This is just an opinion, not the fact.

Not long ago, there is an announcement that Windows can run Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. Not only that, there is Windows subsystem for Linux.

Surely, Linux and UNIX have a lot of powerful features, especially developer oriented. That is why Windows has to adopt them. Because they really solves a lot of problems, such as bash and other commands like grep, find, and vi. Cloud computing is emerging, command-line is much more efficient than GUI. Text file for collaborative development is much more efficient (using git) than working on binary file, as you cannot diff and patch.

Recently I involve in various projects. And they are using different technologies. I am fervent in programming because it conforms to my theological and philosophical perspective.

The languages and technology I am currently using: AngularJS and NodeJS, .NET MVC with C# Mono, and Ruby on Rails. Other related technologies: Nginx, AWS, migrations, Bootstrap CSS, etc. Besides that, my background is strong fundamental C, C++, and PHP skills; have good experience on Python; some experiences on Java, Android, Perl, and VB Script.

Linux, git, ssh, and Docker.

Linux is the most flexible OS kernel in the world right now. It is used in supercomputer, personal computer, server, embedded system like smart vacuum cleaner, mobile phone, smart TV, etc. Firstly because it is open source, everyone can study it, modify it, and redistribute it. Secondly, thanks to GPL (license). Because of GPL, anyone who use Linux need to open source their code. Those bossy people who knows Windows only and like to earn money without paying any efforts, and never understood programming and programmers, they will never understand the power of Linux and GPL.

Recently, I found that, the calendar item (agenda) created in MIUI 7 Calendar does not sync to my Google Calendar. Then I ignore it.

And until today, I found that, the agenda from Google Calendar does not sync to MIUI7 Calendar too. Then this will be serious. So, I search around the forum, and finally get this solution.

Install Google Calendar! This will solve the calendar syncing problem. Enjoy!

1. I was thinking, WT* is the unit test?
2. Why should I need unit test?
3. Why should I spend my time to prepare the test cases?
4. Why should I spend my time to become a tester instead of a developer?

For the first question, if searching online, what you get are just bunch of almost useless information. They can let you get high score in exam.

For the second question, instead of answering why, I will say, it depends. It depends on the language you are using and the framework that you are using. Let’s say you are working on C programming, there is less support of unit testing library. If you are working on Linux kernel development, unit test is difficult to implement. But, if you are developing web application, then unit testing and other testings are highly recommended. Why? Let me go to the next two answers beforehand.

Due to the changes of the career, I invested on Dell Vostro 5459, after a long survey. I chose it because it is compatible to Linux. The compatibility to Linux meaning that, all the hardware devices are accessible by Linux. Besides that, it has the NVIDIA graphic card, which allows me to use GPGPU to do my research and study. Moreover, I can play high quality 3D graphics games.

Ubuntu

So, the laptop I bought was pre-installed with Ubuntu. And, I was impressed by the Ubuntu first boot video, which can be found here.

I was using jEdit. And once willing to change to, so called modern text editor, Atom Text Editor. Then I did some comparisons among the text editors. At the end, now my primary text editor for coding is Emacs.

Emacs requires some time to learn and practise. But at the end, I love it too much. It is so powerful, no other text editor to compare with it. But the primary usage is for coding.

As a computer science lecturer (though I am from cognitive science background, and even labelled as NOT from computer science, 士可杀，不可辱！), I focus on the fundamental knowledge and experience. I focus on C/C++ language on my students, because only have good fundamental knowledge and skills, then they can survive with the evolving technology once they graduated. For example, Flash was popular technology, yet now it is dying. Those who know Flash only, have to learn new technology. Without fundamental skill, how to cope with the new technologies that emerge everyday? Know the root, then you can get any leaf.

What I need is performance, eye candy is optional.

My primary desktop environment is Xfce, as it is more lightweight than GNOME, KDE, or Cinnamon (Mate is out of my choice), yet it has more goodies (plugins) than LXDE. But due to my 4-year-old laptop, I found that LXDE has better performance than Xfce significantly. I can run multiple heavy applications at the same time, especially Firefox and Chromium. Xfce performance drops when I run both applications simultaneously. Switching between applications is slower. If running with Skype at the same time, and doing some development testing, the performance drops drastically.

I was using tab for indentation in coding, instead of spaces. Because I feel that one byte of tab is better than four bytes of space. It produces smaller file size.

However, the problems become prominent in the following circumstances.

• Viewing different languages may require different indentation width. XML and HTML may use 2 characters width, other languages may use 4 characters width. Changing the tab width from the setting frequently is inconvenient.
• Editing source code with different developers and using different text editors will produce source code with both tab and space indentation. As a result, the indentation becomes inconsistent.
• Emacs problem. If the Emacs tab width is set to 8 characters, but the source code indentation is 4, this produces both tab and space indentation at the same line, for example, 3 indents (12 characters width) produce 1 tab with 4 spaces. Oh dear, I always show the whitespace and tab marks in the editor. The ugliness disturbs me.
• Git diff view. If using Git GUI, it will highlight the tab indentation when the pervious line is a space indentation.

So, in the cases above, space indentation becomes handy. Though different developers use different text editor may produce different width of space indentation, with space indentation will produce better output than tab indentation.