IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

Deathwing

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Why do fringe OSes like FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Solaris still exist? And why do the maintainers of these OSes do stupid shit like allow you to update your ports tree, bricking it because your version isn't supported anymore?

I swear 95% of my headaches come these.
 

Aldarion

Egg Nazi
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Perl is not fine.
Shut your whore mouth.

Perl is properly viewed as an alternative to Python, and in that context its undeniably better.

Unless you hate freedom and flexibility, and really enjoy languages that enforce particular rules for whitespace characters.
 

ex-genj

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Apparently the freedom to have shithole formatting. PrettierJS has been lifechanging being a lead developer.
 

Asshat wormie

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Aldarion is a biologist. Back in the day Pearl was the only go to for computational bio. But now all the cool kids use Python and Pearl is what the grandpas use :D
 

alavaz

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Why do fringe OSes like FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Solaris still exist? And why do the maintainers of these OSes do stupid shit like allow you to update your ports tree, bricking it because your version isn't supported anymore?

I swear 95% of my headaches come these.

Solaris isn't quite as prolific as it used to be, but I bet you there are plenty of big business and government institutions still running it, though on SPARC systems. Solaris on x86 seems like a waste of time and money to me. FreeBSD on the other hand... well I guess some people just really like Unix.
 

Deathwing

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Solaris isn't quite as prolific as it used to be, but I bet you there are plenty of big business and government institutions still running it, though on SPARC systems. Solaris on x86 seems like a waste of time and money to me. FreeBSD on the other hand... well I guess some people just really like Unix.
Yes, our Solaris customers are government. We have thankfully droppen x86 support because the builders hardware died. But I'd just love to see the number of dollars behind this. What's the advantage of Solaris over common Linux distros?
 

Noodleface

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I've used Solaris the last two years and finally moved to RHEL. Ive never hated Unix so much as I did using Solaris
 

agripa

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My company got bought out by a PE firm and merged with another services company. I am wondering when is a good time to jump ship.
 

a_skeleton_03

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What's the advantage of Solaris over common Linux distros?
Not having to develop new software and go through the nightmare that is ATO and the rest of that. That’s really about it.

Some of the Solaris stuff runs some secret stuff that needs reliability and can’t be taken down easily to do an upgrade. Think of it like the .gov version of AS/400 and banking.
 

alavaz

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Solaris and SPARC were a very robust combo at the time. Sun was able to cut into the mainframe market as a reliable but cheap alternative. They also got in big with dotcoms. I think in the 90s almost all major dotcoms ran on Sun machines with Solaris.

They were also way ahead of their time with zones (jails in bsd). They basically did what Docker does now 15 years ago but no one was ready for it.

These days though, I don't see why anyone would stick with Unix unless it was a very niche use case or of course cost limitations. I love Solaris but I've got 10+ years with it so I know it in and out.
 

Aldarion

Egg Nazi
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What "freedom and flexibility" do you want that Python won't allow?
The freedom to format your code however you want, so it looks the way you want it to and is as readable as possible.

I mostly talk shit for fun when it comes to Python, like Mac vs PC, but in all seriousness I cant understand why anyone would support a language that enforces a particular format, especially one as shitty as Python's.

Next you'll tell me you prefer five spaces instead of tab!
 

Noodleface

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Well I wrote a perl script this week and honestly it went better than expected. Common mistake was forgetting the $ tag for scalars. Of course my script looks like a C programmer wrote it but I guess everything I write will always look like that
 

alavaz

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I mean I don't care all that much but sometimes when you're putting together a small script I'd rather do something like this in perl:

Code:
say("nah") if($a != 1);

versus pythons:

Code:
if a != 1:
    print ('nah')

Just quicker and easier but in the grand scheme not that big of a deal.
 

Deathwing

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You can one-line that in Python.

Code:
if False: print 'argle'
if True: print 'bargle'

Will only print bargle.
 

alavaz

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bad example on my part, but I guess the point I was trying to make is that sometimes I can put things that everything styleguide ever written says should be on separate lines into a single line if I happen to find it more readable at the time. Honestly, I might even be able to with python, I just don't know it as thoroughly as perl or bash.
 

Deathwing

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Yes, those are definitely PEP8 violations, but they do compile and run. I think PEP8 is wrong on some stuff too, but that's not a mark against the language itself.
 
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Ao-

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Fucking nerds talking the difference between python and perl and let an actual chance at advice be passed up? :|

My company got bought out by a PE firm and merged with another services company. I am wondering when is a good time to jump ship.
Best time to jump-ship is when you have a new gig lined up.

So, the real question is what do you want to do/what do you do, and can you do said thing at the merged services company?
Also, do you have any incentives to stay? Best time to jump ship is AFTER your bonus period, but you have quite a bit of competition because that's when most people start looking. If you have an in-demand skillset/work-experience, you could parlay starting a new position before bonuses are paid out into a signing bonus.