Corps have a dev environment sitting right in Excel that doesn't need special (management, management's management, adding to a registrar of projects, budgeting or project manager assigned, etc) approval for non-stock software. The stack's Excel, plus Sharepoint if you're really looking for a networked data store that also has a web interface.
From that end-user direction, solutions emerge. And they're in VBA.
I'm not impressed by the USB. That it's possible to put transaction details on a USB stick means it's possible for customer data to go walking out the door on a USB stick, too. I'm pretty sure infact this goes against data security requirements of US regulators.
The positive part of snaps, and I don't like snaps for myself, is that snaps keep updating on an unmaintained server. So as a default for VPS providers seeking to hand hold users Ubuntu perhaps makes sense.
At least that's what I understand.
However on a server I use Debian (stable) as I purposefully don't want to be at the 'cutting edge'. [I also use Debian on my laptop because it just works.]
Seconding Zettlr. It also handles citations smoothly with a linked .bib file. The sidebar (a sidebar, there's more than one) also does directory tree structure like your favourite code editor too.
You mean kicking back over some eggs benedict, a meat and cheese charcuterie board, with some champagne on the side, sitting back in your pine-panelled centrally heated chalet overlooking mountain landscapes relaxing having risen at 4.30pm for a hill run and vigorous workout isn't fitting what most Europeans do on a Sunday morning?
The call-in was an anonymous, apparently, call to the company's switchboard stating a bomb package had been left in the vicinity of the desk. We were evacuated to a separate part of the building for a few hours while it was dealt with.
I once worked with new awful in-house software that (thankfully) depended on 3rd party software. We had the legacy in-house system parallel running, which was even more awful. The legacy's awful came from it being unable to do anything it didn't already do without extensive re-wiring, and a team who believed if they don't share their knowledge of it they had a job for life. The replacement's awful came from it being inefficiently programmed with large DB latency due to the team's belief at throwing more CPU behind queries instead of re-writing queries.
The teams sat next to each other but didn't speak.
The legacy team called in a bomb threat to a package left under the IT director's desk. It was taken very seriously. While their cause was already lost, that didn't help them personally.
The new system team eventually called Oracle, who came and re-wrote their queries.
It works for what I need: What I need: Browser (Firefox), Email (Thunderbird), Notes (Zettlr) + Reference (JabRef), Python, Postgres, Shell, occasional LibreOffice, the odd podcast (gPodder) and feeds (Liferea), very occasional audio and video editing.
> That's exactly what I'd like to be able to do again
Dreamhost.com (or one of the many others).
Pick 'webhosting' as the option. You may even get a free .com for a year, just like back in the day.
Github pages and CDNs and CMSs and one-click install and VPSs and all that jazz don't fix an unbroken problem: Hosting static files on a webserver that likely hosts hundreds or thousands of sites effortlessly.
None of that jazz is needed. FTP your files. With FileZilla. Like back in the day.
Learn how to push a button A on a machine to start it, how to push button B to stop it. This can be learnt (and tested) perfectly. It is the ultimate in skills-based education.
Along the way, having worked on a few machines, a worker may piece together some information about 'starting' and 'stopping'. However, this is beyond what's needed.
Should schools be about skill based education? Or about that beyond what's needed?Beyond what's needed won't get the employer a greater short term fungible labour marginal return, why pay for it? Shareholder value!
Does it matter that no one learns Flutter? Teaching Turing [1] may be a step too far in taking programming away from real life. So it's a balance. But so so much more goes into learning computer science than programming language of the day that can be learned from Udemy. From O(n log n) to O(n), how a computer works under the bonnet, what a LLM is, to legal aspects, there's a lot more to computer science as a skill. The challenge of the education system is balancing sketchy employers and pitch-fork public, and the influence they have, that want a cheap quick fix vs actually empowering and inspiring high schoolers' futures.
It hasn't. Surfing the web without an adblocker is almost as bad as 20 years ago without Firefox or Opera and popups galore. Less immediate, acute security risks than then, more videos on autoplay.
There's no need for a 'GDPR' notification for non-tracking cookies. It's not even about the cookie, it's about the tracking.
What's 'ruined the web' (for many) is concentration of sites into a handful of mega-'properties' that seek to own their visitors and users. To say this is GDPR-induced is to propagate and amplify the lie.
The price of a subsidised loan has increased as the subsidy has fallen while the face value of the asset the loan's for purchase of, an asset that's blown up on financing that's been almost free (as in interest, the return on capital) for a decade+ baked with a myriad of sticky price perceptions not least vested middle class (voting class) interest to maintain its inflated discounted present value, hasn't changed much.
Have them set a reasonable end-goal, a thing they'd like to make. Give them the tools to do this. Mark out some steps and scaffold them along the way.
When they've made that, ask what they'd like added. This introduces iterative development. Mark out a plan for that.
Then start all over with a similar but different end goal and have them gain confidence repeating/reinforcing the use of what they picked up with the first goal. Iterate in a different direction.
When adding a their project, perhaps the concept of re-use, making into modules or templates, might sound useful to them.
Then have them go less unguided by you personally with a self-paced course from Udemy or similar. They should be acquiring some self-teaching at this stage. Step in when they're having a lot of trouble.
The key theme here is building efficacy - sort of 'effective confidence' though a distinct term, and that's great for learning anything for life.
Edit: At no point be shy of printing a page of the code you're on and working through it with a pen. Things like loops and recursion might take some repetition practice on their own; introduce crazy things like while or even prove recursion through box logic if you're particularly sadistic!
From that end-user direction, solutions emerge. And they're in VBA.