wols
I use the tiles to "pin" programs that I use semi-regularly and can't be bothered remembering the name of. Or that share an inconveniently long prefix with the name of another program. Or that I have multiple versions of installed, with a specific version I usually need.
I don't like pinning such programs to the task bar because they add unnecessary clutter while not in use.
Thanks for responding, that makes a lot of sense.
I think generally what one gets used to has a big impact on preferences.
I'll say, an easily accessible, reliable gesture for side menu sounds nice. It feels like this was either abandoned on Android or left up to developers who mostly abandoned it. I remember struggling to get the side menu to trigger instead of back navigation and it not working near reliably enough. So I've been trained to always use the hamburger buttons that, ironically, are hard to reach in the top left corner in most apps. To be fair, I feel like I hardly use one menu interaction for every 100 back actions, so the latter being ergonomic is a lot more important to me.
On that point, swipe from left to go back seems quite annoying. I go back all the time, and having to move my thumb across the entire screen is a pain. I almost never need to go forward, so having that be the more accessible gesture seems weird. I'll concede that having a gesture for it at all is useful and Android should add the option.
I never felt like the swipe to go back is too sensitive, and if you accidentally trigger it, you can simply move your finger back towards the edge before letting go to cancel the action. You can also configure the sensitivity in the settings. The feedback that you're about to trigger the action is probably not as obvious as on iOS though, and likely less elegant.
I think both Android and iOS would do well to let users customize these interactions more to their own needs.
Could you elaborate on the gestures part?
I remember the opposite, having hated navigating my iPhone for work. I specifically remember swipe to go back not working reliably at all (many apps seemed to just ignore it, others I think configured other actions on that gesture - WTF), so I got into the habit of using that stupid little hard to reach, hard to hit, tiny back arrow that at least worked consistently when you managed to hit it.
I've been enjoying Android navigation gestures pretty much ever since I found out they existed.
It might have been a user issue in my case with iOS since I didn't use it as much, and therefore maybe was simply using it wrong/was unaware of better ways. But I don't see anything wrong/missing with gestures on Android.
Bonus: good tests can also serve as technical documentation.
Though I have to disagree with the notion that documentation is as important or more so than code.
Documentation is certainly near the top of the list and often undervalued. I've worked on a project where documentation was lacking and it was painful to say the least.
Without documentation, changing or adding features can be a nightmare. Investigating bugs and offering support is also very difficult. But without code, you have nothing. No product, no users, no value.
There are (inferior) substitutes for documentation: specialized team knowledge, general technical expertise. These alternative pools of knowledge can be leveraged to create and improve documentation incrementally.
There's no replacement for the actual functionality of your applications.
TLDR:
Nature can't simply select out consciousness because it emerges from hardware that is useful in other ways. The brain doesn't waste energy on consciousness, it uses energy for computation, which is useful in a myriad ways.
The usefulness of consciousness from an evolutionary fitness perspective is a tricky question to answer in general terms. An easy intuition might be to look at the utility of pain for the survival of an individual.
I personally think that, ultimately, consciousness is a byproduct of a complex brain. The evolutionary advantage is mainly given by other features enabled by said complexity (generally more sophisticated and adaptable behavior, social interactions, memory, communication, intentional environment manipulation, etc.) and consciousness basically gets a free ride on that already-useful brain.
Species with more complex brains have an easier time adapting to changes in their environment because their brains allow them to change their behavior much faster than random genetic mutations would. This opens up many new ecological niches that simpler organisms wouldn't be able to fill.
I don't think nature selects out waste. As long as a species is able to proliferate its genes, it can be as wasteful as it "wants". It only has to be fit enough, not as fit as possible. E.g. if there's enough energy available to sustain a complex brain, there's no pressure to make it more economical by simplifying its function. (And there are many pressures that can be reacted to without mutation when you have a complex brain, so I would guess that, on the whole, evolution in the direction of simpler brains requires stronger pressures than other adaptations)
I want to preface this with the mention that understanding other people's code and being able to modify it in a way that gets it to do what you want is a big part of real world coding and not a small feat.
The rest of my comment may come across as "you're learning wrong". It is meant to. I don't know how you've been learning and I have no proof that doing it differently will help, but I'm optimistic that it can. The main takeaway is this: be patient with yourself. Solving problems and building things is hard. It's ok to progress slowly. Don't try to skip ahead, especially early on.
(also this comment isn't directed at you specifically, but at anyone who shares your frustration)
I was gonna write an entire rant opposing the meme, but thought better of it as it seems most people here agree with me.
BUT I think that once you've got some basics down, there really is no better way to improve than to do. The key is to start at the appropriate level of complexity for your level of experience.
Obviously I don't know what that is for you specifically, but I think in general it's a good idea to start simple. Don't try to engineer an entire application as your first programming activity.
Find an easy (and simple! as in - a single function with well defined inputs and outputs and no side effects) problem; either think of something yourself, or pick an easy problem from an online platform like leetcode or codechef. And try to solve the problem yourself. There's no need to get stuck for ages, but give it an honest try.
I think a decent heuristic for determining if you have a useful problem is whether you feel like you've made significant progress towards a solution after an hour or two. If not, readjust and pick a different problem. There's no point in spending days on a problem that's not clicking for you.
If you weren't able to solve the problem, look at solutions. Pick one that seems most straight forward to you and try to understand it. When you think you do, give the original problem a little twist and try to solve that. While referencing the solution to the original if you need to.
If you're struggling with this kind of constrained problem, keep doing them. Seriously. Perhaps dial down the difficulty of the problems themselves until you can follow and understand the solutions. But keep struggling with trying to solve little problems from scratch. Because that's the essence of programming: you want the computer to do something and you need to figure out how to achieve that.
It's not automatic, intuitive, inspired creation. It's not magic. It's a difficult and uncertain process of exploration. I'm fairly confident that for most people, coding just isn't how their brain works, initially. And I'm also sure that for some it "clicks" much easier than for others. But fundamentally, the skill to code is like a muscle: it must be trained to be useful. You can listen to a hundred talks on the mechanics of bike riding, and be an expert on the physics. If you don't put in the hours on the pedals, you'll never be biking from A to B.
I think this period at the beginning is the most challenging and frustrating, because you're working so hard and seemingly progress so slowly. But the two are connected. You're not breezing through because it is hard. You're learning a new way of thinking. Everything else builds on this.
Once you're more comfortable with solving isolated problems like that, consider making a simple application. For example: read an input text file, replace all occurrences of one string with another string, write the resulting text to a new text file. Don't focus on perfection or best practices at first. Simply solve the problem the way you know how. Perhaps start with hard-coded values for the replacement, then make them configurable (e.g. by passing them as arguments to your application).
When you have a few small applications under your belt you can start to dream big. As in, start solving "real" problems. Like some automation that would help you or someone you know. Or tasks at work for a software company. Or that cool app you've always wanted to build. Working on real applications will give you more confidence and open the door to more learning. You'll run into lots of problems and learn how not to do things. So many ways not to do things.
TLDR: If it's not clicking, you need to, as a general rule, do less learning (in the conventional sense of absorbing and integrating information) and more doing. A lot of doing.
Even better, Obsidian notes are stored directly in folders on your device as plain text (markdown) files.
It's all there, nothing missing, and no annoying proprietary format.
Not only can you keep using them without the Obsidian application, you can even do so using a "dumb" text editor - though something that can handle markdown will give you a better experience.
Honestly, their comment reads like copy pasta. That first paragraph is chef's kiss.
I initially thought they weren't being sincere, something something Poe's law...
(' v ')/
The main difference is that 1Password requires two pieces of information for decrypting your passwords while Bitwarden requires only one.
Requiring an additional secret in the form of a decryption key has both upsides and downsides:
- if someone somehow gets access to your master password, they won't be able to decrypt your passwords unless they also got access to your secret key (or one of your trusted devices)
- a weak master password doesn't automatically make you vulnerable
- if you lose access to your secret key, your passwords are not recoverable
- additional effort to properly secure your key
So whether you want both or only password protection is a trade-off between the additional protection the key offers and the increased complexity of adequately securing it.
Your proposed scenarios of the master password being brute forced or the servers being hacked and your master password acquired when using Bitwarden are misleading.
Brute forcing the master password is not feasible, unless it is weak (too short, common, or part of a breach). By default, Bitwarden protects against brute force attacks on the password itself using PBKDF2 with 600k iterations. Brute forcing AES-256 (to get into the vault without finding the master password) is not possible according to current knowledge.
Your master password cannot be "acquired" if the Bitwarden servers are hacked.
They store the (encrypted) symmetric key used to decrypt your vault as well as your vault (where all your passwords are stored), AES256-encrypted using said symmetric key.
This symmetric key is itself AES256-encrypted using your master password (this is a simplification) before being sent to their servers.
Neither your master password nor the symmetric key used to decrypt your password vault is recoverable from Bitwarden servers by anyone who doesn't know your master password and by extension neither are the passwords stored in your encrypted vault.
See https://bitwarden.com/help/bitwarden-security-white-paper/#overview-of-the-master-password-hashing-key-derivation-and-encryption-process for details.
win + space to switch between keyboard languages
win + tab to open the desktop switcher
win + ctrl + t (if you have PowerToys installed) to prevent other apps from stealing focus from your window