Open source inherently means you can compile the code locally, for free. You can’t necessarily redistribute it, depending on the license, but I’m not aware of a “you can compile this source for testing and code changes only but if you use it as your actual copy you are infringing” license.
Most free software is also open source and vice versa, but not all, the difference usually lies in the licence, this stackexchange answer gets it pretty well
According to the Open Source Initiative (the folks who control whether things can be officially certified as “open source”), it basically is the same thing as Free Software. In fact, their definition was copied and pasted from the Debian Free Software guidelines.
While DRM is the bane of everybody there are cases where trust and integrity is important and it’s an intriguing look into how hard it is to manage.
Nah, when the user wants to ensure trust and integrity in his own system, it works just fine. The problem comes when the user who needs to be able to access the data is simultaneously the adversary who needs to be stopped from accessing the data.
In other words, it’s one of those situations where the fact that it’s hard to manage is a gigantic clue that it’s wrongheaded to try to do so in the first place.
“Usable” is a strong statement… It went from a “misery inducing insufferable machine” to a “extremely big annoyance”. I do concede it is anyway a progress
Winget-UI specifically can run the upgrade tool automatically for you, that’s what I meant for “automation”. You could also add a scheduler to run Winget by itself every day if you need to.
I really want to love the “everything is an object” of power shell but I just have zero uses for using a shell on windows. Granted, my windows usage is like 15 minutes a week most of the time, but still. I also can’t be bothered to use it for work because it’s exclusively Linux/linux-ish over there so it’s not worth bothering.
Either way, I like the idea, can’t really justify figuring out the details.
It’s a wonderful tool for me in a Windows environment/shop, especially with how it works well with all the Windows and Microsoft administration systems/tools we use.
Personally, I’m less interested in any language’s hypothetical merits than how it fits as a tool for what I need to accomplish and ease of future maintenance when the script/program/automation inevitably needs to be adjusted.
All that said, I can’t think of a legitimate reason to use PSCore on non-Windows hardware unless you’re just really familiar with PS and literally nothing else. Even then you’re better off taking time learning a better tool for that environment.
If you only have to use it 15 minutes every week it’s probably not worth getting to know.
I work in a Windows shop, so I love everything being an object, most of the time. At least for the things that are worked out completely.
It’s great for things you need to iterate or just for figuring out what you can do by piping a result to get-member. If you are interested in getting better at powershell at some point, I highly recommend Powershell in a month of lunches. (Also because I like Manning’s model where they automatically offer the digital versions of books they sell, and also offering free previews of the entire book, given enough time)
I hope I didn’t come across as defending ps. PS sucks and whoever decided to have functions use capital case with dashes in between needs to have their brain scanned
I do a lot of work in PS and I don’t find it that bad. But you forgot what’s even dumber about their function naming conventions.
Function names are supposed to be a single word verb, then the dash, then the rest. But not any verb, you’re supposed to use one from PS’s list of acceptable ones which has some really weird omissions. And they break their own single word verb convention with “acceptable verbs” ConvertTo and ConvertFrom (ConvertTo-SecureString, ConvertFrom-Json), which are the only exception to one word verbs before the dash.
Function names are definitely one of my biggest peeves with it.
Additionally, their basic comparison operators are dumb as hell. How is “-le” better or clearer in meaning that “<=”? -ne instead of !=, but == isn’t just -e, it’s -eq. And you can’t slap an n in front of other comparators for not, -nle isn’t a thing. You gotta wrap the whole comparison in parentheses and slap an ! on the front or slap -not in front. But don’t try to do !-le, because that’s also not a thing. It’s not terrible but I refuse to believe that -eq is more readable than ==
Functionally speaking, PS is a really good shell language. Its minor things about it that I dont enjoy. As you said, it feels like the language design has some poor decisions.
There is one case I can think of where statically linked binaries make sense: games. They’re almost always closed-source even on otherwise open-source systems, and so cannot be recompiled against newer library versions, and (for smaller indies especially) it isn’t unusual for the people who do have the code to close up shop and vanish off the face of the Internet. For those, it honestly is better for them to carry all their libraries around with them, even if it results in some binary bloat.
For open-source software, dynamic linking isn’t usually an issue until some piece of software goes unmaintained for so long that it catches bit-rot.
For software not in one of those two categories . . . well, maybe you ought to move off Windows?
Making your own engine is worthwhile learning experience. The same as trying to recreate any of the foundational tools that you use. Might not be the fastest or best way to make a game but a good way to make yourself a better developer.
Keep in mind that if you actually want to make a game, make a game not an engine. Too many video game projects get bogged down in the engine development stage and never make it to completion.
Do people even make their own engines anymore? If this wasn’t a pet project I would have dropped the entire thing as soon as I started dealing with 3D models, and visited Godot’s homepage.
…
Perhaps I should get my hands on Godot at some point.
The in-house engines I know are being used are also really old - hell, 343i even decided to ditch the fossil that once was Halo: CE’s engine because of technical debt and outsourcing blood sacrifices
This is my 4th Vulkan related “project” and 2nd attempt at making something other than a glorified tutorial workspace in 6 years, and it took me 4 weeks to draw this stuff with minimal technical debt.
I could just use an existing game engine, but what’s the fun in not manually sorting all draw commands by mesh>pipeline>material and hunting synchronization hazards by just looking at funny glyphs for extended periods of time?
Yet depressingly common in MMORPG circles. People tend to vastly underestimate the amount of work needed to get an remotely playable MMO off the ground.
I’ve entertained the idea, and the first to requirements that come to mind are advertising money and server upkeep money - then one could start worrying about actually making it
Hear me out: a fully fledged desktop environment, like KDE Plasma or Gnome, but it’s a 3D world - “windows” are just walls, the file explorer is just a bunch of procedurally generated condos, and you get a Gmod physics gun to move stuff around.
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