I’ve never asked, but I believe medical issues cropped up and their reduced retirement funds wouldn’t have been enough, forcing them to keep working, and the situation spiraled from there.

The main problem with Java (or garbage collected languages in general) as a first language is needing to unlearn the bad habits it ingrains when you move to a systems programming language with manual memory management. Other than that it’s a pretty good first language, though I’d suggest learning a bit of C at the same time just to get a basic grip on things like pointers and stack vs heap.

Edit: it occurs to me that C# would be the perfect learning language. It’s very similar to Java and an easy first language, but you’d also learn about stack allocation through structs, and can teach pointers using unsafe (though I think unsafe code is still GCed, so this wouldn’t help with the memory management side of things. Haven’t touched C# in fifteen years so I’m not sure how it works anymore).

Yeah, I remember my parents talking about how badly they were hit in the late 00s. They were considering retirement just as the recession struck, and they lost a huge chunk of what they’d hoped to retire on.

They still haven’t retired fifteen years later despite declining health.

That could take a lifetime!

I’ve seen code with binary data (such as icons) baked into constants. I can’t wait for the three hour narration of base64 encoded pngs.

Metro also comes to mind. The highest difficulty level made both you and the enemies squishier, while also making ammo (which doubled as currency) much rarer. It played so much better that the community even recommended that difficulty level to complete newcomers.

… And then they made the Ranger difficulty a paid DLC in the sequel…

Shinzo Abe vibes.

To paraphrase an old tweet: “parentheses - for when every thought comes with bonus sub-thoughts”.

The first recommended video when I searched for them was this one. Very cool, and confirmed for me that even though I don’t have claustrophobia, cave diving is definitely not for me.

“Exploration is one of the central pillars of our gameplay. That’s why we’re offering this handy little DLC to instantly fill out your map!”

I’ve seen that kind of DLC a few times for open world games and it’s always jarring.

It’s the lack of flow.

When I’m good at something, I can switch my brain off (even for mental tasks like programming; it’s weird how ADHD works) and happily do it for hours.

When I’m working on something I’m not good at or am new to, I need to stop every few minutes to think or research and that gives my ADHD brain an opportunity to attack.

When I’m medicated, I can maintain that flow state with nearly any task - just with zero control over which task gets priority.

I will never not laugh at this. Every moment is so perfectly timed.

*takes ADHD meds for the first time*

POWER OVERWHELMING.

On Windows you can use NVCleanstall, which will notify you when there’s a driver update, download the installer for you, and even strip out Nvidia’s telemetry and bloatware from the installer before running it.

The bloatware and telemetry removal is the best part. There’s like twenty components in a default Nvidia driver installation and you only really need maybe three to run games.

Jealousy is just envious because it didn’t make it into the Seven Deadly Sins.

The only cookie that melts in your mouth. I swear the dough is just densely packed powdered sugar.

There are two things I can’t stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures… and the Dutch.

“Fell down an elevator shaft and landed on a pile of bullets” has lived in my head rent-free since I saw this movie 25 years ago. I don’t know why - it’s not even particularly funny or clever, but the line stuck with me.

VeeBeard?

And the next time Gandalf visited, he tried to lock him in his tower. Kinky.