Viewing profile — nickd2001

I'm assuming from this Q you might be early stage in your career? Its definitely hard nowadays. 30 yrs ago, as well as C++ I learned various Unix flavours - HP-UX, Solaris then Lin…

In the US there've historically been great work and wealth-generating opportunities that weren't as readily available in Europe. That seems to come at the price of less safety net …

Colorado is a great example of this. Rocky Mountains national park is good but a bit of a tourist trap and there's so much more to see in CO than that.

Am using Claude to attempt to do refactoring and find bugs. Sometimes its fantastic, finding issues instantly that'd take a lot of trawling or insider knowledge otherwise. Other ti…

If this is true how then does James Morrison manage to accompany himself playing trumpet with the other hand on the piano ;)

Follow the above advice as its great :) People need each other. Volunteering, apart from being worthwhile for its own sake, is one of the best ways to meet people and put your own …

If they're struggling for ideas to put in homilies, they could always ask for some input from people that are one or both of (a) female or (b) married. Might get a fresh perspectiv…

Indeed! e:g - looking after elderly and/or disabled people, to give their family carers respite. Which is a minimum wage job seen by many as "drain on the taxpayer", ignoring that …

Being completely car dependent is to me a fundamental problem in much of both countries, and the advantage USA has is that the cost of running a car (or often 2 especially for a fa…

If its any consolation, perhaps there might've been a few other highly intelligent capable sensible people in existence over the last few... shall we say, millennia, who, weren't r…

Cautionary tale from here in UK. We had a Neff (same company as Bosch and Siemens) dishwasher which we used heavily for 10 yrs then it started to leak because they'd used plastic i…

This is something I wrestle with. Objectively, it'd seem true that say, a Henry Moore sculpture is of "better taste" than Disneyland. ;) But I 100% wouldn't wanna criticise anyone …

+1 to limiting braggadocio. Maintaining code written by someone with humility, and consideration for the subsequent maintainer (including themself, as they don't assume they're sup…

And the tragedy is that authors of such code often (usually?) don't receive recognition for saving time and effort on others' part by following KISS principles. For whatever reason…

Some research on the subject here : https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20180905-how-genes-infl... . Personally I question how one can definitely prove to what extent genes are th…

To me, the whole Oxbridge education must be distorted by this fierce competition to improve one's "personal brand" by getting a prestigious school on your c.v /resume (or mispercep…

There's a stereotype, possibly unfair but somewhat amusing, that Durham attracts some people who are less clever/bright than they and their families believe, who failed to get into…

Sure, tech is a relatively privileged career. Doesn't mean "Corporate hellhole" isn't a thing though ;). So don't feel guilty. :) The 50-60% pay cut far less stress jobs DO exist, …

Fantasy kids books, e:g Tolkien, CS Lewis (Narnia), Joan Aiken, Edith Nesbit are timeless though right? Then there are books set in a different time, that kids still enjoy e:g Just…

you might find this interesting : https://www.morethanascore.org.uk Says a lot of what you're saying, with some statistical evidence to back it up

These are fairly current: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Rider . Aimed at teenage boys although I only know about them cos our daughter loved 'em.

A friend bought a 14-yr-old one of these for little at an auction in 1999. As someone who knew little about cars, her logic was, it "looked OK' and had had one owner, and crucially…

Here's a less stressful alternative as a counter of sorts... How about, live frugally, try to get a house in a not super expensive area, overpay the mortgage to get monthly payment…

If genuinely feeling suicidal for any length of time, please reach out for help. :) From your many posts, some of which I replied to before, I believe you work at a soul-destroying…

I would argue that Python, being a simple, easy to learn language, allows you to focus on other aspects of CS e:g complex algorithms. Rather than faffing about with memory manageme…