He followed me home, mommy, can we keep him?

No, dear, it’s against the law now.

Oh, I’ve got no complaints about the article or even its title. Few people learn Perl or Raku these days so it would be surprising for most people.

I thought it was interesting myself - Perl’s my go-to scripting language but I never used Raku. I might consider it next time I have a non-trivial scripting project.

I’m not sure why that’s surprising. Raku started out as Perl 6. Perl was designed primarily for use in a shell environment. Convenience features like the arguments to MAIN bit are in line with Perl philosophy.

Why do I care about the state of the code? It works. Perhaps all these people complaining are really just sick of your proselytization.

To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, “You only get one life. You can pick up five causes on any street corner.”

That’s cool and all, but why would I want to? Display systems are invisible when they work right, and X has worked right for me (save for some pre-EDID config issues) since the 90s. I run a program, it pops up on my screen and I interact with it. That’s all I ask of it.

None of the issues I’ve had with X (drivers, mostly) will be resolved with Wayland. For me, it’s a solution in search of a problem. The only reason I have even a passing interest is that it’s (theoretically) easier to maintain and change as computing changes.

I’ll move to Wayland when I have to, but right now there’s no reason to not use X.

I wasn’t clear. I meant that the issues with X crashing were usually driver issues. I have no idea about Wayland - I don’t use it since it doesn’t do what I want by design.

X does the job well enough to be invisible to most people. Yes, we need a clean start in order to move forward efficiently (lots of assumptions about computer displays from the 80s no longer apply), but it’s good enough for most people’s needs.

Why bother with a display server? Some people - like myself - actually use that functionality. It’s not part of the design for Wayland. Personally, I think that’s a mistake - especially as things become more cloud-based - but I’m obviously in the minority.

Wayland wasn’t the first attempt at replacing X. It has made more traction than any other attempt, though. There’s no real hurry - it’s not like X eats your babies and runs over your dog.

As far as robustness goes, that’s mostly the driver. I’ve yet to see a bulletproof display system, commercial or non-commercial. If you cut out driver issues, X is on par with or more stable than other systems. It had better be, given that it’s had decades of bug fixes with few new features to cause new bugs.

That, and they might be using Object Pascal. I don’t know (I haven’t touched Pascal in thirty years) but I would not be surprised if there’s some overhead there.

You’re listening to loud asshats and assuming they’re the majority. They’re not.

One day Wayland will reach a tipping point where it will replace X. Until then, most users will just stick with whatever their distro installs. Most people don’t care one way or another.

As for me, I’m probably gonna to stick with X until I have no choice because I actually use the network features that Wayland isn’t replacing. That doesn’t mean I hate Wayland - I’ve never used it - it just means it’s not the best software for me at this time. Most people never do anything with X that Wayland can’t do and won’t notice when it becomes the default.

Naw, we just buy ones where the lattice is diagonal.

In other words, we install X Windows.

Damn straight. MIT license is where it’s at.

What’s that I hear? It sounds like Grace Hopper cackling from the grave…

Alt-x shell-mode

There you go.

A1: Sure, but why would we want to?

A2: Yes, it’s :q![Enter]emacs[Enter]

It has one. It’s called evil-mode.

It might be too outdated to do major services, but it’s still fine for its original use - interfacing with electronic components.

You could build a weather station, monitor temperature and humidity in your attic and crawlspace, automatically water plants, etc. You don’t need much electronics knowledge for that sort of thing.

Ugh, I hate those things. I spend lots of effort cutting logs, sealing the ends, storing them where they can dry for a few years, and then my spindles are full of wormholes.

Sorry, too busy counting digital outputs on Modicon PLCs to think about that stuff.

Also indexes. Once you’ve been bitten enough by off-by-one errors this actually becomes a pretty handy double-check.

I’m not sure I understand. I’m working, so I’m charging for it.

There are a lot of different flavors of being on call.

I’m on call all the time. That just means I might get a phone call at any time and have to help one of our techs on a site. I don’t have to be near the office for that - it’s the knowledge in my head they want.

I charge regular time for it.

I had a partner when I opened a computer shop back in the day. Closest I’ve come to having sex with him was the time I saw his wife topless through the window.

Significant Other is much more specific.

Quite possibly. I wouldn’t know. Either way, Microsoft is an American company and plays by (or subverts, or writes) American rules.

Money is power. Get enough of either and you get corruption. Some people fight the system, some people learn to profit off it. If it doesn’t work that way in other parts of the world, then it’s because their systems work differently than ours.

Edit: quite possibly, not quit possibly. I’m a touch typist. I type every day. So why does my typing get worse with age?

Sure, but that’s how business works when you’re as big a company as Microsoft. And he was good at it.

I never said he was a nice guy, only that he was good at business.

That part of it, sure, but the guy was good at business and made some smart bets (that the microcomputer industry would explode, for one). Microsoft didn’t get as big as it has based only on their technical ability. They got there because they made the right decisions and were cutthroat against their competitors.

Bill was at the right time and right place, but he was also the right guy. You gotta have them all.

Hrm, so did Ramanujan really die or did he get snatched up by the Indian equivalent of the Invisible College?

Speaking as someone that grew up with records, 8-tracks, and cassettes: yes, yes it is.