I’m hoping to do this as minimal as possible as the “Linux pc” is just an old raspberry pi.

Wait… Isn’t that bad… Going from 10:1 to 60:1???

What if I’m programming in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_(programming_language)

Years ago when I was living with my parents, my mother was at work, I worked nights. She called me during the day and this was the conversation :

Mom: I need a favor, go into my bedroom, get my cell phone and bring it to me.

Me : you are are work right?

Mom: yeah

Me: you can’t make personal calls at work so you must be on break right?

Mom: what? Just bring me my phone!

Me: if you are on break, how are you calling me?

Mom: oh shit, nevermind I found it.

Yeah, I remember having a full desktop to show videos back in the day(like pre-2005ish). I knew it was more powerful than it seemed but it appears I underestimated it.

Out of curiosity, I discovered there were other isos on the SD card I could install but the “noob” installer took literally hours to initialize, is that a sign the SD card is going bad?

I’ll have to see if I have a way to flash a micro SD to do that

Wow, I didn’t think it would be able to do that much. What “personal things” are you talking about? Storing files? Personal email? Video server? Actually using it as a personal computer? Don’t have to say what exactly it is just a rough idea would be nice.

Would I be able to run a gui remotely from a Windows pc? I have extra monitors(yes kinda a tech hoarder) but don’t have space to setup another full setup. It has raspbian installed(or the pi-hole version they used to have), will have to guess on the password but I think I remember it.

My initial plan was to remotely access it via ssh with putty on the windows system.

Long story, my shield decided to have its network die. I reset it. I replaced the network cable and changed ethernet ports on router but nothing would work (wasn’t even getting the lights on the ports). I didn’t know if it was the shield or the router so I found the pi and plugged it in. Network immediately worked so I know it’s the shield. I was able to find an old Asus nexus Google TV box which “solved” the shield and was thinking of using the pi for something other than just sitting in a box under a bunch of wires.

I’ll have to check out the ram. I know it boots and network and hdmi work but will have to dig out a spare keyboard to try to log in and see what it can do

Oh I didn’t even think of that… That’s evil but I kinda like the idea. That said there a notice that there are issues would be nice. Imagine applying for webdev role and on the first page it says “there are several issues with this application, being able to find the errors and correct them is considered a part of the interview process”

Nope, junior software developer of an insurance firm…

I cause a genocide of white cheddar cheeze-its… Does that count?

So many job applications suck…i tried to fill out one with a required “social media link” but didn’t have any place to enter one. It had “LinkedIn url” and the next line was a text box, it had “github url” and the next line was a text box, it had “social media link” and the next line was just a submit button… There was literally no box to enter a social media url. I tried chrome, Firefox and Vivaldi because the job seemed good with good pay but literally impossible to apply to.

Nevermind I don’t know why you need LinkedIn, github, and social media links to evaluate me as an employee but atleast give me a way to enter the data you want.

Wait… Ups drivers get $46 a hour? Where?

In my last company we used a system called windchill. Technically they had folders. Previously we used a different system. But when we switched to windchill no one had time to actually sort and organize the tens of thousands of documents. As a result everything just got dropped in the root folder.

To make it worse there was no enforced naming scheme… Plan for… Thing’s plan… Protocol for execution of thing… Ip of thing… Thing’s up… Protocol of thing… Plan of thing… All valid. And in 5 years when your 3rd replacement is trying to find it… Alcoholism is a serious disorder

Yeah effectively using comments as psuedocode

Proper comments describe why… For example say you are using an api which requires guids and your application doesn’t care are collisions as much so just use int id’s.

You could add in a comment like

// creating a guid to interface with special api.

But just saying

// generate guid

Means nothing, your method should be generate_guid() or GenerateGuid(). Your comment is repeating.

Or this is probably going to hit my last company at some point, there was a system to read a serial number. They also wanted a “status” on the screen to verify the system was connected and running properly but both these values came over same signal wire. Depending on your exact ms timing sometimes you would read the status as the serial number. Another programmer wrote a check to verify the serial number did not start with OK. The comment added was

// add on 11/15/23 by Initials

With no other details. The serial numbers were 8 numeric digits. Someone won’t know the history and delete this seemingly useless check and cause a 10s of 1000s of dollars in loss

Last year during the Christmas shutdown at work I actually made a crud application to track naughty vs nice children for santa, yes it was sql based(entity framework) with >90%test coverage (tests based off a in memory database) and with a winforms ui(what I had to use at work).

I might revisit and refactor it this year come to think of it.

I worked in a heavily regulated industry. Everything required a manual test. Let’s say you have an employee ID that is 10 digits long which they use to log in. You had to have some else (couldn’t be the developer) to write a series of tests, get those tests approved by 5 people(with specific titles) then a third person to execute the test, then the second person had to write a report saying it all passed, then that report had to be approved by the same 5 people.

That typically wasn’t the delay. The delay was to execute the tests we needed to stop production. That typically was a 6 week wait(unless urgent for “reasons”) and changes like “I will drop scrap by 83%” was typically told wait till July 4th or Christmas breaks. Why? Because production would be down for 3-4 days typically. Someone had to start the system, ok no entry produces error, executor and developer have to sign a physical paper, restart the whole system, now an entry of 1 digit produces an error, sign the form, repeat for all digit quantities up to 9, repeat for all digit quantities up to the choosen value(based on severity if an issue occurred), 2 people sign for each one, system restarted between each. If you had say an enter button and a cancel button each had to be checked for each quantities of digits. Oh but wait what if someone just types there name… Now repeat everything for alphabet values… What if someone does combination, more tests, more restarts, more signing.

Reports easily surpassed 1000 pages, no one really had time to check all that so I saw so many missed signatures and missed tests. I asked the “senior validation expert” can I just automate a lot of these tests using unit tests and attach a computer generated report of all tests passing and the source code of the tests? " the response I got was" what’s a unit test? "they still don’t use any of them to my knowledge.