No worries. I don't intend to compete with my employer or use my work machine.

Our company uses at least 4 different database packages, none on my Ubuntu machine. My Ubuntu machine is just used to write programs and connect to those databases on our network. Connecting to all these databases is a company requirement.

In most cases vendor software will work with only ONE brand and version of a database as we are a super specialized company, and there's only 1-2 vendors that has software that we can use. Hence all our different databases. For what we do (printing) we are a medium-sized company, we have complicated processes, thus there are only 1-2 software packages that even come close to what we need. Hence all our limitations in software and databases.

Welcome to business.

I wanted a program I had more control of so I could make EPUB books from Markdown. So I did it.

I started out at the www.pgdp.net project, for proofreading public domain books which become EPUB books and other formats. But the books were so damn BORING and pointless beyond any people with a super-specialized hobby or interest. Thousands of hours go into books that almost no one will ever read. So I wanted to convert my own books into EPUB. And here I am.

In my work life I have about 15 reports for execs that just run automatically. Some run daily, some weekly, some monthly. Once the program works, my work stops there. It's literally getting tons of things done without lifting a finger.

41GB. That's a lot of data. Is there any way to pick out and download just a subset of this data, say from askubuntu?

People bad at math.

The regexes I work with are pretty simple. For example, I'm just raising the price on part numbers that look like /MH\d{3,4}PT(A|B)/.

So yes, there is a learning curve with regex, just like with Algebra I, but I wouldn't say it's that bad.

That leads me to my next question- where(what sorts of companies) should I apply to?

I work for a printer. They want me to do price updates in catalogs, and get them done in 5 minutes for any amount of pages. And it works!

What do you want to do? Write games? Write business software? Something else? What are your strengths? What's your 5 year plan for your career?

Keep in mind that your basic games are a starting point, but to impress them you want to show how you polished the games with a good UI, good features, etc.

I prefer PSPad. I just like the GUI layout and it has all I need, especially the ability to sort selected lines, which is rare in free Windows editors. It's an IDE, and fully functional. The author is very responsive to questions on the forum, and is constantly working on this. It also has a Code Explorer pane which lists all the functions in the current source file, so I can click on a function in the CE and jump right to it.

I mapped my Ubuntu machine to a Windows letter drive so I can use any windows editor for the source files on Ubuntu.

Ok, so AMD and Intel cpus, of the same architecture, share a common instruction set. But isn't it also true that they both have a few instructions only for Intel or only for AMD cpus?

Management minor here. Your hiring manager, or HR person, won't have a clue how to use Github. Just hand them a cheap flash drive with EXE files on it that they don't have to install, and that they can run from a flash drive. Even that will be super challenging for them.

You can tell them you know how to use versioning software (Github) but don't make them to stuff with Github.

Seriously, you can get a 4GB usb flash drive for about $2.

Or make an app that runs through a browser and have them go to that website. Explain what you did.

Linux skills are a plus too. I work on Windows, Redhat, and Ubuntu regularly.

Computer sci major here, I've been programming for 35 years. The most complex math I do in business programming is algebra 1 occasionally. Most of the stuff I do is trying to get multiple systems to talk to each other. That doesn't require math, it requires creativity and a lot of patience and research. Most of the math I do is adding and subtracting and multiplication, like "add 6% to all these prices, but these prices go up 7%". So now I have to figure out how to raise the price on the correct groups of part numbers programmatically using regex.

HOWEVER, my uni required a lot of math, so that was a PITA, and I use none of it. It was a complete waste of my time. I don't need to make another 3d gaming engine, nor am I making a CAD program, nor am I programming orbital trajectories, there are plenty of good ones out there.

If you're doing graphics or engineering that can involve a lot of math and writing your own code to solve math problems. OTOH there are several packages (some free) to do complex equations (Mathlab).

How random does it need to be?

I don't know, I'm not an expert. This question was more to spark discussion than anything else.

I agree current RNGs are fine for games, generating landscapes, etc. But then I got to thinking: "What IS truly random anyway? And how would one go about making a series truly random?"

Doesn't x86 assembly imply an Intel brand chip with it's specific instruction set that is slightly different from an AMD cpu?

Isn't this a good idea if you have an AMD cpu? Are there a few different instructions between the Intel and AMD cpu chips when it comes to assembly? Or do the (free) assembly compilers take care of that?

I'm in the printing industry. We don't produce software for customers, we produce printed items. Programs I create are one-off and created quickly to expedite printed jobs. So mostly I do data processing to put it into a different format for the customer. And then the data is printed in thousands of copies. We do a lot of catalogs in my department.

Interesting. Java is being used more and more in schools. But in business, we avoid it. It's just not reliable or safe for business.