According to the stats, - Typescript only comes as second, E6 has about two time the number of happy users - Typescript and Flow are the only one with a non-negligible part of UNHAPPY users (more than 5% which is 1/9 Typescript user, where most of the solutions have only about 1% unhappy users) - it has the biggest proportion of "heard it, would like to learn"...
As far as I can see the stats, it looks like it's more E6 that dominates the Javascript environment... But with 86% of happy users, it leave very few room for improving it's numbers...
C language is well known and has no inherent problem. it's behaviour is well documented and you get what you program with it... nothing less, nothing more.
If you use something like while(*a++=*b++); it's at your own risk... The only assurance that C gives you is that the assembler code that'll be generated will exactly do what you asked.
Problem is manyfold :
1) many people don't care about low level anymore We have a plethora of "high level languages" which hide what is done beneath. Too many programmers don't know what's happening under the hood (well, with some langages, it's nearly impossible due to some level of secrecy about the inner working). Thinking about the potential consequences of a line of code is becoming quite difficult...
2) CS teaching is not enough centered about secure practice This is linked to a problem that affect the whole teaching system : teachers usually don't use their knowledge in "real" situation. Far too many teachers ended up as teacher after university without ever working in their study domain. They only have an academic knowledge and as result, they often forget about the security good-practice and such (disclaimer : I'm CS-teacher... but I also worked as programmer before... and I see the above problem with many of my coworkers, not only CS-Teachers)
3) Management usually push for quick and dirty coding Too many management forget about the security aspect : the program must be ready as fast as possible, putting aside optimisation, security checking and other,... everything that is not visible... The thing may even be aggravated when the management is computer illiterate and unable to understand the issues... The management has usually zero-liability for problem arising from program they supervised... so they have no incentive for such a long term investment... If the program is out quickly, they'll most likely get bigger bonuses and that's their only focus...
4) High level languages hide incompetence It's way easier to make a runnable program using high level "script" languages (PHP, Python, C#,...) than using a lower level one (ASM, C, C++,...) No need to care about memory allocation, bound checking,... and many errors will trigger an exception and can be hidden. This won't make the program any better... It'll just hide the mistakes... And having something running will too often be enough for the management who don't care to have a look under the hook. I saw my share of awful code done by an incompetent coworker... But with some small-talk and such he used to be able to make it "pass"... he attributed the slowlessness to external factors and until I arrived and had a look at his code, there was nobody who could point the issues...
And I could go on...
Basically, if the program is broken, it's not the langage's fault but the programmer's fault (and often the manager's because he didn't request an high security level). The problem was minor for a long time, because the computers were not connected 24/7... but now, such an error may have devastating results (remind the Nimda worm which exploited an IIS buffer overflow... and infected all exposed IIS in less than 24 hours ?)
Better training about securing the code during CS school (and after) and making managers liable for big security problems could help to limit the problem...
Indeed, besides XY and XX genotypes, you also have X0 (only one sexual chromosome), XXX, XXY and XYY (trisomy)... This is not binary but it is still hard fact that can not be changed.
Why not keep ID of people and the government registery to a strict biological fact ?
Although there are some strange situations (X0, XXX, XXY, XYY), the vast majority of people are either XX or XY. This is something that can't be changed and, as such, is part of WHAT YOU ARE... And which could be used to register you in official records.
BTW, in some countries, the people are assigned an unique AND IMMUTABLE number at birth. That number may include your birthdate but also your birth gender... And people who are changing their gender during their life don't get a new number assigned to them...
Official records are there to keep track of people... These are meant to be hard fact (birthdate, sex, filiation,...) not personnal preferences...
Google should just stop caring about iOS bugs and let Apple learn about them the hard way...
When many fAnboys will have been biten again and again by bugs, Apple's image will be way less the image of a "secure device which never has critical bugs".
Also, IT departments should be able to make serious decisions about the security (or unsecurity) of a device before allowing it on the enterprise network... which means having correct bug disclosure...
When the project arrived in Apache Foundation's hands, LibreOffice had already started moving forward and improving...
Instead of trying to catch up, they started to change the code to replace GPL parts with non-GPL for political reasons, resulting in being even more late in the race.
Most developpers saw an active community, working on improving a tool and another one who was fiddling around, doing some pointless work... and those who wanted to improve OpenOffice went to the most active one : LibreOffice.
Add to that that most Linux distribution include LibreOffice as default Office application (not AOO)... and most users also switched to LibreOffice...
Apache could have managed to get OpenOffice back to it's feet back when the project was transferred to them, by acting quickly and starting to improve it... but they wasted too much time... Now, I think that it's too late... They will never catch up on LibreOffice and IMHO, with time, more and more people will leave AOO... both users and developpers.
you're missing the point : when you work for some employer, you've restriction put on what you may do outside work, what you may say on social networks, what you may say to other people (talking),... As I'm a teacher, I know the restriction imposed upon teachers (in my country, YMMV). She was developper at Arena.net and as such, she also had some restrictions... even if she never signed some document about it...
As soon as she acted using her name and identity, linked to her work (and with a pseudo-autority given by that), she HAD to restrain herself.
She could have used another account (anonymous and not linked to her) to post comments but she didn't. so she was responsible for the word she used and the tone of her answer...
I work as a teacher... As such, I have some restrictions on what I can do outside my work... and I never had to sign any document about that...
1) no racist attacks (even if the people in front of me act racist, I CAN'T answer in the same terms) 2) no talks against my school... Even if I see problems with some coworkers, I can't make random posts about it. 3) no talks about coworkers in front of students (the big taboo) 4) no "unrespectable behaviour"... this includes being seen drunk in the public space, unfit clothing (no SM-wear in the street or nazi costume or...) and so on...
I guess that requirements imposed on teachers are bigger than those on gaming company... but clearly, what she posted is unacceptable... She was not on the internet as "Jane Doe" but as "Jessica Price, writer at Arena.Net"... As such, she had only two choices : politely avoiding the conflict or blocking the guy and ignoring him...
And now, we see people getting pissed off because she got fired... she deserved it... If she can't control her temper online, she should avoid posting !!!
LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice X11 + KDE/GNOME/... Mozilla/Chrome The Linux Kernel Perl, Python, Tk/TCL, PHP The GIMP, Audacity, Blender,... WINE, Vir(tualBox,... TeX, LaTeX,... And so on... None of these products are part of GNU...
The GNU parts are emacs (that most Linux users don't use), GCC (which is sometimes replaced by LLVM), basic unix tools (minor programs),... These are less than 10% of what is installed on a Linux system...
Linux is not about Free software (as in free speech) and has never been... it's about creating a whole system where everyone can find something... including the corporate world... And the most of the corporate world understood that playing nice about linux also benefit them...
"in those certain instances where religion, sex, or national origin is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise"
Tell me how religion, sex, national origin,... are a qualification necessary to produce good quality code...
You can't because these DON'T MATTER TO CODE... so it is unlawful discrimination.
When a job opportunity is only open to a specific gender/ethnic-origin/sexual orientation/... IT IS discrimination... Because all the people that are not part of these groups are prevented to apply just because they don't have the correct gender/ethic-origin/sexual orientation/...
Excluding white men or excluding black women is basically the same thing... In both cases, the excluded people are victim of a prejudicial action...
Outreach is not about ASSISTING people... It's about giving job exclusivity to specific groups...
A true ASSISTING procedure would be to have a company who would act as a proxy between all candidates and the employer, masking the gender/ethnic-origin/sexual orientation/... of job candidates... of ALL jobs candidates (of both gender, all ethnic-origin,...) so the job would be given to the most suited regardless of his gender/ethnic origin/...
Basically, by participating to the outreach program, the project is spending money on a most likely sub-par developper (if it was not a sub-par developper, it would not require the outreach program to get a job)
And the new code of conduct will prevent other to make critics of that sub-par developper...
End result - loss of money that could have been better spend - loss of time for the other developpers who will need to fix sub-par code from that developper
Add that comments around the CoC explicitely says that if racist speech would be punished, reverse-racist speech (ethnical minorities making racist comments against the majority) won't... If homosexual-phobic comments would be punished, heterosexual-phobic comments won't,...
LLVM is sinking thanks to the "politically correct" police
Well what outreach does is nothing but discrimination... and is somehow as bad as other discriminating behaviour...
and Outreach can backfire... The one hired thanks to Outreach may be felt as inferior who needed to put their "diversity" in front to get a job because he is lacking true skills...
Function A creates an element B and associate a function C to the "onclick" property of B before linking B to the DOM tree
C being created inside A, it inherits the closure of A in which you find a variable pointing to B
We have DOM -> B -> C -> closure -> B cycle created
When B is removed from DOM, the references loop still stays, every object keeps at least one reference to it and can't be freed by the garbage collect.
Propre way to do it is to clear the onclick of B when you remove it from the DOM to break the cycle... but most web sites don't care and this leads to browsers memory usage growing and growing.
People let their browser open longer and longer on the same page, opening more pages...
And many web sites (Facebook to begin with) allocate objects, create circular references and don't break the reference cycle because "dropping" the object, leading to a cycle of objects (elements, functions and closures) which can't be freed by the garbage collect.
Don't blame the browser, blame the web sites creator who don't care about cleaning their junk.
1) Many people stuck to older Windows/Office versions. MS Windows 7 is still very popular for example. 2) Most of the software needed do already exists under Linux... We are talking about the city of munich, most of the work is done on Office tools where you've LibreOffice/Apache OpenOffice for example 3) Windows and compatibility is a joke... Unsupported (older) hardware, older application which stop running,... Hardware compatibility of Linux is better and better. When I installed my laptop, Windows required many 3rd party drivers that I had to download. Linux recognized all the hardware (including webcam) without any additionnal drivers. 4) It's a City administration, not a "company" that could merge with another. 5) If there are more issues (vulnerabilities, bugs,...) from the start, it don't help much. 6) when is the last time that you installed a decent linux distribution on a laptop ? 7) City administration mostly need an Office suite... not many exception... 8) The status BEFORE the linux migration was a very strong fragmentation while staying in the MS Windows world... Here, the IT department has pushed the same configuration to everyone 9) Microsoft PowerPoint ??? Microsoft Excel ??? Microsoft Access ??? Microsoft Outlook ??? aren't these silly names ??? The names are not related in any way to the task done... In that regard, LibreOffice Calc is less silly than Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Base than Microsoft Access...
Most of your points were missing the point... and are the usual Microsoft bullshit... Fact is that more and more administration will eventually switch to linux and that Microsoft is trying to bribe them to avoid that... It's Microsoft's biggest Nightmare as if administrations switch successfully, it'll show the route for companies and it'd be the end of it's monopoly... He'd have to start playing nice with other OS, to stop it's underhanded tactics and the fact that it's an inferior and more expensive choice will become more and more obvious.
1) we are talking about 15000 computers... So the distribution maintenance cost would have to be 15000 times greater than windows upgrade licences costs... 2) most of the development is done by Linux/Opensource community... 3) Using MS Windows will require more frequent hardware upgrades as the requirements keep increasing. Linux' requirements are usually more stable and grow slower. 4) training costs have been spent to have team learn the new environment. Since then, both Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office tools have changed which would require to spend the training costs again 5) with the scripting/remote control/remote admin features of Linux, maintaining a big number of servers and workstations require less people than maintaining the same number of Windows servers and workstations. 6) a non negligible part of the costs of the switch would have to be spent again (converting documents, creating new templates,...) 7) part of the costs and time of the switch were related to the situation before the switch with an highly heterogenous computer park (different versions of OS, of installed packages, of configurations,...) and were not directly related to the actual switch 8) What Microsoft is looking for is locking the documents in it's cloud with use through it's SaaS offering... I'd say it's enough to be a no go
There is a Developper engine called "Flowcode" which allows to do programs for microcontrollers (PIC, AVR, ARM) using flowcharts. It's quite expensive (given that PIC/AVR dev tools are free).
Basically, you've some "macro" blocks for more high level functions (like displaying on an LCD screen), rest is flowcharts.
With the rise of Android, we see iPhone/iPads becoming the minor platform. More and more developpers start to think Android before Apple...
And with the developpers fleeing that highly proprietary platform, the ecosystem is slowly becoming less and less attracting for new developpers... spiralling to iPhone becoming eventually irrelevant
So they are trying to mass recruit developpers by teaching an useless language to as many people as possible...
Time spent on learning Swift is not spent in learning C, C++, Java, Python, PHP, Javascript,...
Slashdot Mirror
From this story, it looks like Microsoft tooks some "shortcuts" while displaying Youtube video in order to get "better performances"...
Shortcuts like not actually parsing the whole page but grabbing some specific parts, less to process = running "better"...
And then google changed youtube page... the parts that Edge used to grab directly were not at the same place anymore and the optimization were lost...
What could have been the result is Edge showing it's true speed... The speed that could be expected on web sites not taken in account in Edge...
And they blame google for exposing the whole thing...
We have an huge dependency on US products... and US has killswitch on many of them...
Countless iPhone/iPads that can be remotely locked by Apple
Army's planes like the F-35 which "phone home" continuously and can be remote-disabled
Microsoft that can remote disable any computer by saying that "the key has been used for pirate distribution"
HDMI peripherals that can be revokec by the HDCP
and so on...
Reliance on US device is very dangerous... should one day US decide to go against us...
According to the stats,
- Typescript only comes as second, E6 has about two time the number of happy users
- Typescript and Flow are the only one with a non-negligible part of UNHAPPY users (more than 5% which is 1/9 Typescript user, where most of the solutions have only about 1% unhappy users)
- it has the biggest proportion of "heard it, would like to learn"...
As far as I can see the stats, it looks like it's more E6 that dominates the Javascript environment... But with 86% of happy users, it leave very few room for improving it's numbers...
C language is well known and has no inherent problem. it's behaviour is well documented and you get what you program with it... nothing less, nothing more.
If you use something like while(*a++=*b++); it's at your own risk... The only assurance that C gives you is that the assembler code that'll be generated will exactly do what you asked.
Problem is manyfold :
1) many people don't care about low level anymore
We have a plethora of "high level languages" which hide what is done beneath. Too many programmers don't know what's happening under the hood (well, with some langages, it's nearly impossible due to some level of secrecy about the inner working).
Thinking about the potential consequences of a line of code is becoming quite difficult...
2) CS teaching is not enough centered about secure practice
This is linked to a problem that affect the whole teaching system : teachers usually don't use their knowledge in "real" situation. Far too many teachers ended up as teacher after university without ever working in their study domain. They only have an academic knowledge and as result, they often forget about the security good-practice and such (disclaimer : I'm CS-teacher... but I also worked as programmer before... and I see the above problem with many of my coworkers, not only CS-Teachers)
3) Management usually push for quick and dirty coding ... everything that is not visible... The thing may even be aggravated when the management is computer illiterate and unable to understand the issues...
Too many management forget about the security aspect : the program must be ready as fast as possible, putting aside optimisation, security checking and other,
The management has usually zero-liability for problem arising from program they supervised... so they have no incentive for such a long term investment... If the program is out quickly, they'll most likely get bigger bonuses and that's their only focus...
4) High level languages hide incompetence ...) than using a lower level one (ASM, C, C++, ...) No need to care about memory allocation, bound checking, ... and many errors will trigger an exception and can be hidden.
It's way easier to make a runnable program using high level "script" languages (PHP, Python, C#,
This won't make the program any better... It'll just hide the mistakes... And having something running will too often be enough for the management who don't care to have a look under the hook. I saw my share of awful code done by an incompetent coworker... But with some small-talk and such he used to be able to make it "pass"... he attributed the slowlessness to external factors and until I arrived and had a look at his code, there was nobody who could point the issues...
And I could go on...
Basically, if the program is broken, it's not the langage's fault but the programmer's fault (and often the manager's because he didn't request an high security level). The problem was minor for a long time, because the computers were not connected 24/7... but now, such an error may have devastating results (remind the Nimda worm which exploited an IIS buffer overflow... and infected all exposed IIS in less than 24 hours ?)
Better training about securing the code during CS school (and after) and making managers liable for big security problems could help to limit the problem...
Indeed, besides XY and XX genotypes, you also have X0 (only one sexual chromosome), XXX, XXY and XYY (trisomy)... This is not binary but it is still hard fact that can not be changed.
Why not keep ID of people and the government registery to a strict biological fact ?
Although there are some strange situations (X0, XXX, XXY, XYY), the vast majority of people are either XX or XY. This is something that can't be changed and, as such, is part of WHAT YOU ARE... And which could be used to register you in official records.
BTW, in some countries, the people are assigned an unique AND IMMUTABLE number at birth. That number may include your birthdate but also your birth gender... And people who are changing their gender during their life don't get a new number assigned to them...
Official records are there to keep track of people... These are meant to be hard fact (birthdate, sex, filiation, ...) not personnal preferences...
If I remind well, ThunderBird Anti virus under DOS also used to work in a sandbox...
And it's generic detection was quite good...
Until some crack in the sandbox have been discovered and virus maker started to use them to infect the computer DURING THE SCAN...
Google should just stop caring about iOS bugs and let Apple learn about them the hard way...
When many fAnboys will have been biten again and again by bugs, Apple's image will be way less the image of a "secure device which never has critical bugs".
Also, IT departments should be able to make serious decisions about the security (or unsecurity) of a device before allowing it on the enterprise network... which means having correct bug disclosure...
When the project arrived in Apache Foundation's hands, LibreOffice had already started moving forward and improving...
Instead of trying to catch up, they started to change the code to replace GPL parts with non-GPL for political reasons, resulting in being even more late in the race.
Most developpers saw an active community, working on improving a tool and another one who was fiddling around, doing some pointless work... and those who wanted to improve OpenOffice went to the most active one : LibreOffice.
Add to that that most Linux distribution include LibreOffice as default Office application (not AOO)... and most users also switched to LibreOffice...
Apache could have managed to get OpenOffice back to it's feet back when the project was transferred to them, by acting quickly and starting to improve it... but they wasted too much time... Now, I think that it's too late... They will never catch up on LibreOffice and IMHO, with time, more and more people will leave AOO... both users and developpers.
Except if what you are saying can hurt reputation or image of the company...
And this is even more true if you're doing some "official statement" because you're doing it while saying that you work for that company.
Having a signed agreement only makes things more easy...
you're missing the point : when you work for some employer, you've restriction put on what you may do outside work, what you may say on social networks, what you may say to other people (talking),... As I'm a teacher, I know the restriction imposed upon teachers (in my country, YMMV). She was developper at Arena.net and as such, she also had some restrictions... even if she never signed some document about it...
As soon as she acted using her name and identity, linked to her work (and with a pseudo-autority given by that), she HAD to restrain herself.
She could have used another account (anonymous and not linked to her) to post comments but she didn't. so she was responsible for the word she used and the tone of her answer...
I work as a teacher... As such, I have some restrictions on what I can do outside my work... and I never had to sign any document about that...
1) no racist attacks (even if the people in front of me act racist, I CAN'T answer in the same terms) ...)
2) no talks against my school... Even if I see problems with some coworkers, I can't make random posts about it.
3) no talks about coworkers in front of students (the big taboo)
4) no "unrespectable behaviour"... this includes being seen drunk in the public space, unfit clothing (no SM-wear in the street or nazi costume or
and so on...
I guess that requirements imposed on teachers are bigger than those on gaming company... but clearly, what she posted is unacceptable... She was not on the internet as "Jane Doe" but as "Jessica Price, writer at Arena.Net"... As such, she had only two choices : politely avoiding the conflict or blocking the guy and ignoring him...
And now, we see people getting pissed off because she got fired... she deserved it... If she can't control her temper online, she should avoid posting !!!
In a Linux distribution, you see
LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice ... ... ...
X11 + KDE/GNOME/...
Mozilla/Chrome
The Linux Kernel
Perl, Python, Tk/TCL, PHP
The GIMP, Audacity, Blender,
WINE, Vir(tualBox,
TeX, LaTeX,
And so on... None of these products are part of GNU...
The GNU parts are emacs (that most Linux users don't use), GCC (which is sometimes replaced by LLVM), basic unix tools (minor programs),... These are less than 10% of what is installed on a Linux system...
Linux is not about Free software (as in free speech) and has never been... it's about creating a whole system where everyone can find something... including the corporate world... And the most of the corporate world understood that playing nice about linux also benefit them...
"in those certain instances where religion, sex, or national origin is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise"
Tell me how religion, sex, national origin, ... are a qualification necessary to produce good quality code...
You can't because these DON'T MATTER TO CODE... so it is unlawful discrimination.
When a job opportunity is only open to a specific gender/ethnic-origin/sexual orientation/... IT IS discrimination... Because all the people that are not part of these groups are prevented to apply just because they don't have the correct gender/ethic-origin/sexual orientation/...
Excluding white men or excluding black women is basically the same thing... In both cases, the excluded people are victim of a prejudicial action...
Outreach is not about ASSISTING people... It's about giving job exclusivity to specific groups...
A true ASSISTING procedure would be to have a company who would act as a proxy between all candidates and the employer, masking the gender/ethnic-origin/sexual orientation/... of job candidates... of ALL jobs candidates (of both gender, all ethnic-origin, ...) so the job would be given to the most suited regardless of his gender/ethnic origin/...
Basically, by participating to the outreach program, the project is spending money on a most likely sub-par developper (if it was not a sub-par developper, it would not require the outreach program to get a job)
And the new code of conduct will prevent other to make critics of that sub-par developper...
End result
- loss of money that could have been better spend
- loss of time for the other developpers who will need to fix sub-par code from that developper
Add that comments around the CoC explicitely says that if racist speech would be punished, reverse-racist speech (ethnical minorities making racist comments against the majority) won't... If homosexual-phobic comments would be punished, heterosexual-phobic comments won't, ...
LLVM is sinking thanks to the "politically correct" police
I'm CS teacher... On the first year, on a total of more than 55 students, we had 6 women (about 10%)...
But well, it's the opensource communities and IT companies who are discriminating leading to 10% women among the developpers...
Outreach program is nothing other than a discrimination trying to curb fact to a "politically correct" artificial situation.
Well what outreach does is nothing but discrimination... and is somehow as bad as other discriminating behaviour...
and Outreach can backfire... The one hired thanks to Outreach may be felt as inferior who needed to put their "diversity" in front to get a job because he is lacking true skills...
Outreach is a bad idea...
isn't it the job of the OS to make sure that an individual program can't freeze the whole system ?
Function A creates an element B and associate a function C to the "onclick" property of B before linking B to the DOM tree
C being created inside A, it inherits the closure of A in which you find a variable pointing to B
We have DOM -> B -> C -> closure -> B cycle created
When B is removed from DOM, the references loop still stays, every object keeps at least one reference to it and can't be freed by the garbage collect.
Propre way to do it is to clear the onclick of B when you remove it from the DOM to break the cycle... but most web sites don't care and this leads to browsers memory usage growing and growing.
People let their browser open longer and longer on the same page, opening more pages...
And many web sites (Facebook to begin with) allocate objects, create circular references and don't break the reference cycle because "dropping" the object, leading to a cycle of objects (elements, functions and closures) which can't be freed by the garbage collect.
Don't blame the browser, blame the web sites creator who don't care about cleaning their junk.
1) Many people stuck to older Windows/Office versions. MS Windows 7 is still very popular for example. ... Hardware compatibility of Linux is better and better. When I installed my laptop, Windows required many 3rd party drivers that I had to download. Linux recognized all the hardware (including webcam) without any additionnal drivers. ...) from the start, it don't help much.
2) Most of the software needed do already exists under Linux... We are talking about the city of munich, most of the work is done on Office tools where you've LibreOffice/Apache OpenOffice for example
3) Windows and compatibility is a joke... Unsupported (older) hardware, older application which stop running,
4) It's a City administration, not a "company" that could merge with another.
5) If there are more issues (vulnerabilities, bugs,
6) when is the last time that you installed a decent linux distribution on a laptop ?
7) City administration mostly need an Office suite... not many exception...
8) The status BEFORE the linux migration was a very strong fragmentation while staying in the MS Windows world... Here, the IT department has pushed the same configuration to everyone
9) Microsoft PowerPoint ??? Microsoft Excel ??? Microsoft Access ??? Microsoft Outlook ??? aren't these silly names ??? The names are not related in any way to the task done... In that regard, LibreOffice Calc is less silly than Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Base than Microsoft Access...
Most of your points were missing the point... and are the usual Microsoft bullshit... Fact is that more and more administration will eventually switch to linux and that Microsoft is trying to bribe them to avoid that... It's Microsoft's biggest Nightmare as if administrations switch successfully, it'll show the route for companies and it'd be the end of it's monopoly... He'd have to start playing nice with other OS, to stop it's underhanded tactics and the fact that it's an inferior and more expensive choice will become more and more obvious.
1) we are talking about 15000 computers... So the distribution maintenance cost would have to be 15000 times greater than windows upgrade licences costs... ...) ...) and were not directly related to the actual switch
2) most of the development is done by Linux/Opensource community...
3) Using MS Windows will require more frequent hardware upgrades as the requirements keep increasing. Linux' requirements are usually more stable and grow slower.
4) training costs have been spent to have team learn the new environment. Since then, both Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office tools have changed which would require to spend the training costs again
5) with the scripting/remote control/remote admin features of Linux, maintaining a big number of servers and workstations require less people than maintaining the same number of Windows servers and workstations.
6) a non negligible part of the costs of the switch would have to be spent again (converting documents, creating new templates,
7) part of the costs and time of the switch were related to the situation before the switch with an highly heterogenous computer park (different versions of OS, of installed packages, of configurations,
8) What Microsoft is looking for is locking the documents in it's cloud with use through it's SaaS offering... I'd say it's enough to be a no go
There is a Developper engine called "Flowcode" which allows to do programs for microcontrollers (PIC, AVR, ARM) using flowcharts. It's quite expensive (given that PIC/AVR dev tools are free).
Basically, you've some "macro" blocks for more high level functions (like displaying on an LCD screen), rest is flowcharts.
With the rise of Android, we see iPhone/iPads becoming the minor platform. More and more developpers start to think Android before Apple...
And with the developpers fleeing that highly proprietary platform, the ecosystem is slowly becoming less and less attracting for new developpers... spiralling to iPhone becoming eventually irrelevant
So they are trying to mass recruit developpers by teaching an useless language to as many people as possible...
Time spent on learning Swift is not spent in learning C, C++, Java, Python, PHP, Javascript, ...