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What is it that you like about gamedev? Indie development is very different from AAA gamedev for example. There are also many disciplines within gamedev, each with their core responsibilities and day to day tasks.


If the hardware is exotic I guess you’d have no choice. But for security critical don’t you run the risk of relying on obscurity rather than security due to the niche-ness of your stack?

What does a vendor compiler do or do better than a compatible generic one?


When you get a critical system certified for fielding you aren't just certifying the source code, but the actual executable and build process and test process and other things. This requires reproducibility for years to come. Choosing generic compilers may work in dev and parts of test, but not for actual deployment as a consequence (or it doesn't work well). Suppose you picked clang 11 several years back. Now you need to do an update to the system, you can still use clang 11, but not clang 14 at least not without doing a comprehensive recertification process. Also, if an issue is discovered in clang 11 it's likely been fixed in clang 14, but again you have to get your system recertified with clang 14. And that's if the issue is fixed, it may still exist.

With a vendor supplied compiler you can say, "We're using version 11.2". A year or two later an issue is discovered, the vendor will backport a fix to 11.2 giving you 11.2.1 which is much less effort for recertification. You aren't depending on the kindness of strangers (a terrible strategy) because you're actually paying someone to do the work.


That explains a lot! Never worked with certified code, but I see how it makes sense.

Do the vendor compilers have a very focused feature set as a result? To reduce both test surface area and chance of expensive mistakes?


Mainly their own costs. They have a captive market, and tooling is a "cost center".


How often have you used your airbag?


About as many times, but the key thing is that the horn is only useful if I'm static since otherwise it's faster for me to evade than honk. I estimate ~0.5 s to 1 s net delay to action if I were to honk, with 0.5 s to 1 s delay in action from other person if they're fast. At a 2 s delay, unless I'm not moving, evasion + braking seems superior. And evasion is made harder while honking. I've had many times where people run red lights in front of me (I live in SF) but I've never honked. It's frequently too late to do anything so I just brake.


The point I was making was that something doesn’t need to be used often for it to be important and for you to want it to be reliable.

Also, the horn is a signal. It allows you to evade and alert other users that something needs their attention. Maybe they need to avoid you while you avoid something else.


Just out of interest; which ones would you consider high-end?


For CAD specifically I'd say "high end" are CATIA, NX and maybe Creo? SolidWorks and SolidEdge would form the tier below that.

For CAx in general it's difficult to say, because there's such a huge variety of software and every little niche has its own highly specialized (and usually very expensive) tools. I've never seen any of these support anything other than Windows and/or Linux. Some of them have Win32 GUIs and Linux is headless only (for running simulations), some are fully cross platform, some are Linux-only.

Most CAE engineers around here work on Linux, mainly because they prefer how easy it is to script and automate things and because the headless HPC/batch environment is of course also Linux. Meanwhile CAD and design only happens on Windows because CATIA is Windows only, like the various Autodesk tools used for CAID. From the late 80s to the early 2000s this place had a ton of UNIX workstations (SGI, HP, Sun) and even UNIX clusters (IRIX and SUPER-UX among others, the latter having virtually no representation on the internet today). There's also still IBM AIX systems around, as well as IBM mainframes. Not my department though.


> There's also still IBM AIX systems around, as well as IBM mainframes. Not my department though.

Are you saying some people still use IBM mainframes for CAD/CAE/etc applications? If yes, that's unexpected yet intriguing information, and I'd love to know more.

Although maybe you were just stating the obvious that IBM mainframes survive in general even if no longer in this particular domain.


Thanks for your answer! What makes it so that AutoCAD is not high end? Like what features does it lack or what workflows does it not support?

Suppose something like CATIA was available on Mac and offered lets say a performance benefit. Would you consider Mac? Or would you for example still need a whole other set of tools to be available as well for it to be even possible?


You don't have to be a victim to do something about it.

When any of us remain silent when we witness or hear about abuse we are allowing other people to be victimized now and in the future.


I couldn't agree more...but many people chose to remain completely silent when abuse happens. The culture surrounding this has changed a lot in the last 20 years yet we keep having these types of events that people pile on only after one person comes forward. Then all of a sudden it's a pattern of abuse and a way bigger issue to fix.


And this is where all of us need to actively cultivate a company culture where we maximize everyone's ability to feel safe especially when things go seriously wrong.

Apparently, this does not happen at enough places.


“Get a copy of the data associated with your Apple ID account”

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208502



Did you press 'F' to pay your respects though?


In case anybody thinks this is offtopic: pressing F does indeed do something on that page (be warned: there is sound).

There's an inscription in the marble below the list of products that implores you to pay your respects to capitalism.


The irony being that this website is the product of a startup that is itself valued at an eye-watering 100M..


I refuse to pay any respect to these ironically-deified excesses of marketing, so no.


A non-technical manager who can somehow do his tech job unburdened by having to understand technology to me sounds just like a non-administrative programmer who can somehow do his tech job unburdened by any administrative tasks such as issue tracking or planning.

How does that even work? How can one be 'non-technical' when they are managing people who produce technical output? Is it not key to managing this situation that one understands what is being done to at least some degree? And if one understands to some degree then one is not 'non-technical' I would say. If understanding is lacking; it can be learned.

It's not like it's magic!


You can pretty much do that with Unreal Engine which allows you access without relying on stolen goods...


Oh I don't know. Maybe the hackers will hold their operation hostage for ransom? Get the money and get some nice PR all at the same time!


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