Without that, people seem to get caught up in the conventions of their first language, thinking that it's the best way, because it's the only way they know.

It's the same reason that people who've spent time in other countries and cultures have a better time navigating new social situations.

I've started to come around to the thinking that every programmer needs to spend a significant amount of time creating something "real" in at least 2 other languages than their favourite.

Not a play project, something you've deployed, that ends up being used, that you have to support and update.

I'm frequently asked "how much does @compiler-explorer.com cost to run". I've done some digging and posted xania.org/202506/compi... which is a high-level breakdown of the costs (and revenue); and links to a more in depth report if you want all the gory details.

One useful think to do: when you read a take on software engineering, understand where the person making it is coming from. Are they building a side project? Is it indie hacking? Mid-sized team? VC-funded? Academia? Etc

Context makes a massive difference is stuff that “works”!

#synology breaks my heart. I guess there will be something else after my DS1522+, I am hoping it will last a decade though (owned since February 2023). It is a great home NAS.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/04/synology-confirms-need-for-synology-branded-drives-in-newer-plus-series-nas/

Perhaps there is still hope for reasonably modern and safe C++. I always considered undefined behavior (UB) as a C++ standard sloppiness introduced because of pre-existing compiler differences, weird CPU architectures, memory consistency models, etc. Herb says (in the appendix) UB is for […]

Isn't it sad that you have to set all these C++ compiler settings to achieve a decent level of sanity for your code? I mean, most of these should be the default setting. Why are the latest versions of GCC and Clang still so lenient and forgiving in 2025? […]

Did you know that Claude 3.5 AND 3.7 Sonnet are available in @visualstudio.com for GitHub Copilot?!?!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Ur...

#visualstudio #githubcopilot #dotnet

Are you using FluentAssertions in non-OSS projects?

Are you planning to pay for the new license or are you planning on moving away from it?

You’re still arguing about tabs vs. spaces? May I present…

Biggest problem with brainstorming with LLMs is that you have to go out of your way to make them disagree with you 😬

I want to see this picture where the cookies are actually proportionate. If the worker on the right has one cookie (let's say $100K to be generous), a billionaire with $10B will have 100,000 cookies, which is probably several truckloads.

I imagine a world in which NO APP can just add some BS process that auto-starts when I sign in to Windows. And that these apps must ASK me first. EVERY TIME.

And my answer will always be the same. NO. A million times no.

Screw you, Spotify, Discord, Xbox, Teams & so many more.

How Much Memory Do You Need in 2024 to Run 1 Million Concurrent Tasks?

hez2010.github.io/async-runtim...

Thanks to LLMs, I no longer have to ever relearn regex. That alone is worth $20/month.

TIL, you can get Roslyn to create really confusing error messages *or crash* using weird #line pragmas in C# code:

#line 100 ":invalid:"

... causes Roslyn to crash if there are any subsequent errors.

#line 100 ".."

... causes Roslyn to report any subsequent errors as from a parent directory.

I think it would be nice to unify on target frameworks.

If you're targeting .NET Framework, target net472.

If you're targeting .NET Standard, target netstandard2.0.

If you're target .NET, target netX.0 or whatever is the latest.

I don't see the point of net48, net461, netstandard2.1 etc