Decades ago when magazines were gushing about the prospects of RAD, VB6 was released and had rapid uptake by all sorts of amateurs and non-programmer types. Here on slashdot, and by many professional programmers, it was widely panned as enabling all sorts of low-quality garbage because it very much lowered the barrier to entry, and could generate most of the boiler-plate code. This which was definitely resented by many. But all sorts of useful, one-off utilities (loads of shareware) were done using it by people who would not call themselves programmers. Drag and drop GUI form design and event-driven programming was a powerful concept that is now fairly mainstream post VB6, although I think many VB6 users disappeared after MS abandoned the platform and users when it came out with VB.net.

Having used AI coding assistants (currently using four different models concurrently) for the last few months, I believe Coding LLM agents are a modern incarnation of VB6. While many here on slashdot poo poo them, in the last few months I've managed to finally do several projects that I've been wanting to tackle for years but just lacked the knowledge and time. I haven't let the bots do everything, but in guiding them carefully I've learned a lot and got things done. I've added features I need to existing open source software, written in languages I have no experience in and toolkits I've never used before. I've used them to convert entire projects from one language to another, or upgrade them to new language and toolkit versions. Recently I was able to bootstrap my learning of KiCad using these tools. LLM agents can create schematics and board layouts from scratch for me to get me started. Also more impressive, some of them can take an image of a component and description of the physical layout (either my own description or from the data sheet) and create both a custom symbol and footprint for it, if it wasn't already in the KiCad libray.

In short I've made more progress on my projects in the last three months than I have in the entire year before this. Granted while what I'm doing is related to my profession, but I'm not paid to develop software, so I'm not a software (or electrical) engineer nor a professional programmer.

Like VB6, we can ask, is this a good thing? Will it dilute the profession?

My fedora workstation boots today in about the same time as it did 10 or even 20 years ago of in honest. UEFI is definitely not fast to get to the grub screen. But after that takes about 30 seconds to get to the login screen which isn't impressive IMO. Done of that is zfs importing and getting the root filesystem up.

Windows 11 boots in about half the time. Although I just worked on a laptop that windows 10 took about 5 minutes to boot and 10 minutes to get usable.

I assume you also stay off the roads and avoid using any and all government-provided services as well. And you're not connected to your local government-owned utilities either.

Yes we used to think that. Now we know that there are many chemicals that at low does accumulate in the body to detrimental affect. For example, PFAS chemicals and also the chemicals mentioned in the study: BPA and BPS.

You really think things will go back to normal in three years, don't you? You really are unable to see the damage that has been inflicted on your nation, much of which will never be repaired. Particularly the damage to the constitution. The last year was a reminder to us all that the constitution is just a piece of paper; it has no power to save us except as people in power (and indeed all people) voluntarily honor it. The DOJ is actively working to circumvent the limits of the constitution and in fact is currently in literal violation of the law, yet courts are powerless to do anything other than pass rulings (by design), and congress also sits idle and does nothing to check the executive. The system only worked before because people, especially presidents, agreed to abide by it. Not anymore. Don't think for a moment this isn't doing permanent damage to the Republic. I thought the Star Wars prequels were pretty bad (and they are), but Lucas' story of the fall of the republic and the rise of the empire have real parallels in what we see happening today. Trump may be a rambling old man, but he's surrounded by people who aren't rambling and aren't senile, who very much want all of what he has said he wants, including "having Greenland." That's why we take it seriously.

Multilateral agreements, be they about peace or trade, are dead, even if a sane guy gets in the white house in a few years. No one wants to take the risk of signing something with the US only to have it be torn up when the next crazy guy gets elected. Free trade and globalization is dead. There will be no new north American free trade agreement. No one in the administration wants it, and congress doesn't want it either. By all accounts the president wants everyone to self destruct, sowing division, and then he'll come in and steal what's left for himself. That's the way he ran his businesses, and that's the way he runs the country.

There are no winners. Things have been fracturing for decades, but Trump finally threw the brick that shattered it. Whether it was inevitable or not, you'll forgive us if we aren't exactly thrilled about him ripping it all down.

Diesel heaters have been used on ICE heavy trucks for decades for cold starting. Webasto made their name in North America selling such heaters. They are used on all sorts of heavy vehicles and agricultural machines where there's no electricity to run a block heater. Webasto isn't the only game in town either.

Actually it turns out it's not only been deemed practical, but Webasto is selling a product that does exactly this, made exclusively for EV vehicles such as vans: https://www.webasto.com/en-int...

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. When you combine cabin heating with warming the entire battery system, you can get full EV range and fast charging at the coldest temperatures for the cost of a tiny amount of diesel per day. Seems like a great idea for the small amount of time each year it's necessary.

Wow. Where to start. Huge diesel tanks? You do realize bus depos already have diesel tanks fill stations? Further we're not talking large tanks. 5 gallons that you can fill with a jerry can for goodness sake. Does Webasto mean anything to you? If not then you really don't know what I'm talking about. Also the web is full of cheap diesel air heaters (no I'm not talking about construction heaters) that work well and are quite efficient. In fact I've seen some redneck videos, probably intending to be anti-EV where they pipe the air duct from one into the interior of an EV. Which in honesty isn't the stupidest idea.

Somehow I think add-on heaters like this, which are already widely used on heavy vehicles with a fluid cooling system (just like they use in battery packs) are a lot cheaper than heated charging buildings.

Do a bit of research before you post so you'll know what you're talking about. Stop assuming that what you know is the way things must be. If EVs are to be successful in colder climates, we will need hybrid heating systems like this.

One other thing was that Elektrotrucker found that regenerative braking was a bit sketchy in icy conditions. But that's not all that different from drivers having to be careful with jake brakes in icy conditions too.

No it's just that the temperatures in Norway's major cities, being coastal, are more moderate than a lot of the coldest climates in North America.

Elektrotrucker just documented a long-haul electric semi trip through Scandinavian countries. In Sweden he had relatively warm temps, only -5 or so. By the time he ended up in Finland it was -35. He had a major problem keeping the cabin warm at those temps. Battery thermal management systems consumed a lot of power too. His efficiency dropped from about 1 kwh/km in warmer places (Germany) to 1.6 kwh/km, which is actually not bad considering. He was able to charge along the way and he wasn't parking this rig indoors every 6 hours to charge it.

As I said in another post, having small diesel heater (air or fluid exchange like all the youtubers are hawking these days) to heat the cabin and also the batteries would be a great way to get full utility out of EVs in harsh climates. I'm really surprised bus companies and electric semi truck makers aren't considering this. Possibly the way the laws are written they'd not qualify as an emissions free vehicle. If so, short-sighted.

Don't laugh. Diesel heaters are a good solution to keep the batteries and cabin warm. I'm sure some say that's crazy and defeats the purpose of using an EV in the first place, and is an unacceptable compromise, but I strongly disagree. I'm really surprised EVs in cold climates don't embrace this. Sure burning diesel makes EV people uncomfortable, but it's a lot less diesel than an ICE bus would burn, and it lets the EV system work at its most efficient state all winter long. Such a hybrid system makes a lot of sense and is still an overall net positive.

Also Qt's biggest downside is it's a C++ toolkit and to use it from other languages requires wrapper layers that instantiate and hold the C++ objects while exposing essentially a C-level interface to those objects. This means in Python, every time you instantiate a Qt object you really are dealing with two objects: the python one and the C++ one. I've run into bugs where the C++ object's lifespan got out of sync with the python object and led to crashes. Also the C++ nature of Qt means often your code is like transliterated C++ than native idiomatic Python for example.

GTK+ was always built out in C, which lent itself better to wrapping in other languages (including C++!). GTK+ was always my preferred toolkit because of this. However with GTK+ 4, their design philosophy is starting to diverge from mine with things like hamburger menus and client-side integrated titelbars. GTK+ is really focused on what Gnome wants first and foremost. It used to be the Gimp Toolkit, but now it's the Gnome Toolkit.

Yes and that's how it's done on Wayland. I don't see any reason why kwin on X11 couldn't do something similar except that you'd have to get all the various programs that want to see the screen to cooperate.

With Wayland, the only way to get an image of the screen is through the compositor through a somewhat well-defined interface (works across several different compositors), so that's what Zoom, OBS, screenshot programs all have to use. But on X11 all the apps just grab screen shots directly from the X server currently. At this stage a standard for X11 just isn't going to happen. Besides that, what would you do if you didn't have a compositor running? Would require fallback code. I just don't see anyone getting real excited about that. Whereas on Wayland these features can be added by the compositor for free as it were, and the screen sharing apps don't have to know anything about it or do anything special.

No, not really. X11 simply has no architecture for that sort of separation, and no way to screen share anything other than what is in the frame buffer.

Oh I see. It's not an option in Dolphin, it's in Plasma settings under Workspace->General behavior.