Aa!

WSL is pretty good these days. Dual boot with Windows is still a pretty risky move with how easily Windows will overwrite your boot loader. I usually recommend you pick one os or the other rather than dual boot, so I’m in favor of WSL or virtualbox. Personally, I have never cared for needing to reboot just to switch operating systems. I tend to stick with one and the second one does nothing but take up disk partition space.

WSL lets you run both simultaneously without rebooting. Virtualbox lets you do the same with extra setup. Virtualbox makes it easier to do GUI setups than WSL does, and the network configuration is a little more obvious.

The best option is to get a second machine so you can run both. If that’s not an option, virtualbox is the better choice for learning. If you just want a Linux environment on your existing setup (similar to using a Mac) then WSL is usually good enough

Tabasco?

I prefer hot sauce on old pizza, not vinegar

You’re arguing opinions and trying to convince someone as if they are facts. There’s plenty to criticize about how AI is used, but it is a valuable tool for those that use it.

The amount of value it provides is very subjective, and even if you don’t find it useful, many others do. You might as well be trying to argue that you don’t like photography because it doesn’t provide the same experience of drawings and paintings. You wouldn’t be wrong to feel that way, but you would be wrong to tell someone else that they need to feel the way you do.

I couldn’t imagine tying myself to a single category for my whole career.

I’ve done front end, back end, database, web, Windows, and Linux development. If the job calls for learning something new, I’m on it. These days I’m making datacenter software for admins to use to manage their distributed applications. Before this, I was doing the same thing for factory automation at the edge.

Specializing has its value, but the more flexible you can be, the more useful you will be when the landscape changes and your boss suddenly asks you to set up an AI system or something.

I don’t understand how you got that from the image.

Both monitors on the senior side of the image are showing coding environments

Not quite this, but I did have a validation team that didn’t know when to quit.

The project was a Windows service, and they would be constantly opening bugs saying “program crashes when we deleted xxxxx.dll”

Like… Yeah. If you delete necessary libraries from the installation directory, the program won’t run correctly.

While Calvin in a Crowder meme is better than Crowder in a Crowder meme, maybe we just don’t use a Crowder meme at all?

There are several others that convey basically the same message

I feel like I was watching a very different situation than the rest of you were.

First off, the antiwork subreddit didn’t actually accomplish anything. It was mostly people complaining about bad/illegal practices at their jobs, and literally nothing changing.

Second, things didn’t die after that mod appearance. It drew attention to many users that the mods had a different goal than they did, but that didn’t change the atmosphere of the posts for very long. The work_reform sub did become more popular, and antiwork still kept getting just as many people complaining about bad practices.

And neither sub got people organized, neither sub changed attitudes, and neither sub made a difference.

I’m a programmer, which is in a pretty bad spot if you’re looking for work right now.

I was laid off in January and had to start looking again. While it’s important to be able to demonstrate your skills, the only way I got an interview for my new job was by being referred by an old colleague. Turns out maintaining relationships with people who can vouch for your work is a very big part of the process.

Imagine programming a computer without understanding the machine code that tells the CPU what to do

This is a symptom of the problem, I think. The idea of a social media platform being confusing enough to even need a new user guide will be enough to put people off.

I think the conversation needs to be framed differently. Most new users aren’t going to care about federation or decentralization when they first look at the platform. Don’t tell people to choose an instance, just recommend one that you think is good. At that point, the only thing that will draw people in is to see interesting conversations and communities when they visit.

To me, that means feeds that aren’t dominated by niche interests by default. Don’t get me wrong, I love Star Trek and I appreciate Linux for what it’s good at. But if I wasn’t into those things, I would think those are the only communities being represented here.

In that respect, the sorting algorithm needs work. The votes are a good way to start, but it’s become pretty clear that in the new user feed, some communities need to be weighted differently than others. The initial experience should probably show more actual conversations, and fewer communities that live off bot posts.

People were really excited about being able to make bots that repost entire rss feeds or repost other site content into everyone’s Lemmy front page, and those are fun projects to work on. But those need to have a lot smaller impact on the default feed that instances show

This is where the real problem is. Lemmy users act like there’s no issue, because you can block anyone you like, but to most users exploring the platform, that’s not helpful at all.

People generally don’t want to have to spend an hour making the feed into something useable, much less 6 months. What will draw people in is a feed that is already interesting and useful, which they can customize as they go.

I think the solution would be a set of default subscriptions, and even a default block list. Something that instance admins can curate themselves for the new user experience, but users can still customize as they see fit as they get to know the platform and communities

Last I heard, the rules were more strict on the redesign – but old Reddit still let you sign up without email

I’m fond of Go, which comes with its own auto formatter. It eliminates all arguments over style and format.

This is a great argument for using a pwa in Firefox rather than a native app. Your “in-app browser” can have ad block

Well I agree with most of that, and I suppose I should clarify that I’m not hostile to every decorative emoji someone uses in their text. My response is primarily towards the folks who use it instead of clear written communication, but it extends to people who overuse emoji to the point of making the text less readable.

Adding flavor or decorations (like the one used in this post) has rarely confused me, and I have no complaints there. But I’ll still disagree with you that using emoji ever makes things more clear than using words. I have certainly never had that experience

Emojis are a terrible method of communication. People have different interpretations of the same faces, and use them to mean different things. On top of that, they render differently depending on which device or service you are using, potentially sending a completely different message than you intended.

Tiny faces are ambiguous and usually don’t help clarify a message.

Just use your words, it makes for better communication. Spell out what you mean and there’s less room for misunderstanding.

What did I miss?

It mentions Daniel Radcliffe, is that just a vague reference to Harry Potter?

This is one of the things I like most about Go. Formatting is already defined and handled by go fmt. Takes out all format arguments before they start.

The drawback to this is lower new user engagement.

Face it, most people who come look at Lemmy aren’t looking to block several dozen accounts and communities to make the feed useable. Most don’t even want to look for communities at first, they just want to see what the vibe is on the main feed, and judge from there

If we want to draw in more users and increase engagement, we need to cater to more than just the people who are ready to customize everything before judging. There’s a few possible ways to go about this, but it’s very clear that “just block things you don’t like” isn’t going to be enough.

I realize the drawbacks to any solution here, but as it stands now, even when I block the bots I don’t like, there’s not enough real content and discussion, and my own engagement is decreasing. The solution is probably not to ban all these bots, but leaving it alone as it is isn’t working well either