So here’s the thing. This year I fell in love wih clojure, it’s an absolute pleasure to program in. It’s also a hosted language that runs on java (primarily) or javascript (or a bunch of marginalized things). And honestly, I feel like I can make the java backend run more resource-effecient than the JS one.

Or just slap a GPL and subsume everything within a vortex of FREEDOM, and thusly become a true FOSS dude

Yeah, no. I suppose this is sarcasm, but just in case: not every license is compatible with GPL, GPL has a few versions, and not everything is GPL-3-and-above.

Personally, I prefer Apache-2.0. It just seems more fair.

Fediverse generally runs on ActivityPub, which uses HTTP as a transport, so you’ll be good. The problem is that the clients don’t talk to fediverse, it’s more of a server-to-sever protocol; you’d look into the specific server APIs. But you’re good there, too - all the big fediverse players use RESTful HTTP for their client-facing API.

By all means, use the publicly available code within the limits its license permits. Always strive to give credit back (I oftentimes add notes to where I took config bits even in my private my-eyes-only repos to have some breadcrumbs).

Remember that licensing and copyrights are kind of separate things. People own copyright to their work (unless they explicitly give it up), and licenses are the terms on which you can use their copyrighted work.

Know the basics of the OSS licenses and know which ones you can copy things from verbatim (e.g. don’t touch AGPL code unless you also use AGPL). Generally, I just keep the original license and add a note to my license file saying that e.g. this code is licensed under Apache 2.0, but some parts are MIT.

It gets somewhat murkier when you use someone’s code and base yours on that. IANAL, and that’s very much the legal territory. If at all possible, just reuse the original copyright and license and then derive your work (given the license allows that).

Being on the receiving side of this a few times (people using my code verbatim in their projects I stumbled upon) it leaves a bit of a sour taste in the mouth when you see your copyright header replaced with someone else’s completely. Don’t do that. All the three times it happened to me, the other party was quick to remedy the situation, though (2 added the original copyright note back, 1 removed all my code). So just don’t do that. Make a habit to read that dumb tall copyright notice at the top of the file every time and you’ll quickly learn what to expect.

The free news app was, sadly, never free for all, and missed in a bunch of regions.

While you could practically install macOS on ipads it’d work no better than windows used to work on tablets (it got a bit better nowadays). macOS is just not designed for touch input and would be a hideously subpar product. Can you imagine trying to use your fingers with the blender UI at 1x scale?

There is a toolset to easily get metal mac apps on iPad, though. I actually looked into what’d it take to port bender to iPad previously, and metal is the least of all problems. Blender is just a notoriously complicated piece of software.

They actually had a couple seconds of the new mobile zbrush running on it. Blender natively supports metal nowadays (thanks to apple), so making it work is on the blender team. Sounds like a lot of work, though.

Any language you’re comfortable with is good for that. Ruby, JS, and Go come to mind the first because they all have solid ActivityPub libraries which are going to save you some time on interconnection. Any programming language can do static html.

I really enjoy writing clojure lately. the only thing that annoys me is the whole “hosted” thing where you either get a bunch of good clojure-native libraries or all the JS’s npm mess (other clojure hosts are very much non-existent).

FWIW Sourcegraph chrome extension adds a neat “open in Sourcegraph” to github pages and SG is just superior. Why would you use Github’s mediocre search either way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

IANAL and you really should ask a lawyer about this. The answer very much depends on your work contract and country of residence (the latter due to the fact that some generic contracts’ statements might be legally unenforceable in specific jurisdictions).

I’ll throw in a random fact: the contract might say that whatever you write as a programmer is still company’s property even off the clock and it will be legal in some US states.

I don’think rust has any specific features that target ML. Swift does, but it’s Apple hardware only.

Just a nit: swift is opensource and there is a swift ecosystem outside of apple UI things. Here’s a swift http server that you can totally run on linux.

The tricky part isn’t the syntax, it’s the domain knowledge. Well, actually it’s syntax, too. Swift has a whole lot of things that aren’t like anything else with sprinkles of Objective-C. Rust turns the common patterns upside down because they make borrow checker sad. But, in the end, what makes you a good engineer is knowing how to apply the tool to solve the problem and that goes well beyond syntax.

Programming languages are like different kinds of saws: all of them are made to cut things, but there are nuances. Some are replaceable, others can be used for one specific thing. Knowing how to operate a hacksaw gives you some idea how a chainsaw would work even though they are fundamentally different. But tinkle it this way: what are you trying to do? Answering that will tell you which saw you need to use.

I think Python is still unmatched when it comes to ML, and nothing can beat Swift in terms of Apple ecosystem support. Why not learn both, though? I find Swift a bit harder to reason with than rust, but both have merit (and both have interesting use cases). Just see what uses you will find for them as you progress.

You can always use sqlite cloud

/s?