Yes, fragmentation causes problems for Linux, at the same time, it's also what makes it awesome for the people that use it. If I didn't have the choice and power that Linux gives me, I wouldn't be using it.

To be fair, they make it quite clear that you should check that before doing updates - and that it's not a hands-off distro, it's quite clearly stated that Arch is a distro where you will need to get your hands dirty at times - they are proud of that, and it's what the aim is. Also, I don't think I've seen anything that can break your system unless you try and force the upgrade when it fails.

My reply was aimed at the line "If you want IPv6, you can readily get it." in the parent.

I hate this crap - auto complete tells you that lots of people have searched for that - it doesn't make it fact. The issue here is people seeing auto complete and thinking it means anything other than lots of people have searched for it. This should be thrown out.

I disagree - in some areas, no ISP that offers IPv6 covers the area, and tunnels are hard to set up (for average joe) and relatively slow.

Not everything can be to everyone's taste, unfortunately. Portal is great, and I'd think more people than average will like it, but obviously pleasing everyone is a pipe dream.

Isn't it a little awesome that he has become a (general) idol? I mean, everyone cries out that the current celebrity culture is terrible, and yet here we have a man who is everything everyone should aspire to, despite terrible adversity, and he is in popular TV shows, doing adverts. Isn't that a good thing? I am glad that we are moving on and people who in the past would only be icons for the geeky, or those in the field can become icons for everyone, because it means we are focusing on better things in people.

Sounds like success to me!

Definitely - a few of the friends who have tried Portal have fallen at the first hurdle - gamers don't think of character movement as a skill, as it's so heavily ingrained after playing a few games, but I've seen people try to play Portal and have issues running into walls and stuff, just unable to figure out movement with a stick (weirdly, a lot of people I know actually do better with WASD than a controller, which seems counter-intuitive to me). Another thing that really gets people is moving and looking around at the same time, which is vital in many games. The upside is, that if you can get past that, Portal eases you in pretty gently.

As a note, that's not to imply I am advocating evangelising gaming - gaming is great, and if she is (even slightly) interested herself, great. If she has truly no interest, then don't try and force her to get into it. It might just not be her thing.