I wonder if they licensed the source of 5.0+ to someone and are still getting paid for it. If so, it's probably something ubiquitous and critical that nobody would think of like traffic lights or water treatment plants.
I would have like to been in the meeting where they discussed putting the keyboard cable on the front of the keyboard.
If your body goes unclaimed then it's up to whatever local entity to dispose of it. Most places cremate.
If you want to watch a dark documentary about how dead people without a next of kin are handled. => https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342180/
What industry do you work in? I would focus on that. The truth is that programing is somewhat of a commodity, and a lot of your value is going to come from industry knowledge.
Dude interviewed some people that did both software and other forms of engineering. Vast majority said software engineering is real engineering.
These are a few things that stood out to me.
In software engineering the gap between tradecraft and engineering is a lot smaller than the other engineering fields like electricians and electrical engineers.
Software engineering can iterate faster because it's cheap. If civil engineers could iterate like software engineers they would. New modeling tools are allowing this.
A lot of physical engineering defects are being fixed with software. 737 Max was given as an example where the new engine configuration made the plane unstable and it was fixed in software.
A lot of things can be learned from the different fields. All the other engineering fields wish they had version control. Software engineering needs more very focused deep dive books like this the other engineering fields have. Ex: https://www.amazon.com/First-Snap-Fit-Handbook-3E-Attachments/dp/1569905959
Don't worry about Linux, and don't try to over complicate things. If you are set on going the Linux route, get a Raspberry Pi. It will give him something really flexible and cheap to experiment with later on.
Look into modded Minecraft. There is a mod called Computer Craft where you can write programs in Lua. One of the things that makes scratch so good for kids is that the results are instantly visible. This is important for kids.
https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/cc-tweaked
There are programs to control your reactor > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9fC3khXuj8
Unmodded Minecraft has Redstone where you can build logic gates.
Outside of what you already have check into a maker space or a computer club at school. Here in Atlanta there is https://www.codeninjas.com. Maybe there is something similar in your area.
I’m in that weird group that’s between Gen-X and Millennial. I’ve seen us called Xennials or the Oregon Trail Generation.
Diverse teams are more effective and deliver better results. A group of people with different backgrounds and experiences will come up with different solutions to a problem than a heterogeneous group. This is a well researched topic. It is why corporate America and the military are pushing for more DE&I.
I heard this on the radio yesterday. Secretly ruthless is a good way to describe Google.
SHAPIRO: OK. So big picture on this anniversary, 25 years in, if you could describe Google's legacy in a sentence, what would that be?
PATEL: Secretly ruthless.
SHAPIRO: Oh, that's rough. Wow. Secretly ruthless - that's even less than a sentence. Give me a little bit more. Why do you say secretly ruthless?
PATEL: Google has convinced everyone that it is this incredibly sincere and earnest company - that it's just a bunch of goofballs making cool things. That is true. But I think if we just paid a little more attention to where Google's money comes from - and it is almost entirely advertising - I think we would be able to see the company and its influence a little bit more clearly. But the truth is, it is an utterly ruthless advertising company that is very, very, very successful at delivering results to its clients.
SHAPIRO: But Nilay, you didn't mention how cute the Google doodles are.
PATEL: Yeah, the - I understand. They're very cute.
A lot of programmers need to work on their soft skills.
I mostly use VS Code as a simple text editor with some of the CSV plugins. Though with JetBrains coming out with Fleet I've started to use that more. It doesn't have plugin support yet so it's not getting a lot of use.
For everything else I use whatever JetBrains IDE fits. For work, it's mostly IntelliJ, DataGrip, PyCharm, and DataSpell. At home, it's IntelliJ DataGrip and CLion. I guess I've kinda drank the JetBrains KookAid, but to me, it's worth the subscription to the all products pack. Especially if you are a polyglot since you keep a consistent IDE experience.