Those people you see on LinkedIn with like 20 programming languages on their resume are really looking for a job just to pay off the debt of buying 20 computers
Actually long desks are no longer considered best practice. At my work, some devs have a lazy suzan, while others prefer a circle that they can pivot around to face the right computer.
I got one of those desks with a vertical pneumatic lift so I can stack the computers vertically in a rack and just raise/lower it so the right one is at eye height
The trick is you hire a runner who comes over when you ring a bell and he unplugs your computer and plugs in the one you need and then takes the other computer to someone else that needs it, I think they call him a vm short for vamoose machine
At one point, before we virtualised everything, I had a custom desk built in an L-shape. Instead of a desk and a return, I had the refurbishment team put together a desk with two desks instead. It gave me two sets of drawers, two computer cubby holes and the gap was too small for the horrible keyboard adjustable shelf that kept hitting your knees, so they replaced it with a fixed surface instead.
People laughed.
Colleagues sniggered.
Then they wanted one too.
Now I have a mobile lectern with an iMac clamped to it. Height adjustable, wheels, enough space for keyboard, trackpad and USB hub. I move around my office as the mood or light takes me.
I swear, overcoming fixed functional-ness is like a superpower when you can apply it.
I once shared a small office with a co-worker. I had the idea to move the desks away from the walls and place them back-to-back, diagonally, in the middle of the room. Other co-workers scoffed and remarked at how dumb and unconventional this looked. Then I explained that we each now had nearly full privacy from each other, much more personal space in our respective corners, no more glare from the window, and nobody could sneak up on us from the door anymore. Things got pretty quiet after that.
Early on in my career, I had to do a project in Python, together with another junior. Neither of us had any clue how to handle Python and he was on Windows, so, if I remember correctly, he had to install some dependencies from Pipenv, others from Conda, and his setup would break every two weeks in novel ways.
Eventually, we became quite good at installing a working setup, but correctly removing the broken setup was a pain. Often times, I thought that just reinstalling the whole OS would be quicker. 🫠
Every now and then a new hire comes along with a windows pc, every time they decide they want to try to get everything working on windows, after a week they give up.
No clue, all i know is that i never have to do more than that, and noone has managed to get it working on windows 🤷♂️
When i started learning programming, everything was always a pain to set up, needed to install weird IDEs from shady websites and they only worked half the time. Then a friend showed me linux where stuff just worked out of the box, just slap some code in a textfile and compile it, i never looked back (was working in c/c++ but from what i've seen it's not much better for python)
Since some wsl features started coming with windows out of the box python has been pretty trivial to install. It's a far cry from the conda/cygwin nightmare hell scape it used to be
I believe, it's because various Python libraries ship with a pre-compiled C/C++/Rust library. That library needs to be compiled for a specific target, and you often only get Linux x86_64 on Pypi, because that's what most library devs use themselves.
Conda tries to solve that by providing a separate repository, where they do have builds for more targets available, but as a result, they have fewer libraries available in that repo. That's why we needed to install some via Conda and some via Pipenv/Pypi.
Last time I checked, it was way easier in Windows to have a VM running Linux just for Python, than to get Python to reliably work nativelly in Windows.
'Yes boss, I need 16-Bit, 32-Bit and 64-Bit Arm and x86_64 ASM as well as MySQL, SQLite, Postgres, Firebird, Mongo and all other stuff too, so I need a lot of computers ... of course all with Threadripper PRO 7995WX's.
