Just a note: Windows software for controlling hardware is highly likely to assume a)direct access to the hardware (sometimes mediated thorough ancient APIs and assuming the existence of defunct expansion slots) and b) assume meatspace time can be counted using OS timing ticks (which get stretched out as modern VMs timeshare with other processes underneath the virtulized hardware). It is awfully tough to replace them sometimes.

Maybe if enough people file feedback on the name change they will reconsider. At least they will have a glut of feedback to deal with.

There are thousands of programs for Linux… but you should be warned that relatively few programs run natively on both Windows and Linux. In some cases there are ways to run “Windows programs” on Linux, but in general such successes are special cases. If you absolutely must have Windows you can run it in a virtual machine… but you will most likely be happiest with Linux if you aren’t chasing after such things.

I use Windows for work because our IT department only supports that… but I use cygwin and wsl to get a smidgen of my familiar Linux tools that I use on my personal computers.

Yes, this was an appropriate response. I hate people who wave guns around like they are toys.

Way too late for that. Every language I know makes some kind of auto conversion for numeric comparisons… and sometimes for strings as well.

Jesus. The initial transient used to be about 3%, but now is under 1% for most product being sold. It was never near 20%.

But that doesn’t stop idiots from saying “we have optimizers” and installing them in the shade or facing north and acting surprised when they underperform.