If you want to do any amount serious work such as,

- Write hundreds of e-mails
- Write 10k long reports
- Code 8 hours a day

You better be using a qwerty keyboard !

I owned touch screen phones, tablets and devices in between such as MS Surface. Non of them are great for any serious work.

Call me outdated, I still use a BlackBerry for writing/drafting e-mails on the go. And yes, I am a keyboard hoarder... every time I come across decent one, I just buy it. My current favourite being MS Ergo 4000.

Linux on desktop... finally arrives in 2017 !!!

I mean seriously... M$ is doing a great job on that... check here:
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/...

Not trolling... but I think it is time and right thing to do.

Don't misinterpret me... I worked in a Java house for 4 years. For the life of me, I can't understand why anyone should go for Java solutions at this day and age. Perhaps, it solved some problems around the time it was introduced. Fast forward to today, I find it overly complex, largely irrelevant and struggling to keep up.

I guess Java will haunt all of us for another few decades, similar to Cobol, simply because of Android platform and many other critical software written around it, and the large pool of (barely talented) developers. Good luck!

Floppy's ultimate demise came about because of USB technology, which was superior and did much more than just a storage technology.

Somebody please enlighten me, what's the technology making 3.5mm redundant at this point?

I worked in an Agile house for 4 years.... and went to local Agile meetups regularly. Overall, my opinion about Agile is bit.. hmmm.. Fragile!

Firstly, Agile is good at getting half-baked products out of the door. Two (2) week cadences, where features to be build, demo and shipped is quite narrow... and you get time to barely test it. Yes, you can demo it is working, but it is the tip of the ice berg. How the feature interact with other features or infrastructure is the iceberg what's below the water surface.

Secondly, Agile is good at sweeping hard work under the carpet. For an example, because there is no centralised architectural thinking or planning, every developer goes wild and build their own architectures... half of them are duplicates doing similar functions (and not to forget, poorly tested). Things like database or API designs generally takes lot of planning and thought process. By design, Agile doesn't allow such lengthy ventures.

Thirdly, Agile not scalable. Agile works best for smaller website projects.. say 5-6 page dynamic websites. If you are to do a huge mission critical project involving 100+ templates, 20+ devs so on... Agile will fail half way point, and you will have to downgrade to Waterfall, and pretend you are doing Agile to your client... which method I christened as "ScrumFall" (after James Bond movie).

Overall, I promote "prototype, maturity and ship" model (I don't know there is an actual name for this). Basically, try out prototypes first.. if it works, then promote to regular development, and finally production. I see JavaScript & C++ language committees adopting a similar work cycle. Overall, they are doing pretty well IMO, with regular releases and good quality.

I have used CoreMedia CMS in my last company. It is an enterprise grade software with lot of bells and whistles. Over the years, it has become better. However, it is somewhat rigid, and not customisation friendly.. this can become a huge problem if your client is a news media outfit trying to reach social media market urgently with crazy creative ideas. Scaling comes at a huge cost, so be ready to buy/rent lots of servers. Furthermore, whole software is written in Java/Spring... which may explain the drain on resources... and if Java is your cup of tea, you may like it (Disclaimer: I hate Java with a passion). And finally, licenses are quite pricey.. so this solution will only work for giant corporations with sizable lucre under their HQ.

Then I happened to work at a hand's distance with WordPress earlier this year. Security is a major problem as many highlighted. There are other administrative issues (e.g. can't make admin accounts for tech staff to troubleshoot things). Unless you have a caching mechanism on the front, expect 10+ seconds of latency YMMV.

In my opinion, there are no one size fits all CMS in the market at this point. All comes with some "gotcha".

Loved playing around with GW-BASIC in early 90s in an early 286 or so.
Then enjoyed coding in C/C++ in university years.
Recently re-discovering my passion to program with JavaScript.

I've tried many other ugly languages, like Java, Ruby, Python, and some proprietary languages came with corporate software. Naturally, they make you start hating programming in general. YMMV on this.

Bridgekeeper: What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
King Arthur: What do you mean? An African or European swallow?

Spoiler: This is from the bridge scene of Monty Python's Holy Grail !

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

Like it or not, you got to survive dick-head bosses, power struggles and office politics to have a decent career (more than your coding skills or knowledge)

After all, we gonna see linux on every desktop once M$ rolls out linux bash on win10.
Heck.. I never thought this could ever happen.

First and foremost, this is old news!
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

Former developer and operations (DevOps) guy here, worked for many financial and media outlets; now working as a consultant for remote clients in Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore. By nature of my work, I handle thousands of e-mails, hundreds of voice calls, text messages, WhatsApp, Skype etc on the go.

As for why I still use a BlackBerry:
1. Solid communication device - There is nothing like a BB when it comes to holy trinity (E-mail, voice, text). BlackBerry Hub is an unique app that aggregates all communication details into one place, haven't seen anything like it in other devices.
2. Keyboard - Do I need say more ?
3. Sturdy design - I drop it everyday, still it is working without a hitch
4. Long battery life - Easily a day, if I push, about day-and-half on a single charge
5. Stable OS - It has QNX with proper multi tasking
6. Basic useful/stable apps

I always get slagged off by colleagues, friends and pretty much everybody else for carrying a BB. Fact of the matter is, I am an old geezer with sausage fingers, suffering from early stages of rheumatoid arthritis. As a result, I can't type on touch screens like others. I am not big into social media stuff or any young & hip trends that require all these fancy apps. I am comfortable with the basic & stable apps comes with the OS.

There is nothing like writing a typo free e-mail/text (especially to a client), and ensure intended message is communicated correctly. In that respect, BB is a godsend !

Ancient Greece had a direct democracy, but as the population gets bigger, country has to move to a representatives system.

As for ideas, how about using a Block Chain system similar to BitCoin to counter voting frauds?

psychology
control systems (excluding a few topics, most are un-applicable and highly theoretical)
behavioural science
statistics
economics (more of a snake oil)
climate science
any theoretical disciplines
and the list goes on...

Don't get me wrong.. I am a man of science. As of late, word "science" is used and abused quite badly. For me, it is always the "scientific method" that counts. Body of knowledge is always contestable, unless it has survived the test of time.

p.s.
One time, someone asked me "why science can't answer XYZ?".
My answer was "Science is a methodical way of exploring the natural world, and not a corpus of answers for all questions out there".