https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/qualcomm-cancels-windows-dev-kit-
pc-for-comprehensively-failing-to-meet-standards/

This was supposed to allow developers to work with Windows 11 on Arm
without having to buy an expensive laptop. It didn't go well. The lucky
few get to keep the hardware and get a refund. That reminds me of a couple
of times when I got obvious Chinese knockoffs from Amazon rather than the
name brand products I ordered. Amazon said "Don't bother sending the shit
back. We'll reverse the charge."

It's worrying since one would presume Qualcomm could build a PC using
their own processor. I'll stick with my new Linux on Arm toy.

On 18 Oct 2024 04:18:02 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/qualcomm-cancels-windows-dev-kit-pc-for-comprehensively-failing-to-meet-standards/>

This must mean that the momentum towards the adoption of Windows on
ARM must now be truly unstoppable!

/sarc

On Fri, 18 Oct 2024 05:00:16 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On 18 Oct 2024 04:18:02 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/qualcomm-cancels-windows-dev-
kit-pc-for-comprehensively-failing-to-meet-standards/>
>
> This must mean that the momentum towards the adoption of Windows on ARM
> must now be truly unstoppable!
>
> /sarc

I don't know how well it works but this time around they do have an
emulator to run the x64 programs people expect.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/iot/deployment

..NET works on Arm but so far there is the same problem as .NET in Linux --
no feasible way to port GUIs. WPF and WinForms are heavily dependent on
the Windows OS and MS doesn't seem to be going in that direction with
MAUI, only Android, iOS, and macOS.

On 18 Oct 2024 05:14:49 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> .NET works on Arm but so far there is the same problem as .NET in Linux
> -- no feasible way to port GUIs.

Ironic, isn’t it, that Microsoft, the world’s foremost proponent of a GUI-
centric OS, can’t figure out the right way for its developers to implement
GUIs, after so many decades of trying.

rbowman wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:

> On Fri, 18 Oct 2024 05:33:31 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On 18 Oct 2024 05:14:49 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> .NET works on Arm but so far there is the same problem as .NET in Linux
>>> -- no feasible way to port GUIs.
>>
>> Ironic, isn’t it, that Microsoft, the world’s foremost proponent of a
>> GUI-
>> centric OS, can’t figure out the right way for its developers to
>> implement GUIs, after so many decades of trying.
>
> It says a lot that VS Code which is used by about 70% of developers
> according to StackOverflow is based on Electron.

Is that a lowest-common-denominator IDE or programmer's editor?

I've used Visual Studio a fair amount, Eclipse a little, and NetBeans a little.
Oh, Qt Creator to lay out dialogs and, in Windows, to do some debugging.
Still, most of my work is done using a terminal, vim/gvim, automake or meson,
and cgdb (gdb wrapper).

I don't need no funking Intellisense. :-)

--
I went home with a waitress,
The way I always do.
How I was I to know?
She was with the Russians too.
I was gambling in Havana,
I took a little risk.
Send lawyers, guns, and money,
Dad, get me out of this.
-- Warren Zevon, "Lawyers, Guns and Money"

On 18 Oct 2024 19:10:33 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> The problem with being a widely used OS with thousands of 'must have'
> applications is you wake up to find yourself in a straight jacket.

The *nix ecosystem also has thousands of “must have” applications, and it
is older than Windows or even MS-DOS. Yet it has evolved in a much more
graceful fashion.

The difference is that Microsoft’s platform has been victim to a long
succession of short-term, profit-driven decisions by managers and bean-
counters, that have totally bit-rotted away any conceptual integrity the
architecture may originally have had. This happened to some extent with
the proprietary Unixes, too, but they are all dead now.

So *nix as a living, breathing and still evolving concept, lives on as
Linux today. And it is now Windows that is desperately trying to copy from
Linux.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>On 18 Oct 2024 19:10:33 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> The problem with being a widely used OS with thousands of 'must have'
>> applications is you wake up to find yourself in a straight jacket.
>
>The *nix ecosystem also has thousands of “must have” applications, and it
>is older than Windows or even MS-DOS. Yet it has evolved in a much more
>graceful fashion.
>
>The difference is that Microsoft’s platform has been victim to a long
>succession of short-term, profit-driven decisions by managers and bean-
>counters, that have totally bit-rotted away any conceptual integrity the
>architecture may originally have had. This happened to some extent with
>the proprietary Unixes, too, but they are all dead now.
>
>So *nix as a living, breathing and still evolving concept, lives on as
>Linux today. And it is now Windows that is desperately trying to copy from
>Linux.

Good post.

--
Joel W. Crump

Amendment XIV
Section 1.

[...] No state shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.

Dobbs rewrites this, it is invalid precedent. States are
liable for denying needed abortions, e.g. TX.

On Fri, 18 Oct 2024 15:48:40 -0400, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:

> Is that a lowest-common-denominator IDE or programmer's editor?
>
> I've used Visual Studio a fair amount, Eclipse a little, and NetBeans a
> little.
> Oh, Qt Creator to lay out dialogs and, in Windows, to do some debugging.
> Still, most of my work is done using a terminal, vim/gvim, automake or
> meson, and cgdb (gdb wrapper).

There is a vim extension so if I hit <Esc>:wall I don't leave pecker
tracks in the code. :) Searching, saving and pasting buffers including "*p
for the clipboard work as expected. There are one or two things that
weren't implemented the last time I tried to use them but it's being
enhanced all the time.

There are extensions for almost everything so I would say an IDE. I
started using it on a large Angular project so that was TypeScript, css,
and html. If you've ever worked with Angular you wind up with a directory
structure from hell. Having the visual tree and search capabilities helps.

I also use it for .NET programming with C#. It works well with Python.
Purists object because it's proprietary but Pylance works well.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/python/announcing-pylance-fast-feature-
rich-language-support-for-python-in-visual-studio-code/

For working with MicroPython on the Pico there is a MicroPico extension.

https://randomnerdtutorials.com/raspberry-pi-pico-vs-code-micropython/

After MicroPython is installed on the Pico it comes up as /dev/ttyACMxx.
The extension finds the device and enables copying the program. Code has a
console where debugging information appears. Thonny is the easiest IDE for
MicroPython but in the long run Code and the extension is more flexible.

For C++ Pico programming there is a Raspberry Pi Pico extension. It
handles the SDK for the project. Transferring the executable is a little
more complex. If you hold down the BOOTSEL button on the Pico when
plugging in the USB it comes up in the file system and you can copy it
directly out of the build directory. Plugging/unplugging gets old fast so
you can also use the debug interface. That requires GPIO pins on the RPi
or for a straight Linux box you can use another Pico.

Then there is the Swiss army knife PlatformIO

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=platformio.platformio-
ide

I use that with Arduino C++ code. That and VS Code are much better than
the Arduino IDEs. v2 improves on the original but is still lacking.

Oh, yeah Code works with Jupyter Notebooks.

That's only what I use. There are many more extensions for langiages. How
it performs does depend somewhat in the extension but the overall
experience doesn't change Versus learning the Arduino, Thonny, PyCharm,
Visual Studio, etc IDEs.

I do like Visual Studio for starting a dotnet project. You can do it all
with 'dotnet' on the command line but that means remembering all the
dotnet commands instead of filling in the blanks of a handy template.

> I don't need no funking Intellisense.

See above about remembering commands. Expand that to remembering stuff for
several different languages. Half the time I have to run 'man read' and
'man fread' to remember the correct order.

size_t fread(void *ptr, size_t size, size_t nmemb, FILE *stream);
ssize_t read(int fd, void *buf, size_t count);

All these years and I haven't figured out why they stuck the file
descriptor and stream pointer on opposite ends.

On Fri, 18 Oct 2024 21:36:22 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> The *nix ecosystem also has thousands of “must have” applications, and
> it is older than Windows or even MS-DOS. Yet it has evolved in a much
> more graceful fashion.

MS has done their best to preserve backward compatibility. Others aren't
as reluctant to break stuff.

I upgraded my work Windows box to Python 3.13 Wednesday. For a quick and
dirty test I went into a project that used CherryPy.

https://docs.cherrypy.dev/en/latest/

It's old and doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Django (and
opinions) and has been overtaken by Flask. It didn't work. Deep in the
bowels of CherryPy there was a reference to 'cgi'. When they shook the
tree for 3.13 'cgi' fell out.

Fuck! After a little side expedition to StackExchange and other sites,

'python -m pip install legacy-cgi'

rescued the day.

I realize it's a trade between move fast and break stuff and being stuck
in the mud forever but there are trades. It caught up in the last release
but QGIS wasn't happy with 'Wayland only'. It worked for what I was doing
but it did warn some dialogs might not work correctly. iirc Qt6 was
delayed a bit while the maintainers tried to get it to play nice.

I've said it before but my production Linux box is boring old Debian
because i don't like surprises.

On 19 Oct 2024 01:59:21 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> MS has done their best to preserve backward compatibility.

Sure they have. That’s why you don’t have companies sticking to old,
obsolete Windows versions for mission-critical systems, do you? Because
it’s so easy to keep upgrading to the latest versions, without breaking a
thing.