StackOverflow isn't representative. It was always skewed towards .NET world (and thus VS). I assume this is the case because the founders were prominent .NET personalities.
> Those who ape the Tolkien high-fantasy school lean on it more, meandering descriptions
You seem to have a very specific idea of what constitutes "worldbuilding".
In my mind, every scifi has to do worldbuilding, because they deal with some non-existent worlds - they can't just rely on reader's being familiar with reality. They can't just say "imagine it exactly like today's US, just with faster than light travel". The authors have to describe the setting of the plot to the reader to at least some detail. Stephenson does that in my opinion very well and it's the main draw for me.
I can recommend Lockstep from Karl Schroeder. Scifi books rarely tackle the problem of huge distances, slower thab light speed travel and the resulting long time scales and their effects on multi-star civilizations (FTL is the usual boring cop-out). Lockstep provides an interesting take on the problem.
I disagree. Neal's characters are mostly weak and forgettable. Even the storylines often seem to be playing second fiddle. The real power is in his imaginative and thought-through world building. I have close to zero recollection who was the hero in Anathem, instead I often come back mentally to the ideas around the concents and avout society.
Why can this be called "worldbuilding" in fantasy, but not in sci-fi?
His sci-fi books (Anathem, Diamong Age, Snow Crash) are not just detailing technology, but the whole society. All of the detailed descriptions about concents and avouts (in Anathem) is without any technology since they explicitly disawow technology.
> a well thought out picture of what happens as that timeline continues on
TBH it seemed very ... "idealistic" in a way, "racist" would be another word, but I'd like to avoid the word's moral connotations. Just the idea that the descendants of this particular Eve are physically strong and then descendants of this Eve are intellectuals. It kinda seemed like a fairy tale instead of an actual development, which would realistically end up way more "messy".
Neal's particular strength is in a detailed world-building. Dick created wild worlds, but they are not particularly fleshed out, kinda dream-like in their vagueness, therefore for me not "convincing" in the same way as Neal's worlds are.
With Banks, the worlds (Culture being a major one) are more fleshed out, but somehow to me not as interesting. I've read several of his books, but somehow didn't enjoy the Culture ones a lot (read Player of Games, Use of Weapons and Excession). I did like the A Song of Stone a lot, but that's not even sci-fi. I'm aware my opinion is quite unpopular regarding Banks.
> But seven eves? No. That one kind of killed my love for his work. I dont know why, but he kind of overdid the long-story-arc thing there.
The first and the second part of the book (which constitute most of the book) stand on its own. I think it's better to pretend the 3rd part doesn't exist (which is IMHO rather easy since it's just unnecessary) than to discount the whole book.
Stephenson is for me a hit and miss author. I adore The Diamong Age, Anathem, Seveneves. I didn't finish the first book of Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon. Some of his other books I don't plan reading since I don't expect them to be good.
I'd say Anathem is his best book overall, but the first 100 or so pages is almost pure world building without much action which might turn people away.
Seveneves is close and is more accessible from the beginning. Just skip the last (after time jump) part of the book which is... unnecessary and bad.
This specific issue is a problem for humans, not for APIs.
I have a very smart SQL IDE with great intellisense, but when I type "SELECT", it can't help me because it has no idea what I want. Being able to type "FROM table SELECT" would be way friendlier for humans, because IDEs could offer me immediately columns I'm very likely interested in.
> and decided at the last minute to ship a pimped up version of Windows 98
That's more or less false. Releasing 2000 for home usage was planned, but it was realized early on that there's not enough time for that. It's not possible to develop on a short notice, ME contained some notable improvements (mostly ports from 2000).
You seem to be using a dictionary with very short entries. Mine contains 10 different meanings of the verb "take" and one of them is "obtain, gain, acquire".
In my experience scheduled meetings tend to be longer and involve more people than necessarily.
Also, somewhat contraintuitively, I often avoid starting some new work e. g. 30 minutes before a scheduled meeting, meanwhile without it I just start, and if interruption happens,... it just happens.
If you like the company/team enough to work there, you should learn to respect the way it operates.
Hopefully it doesn't sound too combative, but I wanted to express that it's a two way street and compromises have to be found. I dislike various things in my company on a personal level, but often make sense from company/team point of view.
Trust is very important e. g. Facebook or even Twitter alternatives. For reddit alternative, not so much. I don't care about my reddit profile, I rotate them frequently anyway.