Den15

why care

I recently grabbed a cheap HP laptop with Ryzen 5 2500U, 8GB RAM (2666MHz in actual dual channel which is really neat) and 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD for under 480€. It might not be king of the hill, but it's way better than any Core i3 Intel can offer. At lower price.

been learning C for college... all I can say is I freakin love it, and performance is a blast
I don't think it's slower than other less strict languages, you'll just need to pay attention to what you're doing
 
EDIT: I meant slow in the coding proccess

If Python was the only language I knew, it would be my second best language as well.

Python, mostly.

What car do you drive?

Story time folks, I was looking to mod a case and needed a spare panel in case I wrecked the only one I had so got on to the case maker to order one. They had none for general sale but had a couple for warranty so if I sent them a S/N they'd send me one. Deadly!
 
Couple of weeks go by and UPS drop a box to my house. My better half says it was a serious weight but the only thing I had coming was the panel. Low and behold it's a MSI box. Very confusing all together. So I open it and there is two factory sealed RTX 2070 Armour cards!!! I nearly collapsed in my kitchen. I noticed all the delivery stickers are from the case company and the part number for the panel is on the box. Obviously, there had been an error.
 
So being the upstanding gentleman I try to be, I get in touch with them and let them know what has gone down. They're full of apologises and arrange for collection. They say they're gonna send me a thanks for highlighting the issue and the panel. Some PWM fans and "some other things", they said.
 
This rolls on to today. Another UPS box turned up. Panel had arrived by regular post a few days ago so must be the "thanks". For returning over €1000 worth of parts, I got 3x 120mm non-PMW fans and 3x 140mm non-PWM fans none of which were boxed but covered in dust and a few marks so can't sell them on or use them in a system I might sell since I don't know their history. Bit disappointed but at least but they're free. I've no use for them but I have them.
 
Moral of the story: not everyone is a thieving bastard but some people aren't as nice as they make out to be either.

be a man and just run it without cooling while baking a steak on it

Just throw it all in a tub of 3M novec

I use C for web and desktop development.

Does "Internal compiler error" sounds familiar? ?
Believe me, I know that for a fact, I do work in this field. Some compiler versions are pure sh#t! 
Also, some compilers are more…. let's say permissive than others about the norm, so your code can compile well using them, but simply can't compile using another (even on the same machine!).
 
Quick example: overwritting a constant… ? Some compilers say "you're doing some sh#t but ok, I'm saving the constant and give you a copy of it", while some say "let's goooo" and then the code crashes when you run it! And some just stop the compilation saying "nice try, but try again" ?

Try not to pigeon hole languages like that. Game engines comprise such a small % of the C++ code out in the world (it's behind most of the web browsers you use for example), and python isn't the only language to do machine learning in. There is truth in some of the language stereotypes, but it might give you wrong idea about a language if you latch on too firmly.
 
Instead of specific applications, think of the languages in terms of their strengths weaknesses and go from there:
 
(this is BY NO MEANS an exhaustive list, just the stuff that comes to my mind) 
C/C++
Pros
Low level High performance A lot of tooling to catch errors at compile time Portable Cons
Higher skill curve some types of defects can be very hard to track down (e.g. memory/GDI issues)  
C#/Java
Pros
Not as performant as C/C++, but adequate for the vast majority of applications have a wide variety of built in features (especially with C# and .NET) Lower skill curve, as many low level operations are abstracted away Cons
Managed memory (garbage collection) can sometimes have performance impact (not common) Not necessarily as portable. The appropriate JVM/.NET environment, and .NET in particular is limited to mostly windows machines. Python/Javascript/Ruby
Pros
Typically the lowest barrier of entry. Very little is needed to run simple but useful things Great for automation and quick scripts Extremely large library selection, with a huge dedicated userbase constantly adding to it (this is why python is such a common research language) Cons
Weaker performance, though this can often be mitigated (such as using precompiled libraries in python) Heavy reliance on third party libraries means extra work with upkeep. Not as portable  
again, THIS WAS NOT MEANT TO BE A COMPLETE LIST. This is just to show how you should look at languages based on strengths, not stereotypical uses (which are often outdated).
Most likely embedded development in todays market, but it depends wildly based on where you work.

Assembly is for low level programming. Touching the bare metal, speaking to the machine in its language.
No one (almost) does assembly any more because the systems these days are powerful enough not to need the performance boost from assembly. But some of us assembly coders are still out there.

Australia doesn't seem to be affected at all i can access Netflix, google and YouTube just fine
FINELY KARMA STRIKES BACK! now who has bad internet?! (still us but..................fuck you)

I am personally very excited. We need a new player in the PC space, and Qualcomm has been doing massive strives at each iteration of their CPUs which targets the laptop market. While I do expect the current Snapdragon powered system to be on the expensive side more than Chromebook pricing, it won't take long before the mid range chip will match the performance of this chip and be price competitive to Chromebooks.
 
Aside from this, it seems that there is developer interest. Considering that the ARM based device is very rare, and OEMs making very limited quantities of Qualcomm powered CPUs devices, the following are official programs coming (with beta/test version available) or officially released as we speak:
Firefox (reached testing phase) Chrome (in the works) Chromium Edge (in the works) 7Zip VLC PuTTY Python Netflix and all native UWP programs (if I am not mistaken) Honestly, I expected 0 support. Especially, for the fact that buying ARM based Windows machine was expensive, very expensive, and actually very difficult, due to the limited production run (which didn't help lowering the price) by OEMs that were mostly doing this for proof of concept/tapping their toes on the water. Dev obviously needs the system to test their compiled software, and debug it on it if they are any issues. So, there is interest. 
 
We need competition in the PC space, Intel is massive and it will need more than AMD to actually genuinely scratch Intel and actually have fierce competition as we used to have back in the old days of computers. If you think about app support, having Chrome/Firefox/Chromium Edge, Office, some music player like Spotify, I think that covers most use cases of a PC for many typical users and office warriors. And that excludes Win32 translation support that they can use just in case. Such user may not gain much on price system powered by this chip, especially if they seek a quality  device with a good keyboard, trackpad and screen, but they will gain things that Intel is having a very diffciult time delivering:
Massive battery life LTE/5G support Lighter/smaller system Instant wake up (like your phone). Connected Standby from Intel+MS didn't pan out to match a mobile phone experience in waking up a phone from sleep.  
If Qualcomm is able to kick start things with this chip, I think we will see more developer interest, with a a growing list of native ARM64 programs for Windows 10 on ARM, making such system even more appealing to a number of user.

Today we pit the Snapdragon 8cx against the Core i5-8250U. This is how the 8cx hold's up:



Benchmarked configurations:
Unnamed competitor laptop. Intel Core i5-8250U 8GB RAM 256GB NVMe Storage 2K resolution display (2048×1080) 49Whr battery Windows 10 OS version: 1809 Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx reference laptop. Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx (same as the rumored "Snapdragon 1000"?) 8GB RAM 256GB NVMe storage FHD resolution display (1920×1080) 49Whr battery Windows 10 OS version: 1903  
Some in-house footage of the benchmarking:
 
Okay, so it's theoretically as good as an 8th Gen Core i5 but do apps actually run well on it?
 
Well here we have some browsing, Office Suite, and light gaming/Photoshop (PUBG on the Snapdragon 850):
 
Reviewers mention that Snapdragon laptops sells it in I/O, battery life and solid on-the-go productivity, but here's the caveat: most Windows games will be unplayable unless the 8CX's Adreno 680 GPU proves to double the performance of the Snapdragon 850 and app-support will be limited to "native" Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and "non-native" emulated x86/32-bit apps, which might feel kinda slow until they are optimized as UWP apps or re-compiled for ARM64.
 
Sources, Benchmark analysis, more hands-on footage, and Snapdragon 850 device reviews:
 
Personally, I'm not sure I would buy these until they prove to run enough non-UWP apps and run them at least as smoothly as a Core i3 or Core Y-series processor.
 
What are everyone else's thoughts on this?

Qualcomm is also moving into laptop market. It's not like Intel wont have a competition there.

Does it support X86-64? I'd like one if it does.

I am really interested in performance. I am still on edge about ARM VS X86 

*Sees Ampere in Title*
*Expects Nvidia Topic*
*Opens Topic and sees ARM*
*Close Tab* /s
 
No but seriously when I clicked on it I thought this was Nvidia news Unless Nvidia is conspiring to make ARM server chips secretly

This was talked about at the start of the year and now it's here. Ex Intel Boss Renée James and her company Ampere Computing will aim their new chip at the top 8 web companies as cheaper (both to buy and run) server chips for running things like web servers as well large scale network appliances and other targeted servers.
The specs are fairly impressive for what's essentially a low power chip,
They're already teasing a 7nm second generation model with dual socket support.
You will be able to order servers from Lenovo by the end of this week with Ampere having their own servers ready sometime soon.
It seems as though Intels current struggles with die shrinkage makes this a perfect time for the Arm chips to launch a counter attack
https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2018/09/18/ampere_shipping/
 
I would be very interested to see Linus put one through its paces and see how it performs. When they say "upto 125w" is that an under 100% load number or an Intel number? We've all seen Intel chips draw upwards of 400 watts.

Great news.
 
As the owner of an ASUS X370 Pro, I'm especially happy with ASUS claiming their 1st gen mobos will be able to withstand 3rd gen Ryzen. If 3rd gen offers enough advantage over 1st gen, I might end up upgrading in a couple years when 4th gen comes along and 3rd gen prices drop. ❤️ 

System76 sells overpriced laptop in my opinion. I mean I can get a better specs Windows machine for less and then wipe off winblows and install Linux on it. Interestingly it says on Microsoft terms and agreement, If I don't accept the terms and conditions, I can return the windows oem license for a refund. 

If you're asking this question then the answer is: Mac will do no good for you.
 
Want a safe bet? Get a Winderp... sorry... Windows laptop that can run a VM with Linux on it and you'll be good to go.
 
You'll have to test the programs you'll be making on the final environment (don't know if it makes sense, english is not my first language but whatever).
 
If you write an application in C (good old C, they'll probably teach it in this program) you'll have to compile it to the architecture you'll use. Since most users go with Windows you might as well do the same. Or you can ressearch about Linux and enter the penguin side and run a VM for Windows testing.
 
Since W10 license is paid the first option might be the best, if you get to buy a laptop with a license strapped in.