The Hollanesian

I am actually getting back into programming just for fun as a hobby. I downloaded and opened up  Notepad++. Went to Languages option on the menu and saw a whole lot of them. Some I have heard of and some not. Currently trying to learn Python since it seems like the main language currently. Two decades ago I remembered at my highschool I learned Pascal and then at a technical college I learned C++, Visual Basic and Javascript. Now my question to all you developers out there is what is the point of having all these languages? Why not have 1 universal language and phase the other ones out or just stick with a previous one and not create new languages? I can understand a few exceptions maybe like Javascript is for the internet and websites and something like SQL is for databases but even with that why not make something like C++ or even Python compatible with web developing since their selectors, properties, values/variables, declarations are similar anyway. If I sound ignorant I apologize. Just trying to figure out the logic behind all this. I feel like there is no point in relearning C++ if Python is the main thing now.
 

I am actually getting back into programming just for fun as a hobby. I downloaded and opened up  Notepad++. Went to Languages option on the menu and saw a whole lot of them. Some I have heard of and some not. Currently trying to learn Python since it seems like the main language currently. Two decades ago I remembered at my highschool I learned Pascal and then at a technical college I learned C++, Visual Basic and Javascript. Now my question to all you developers out there is what is the point of having all these languages? Why not have 1 universal language and phase the other ones out or just stick with a previous one and not create new languages? I can understand a few exceptions maybe like Javascript is for the internet and websites and something like SQL is for databases but even with that why not make something like C++ or even Python compatible with web developing since their selectors, properties, values/variables, declarations are similar anyway. If I sound ignorant I apologize. Just trying to figure out the logic behind all this. I feel like there is no point in relearning C++ if Python is the main thing now.
 

21.04 will have slightly newer software package, but odds are you won't need them and the extra stability and ability to set it and forget it for much longer will be much more useful to you. For a server, LTS is the go-to. On a desktop, it depends on how much you value newer software and having to do a distro upgrade every ~6 months.

For a server you should pretty much always pick LTS (Long Term Support).

LTS means long term support
 
I think Ubuntu states they give 5 years of support for that current version. Other's only get 8 or 9 months

Programming languages are tools. You can do many things with a hammer but taking down a tree with a hammer is harder than with an axe. So yeah some languages can be more specialized than others, some are in vogue some are out of date (for today's standard) but all of them are useful for a specific use case.
 
Another thing to consider are libraries. Python for example have a ton of nice (an maintained) big data libraries. So yeah you can do all that in Delphi (Pascal) but you will have to port everything from scratch and Pascal developers are far less than Python devs nowdays.
 
You can't phase out languages even if you wish. Some banks and part of the Canadian government still use core apps written in Cobol (a 50's language)! They are slowly porting but this costs millions of dollars to do so and for what? If it still works it works. You can't port huge apps without breaking things so yeah you get a shiny new system but not as tested as the legacy one.
 
Python by the way is used heavily for Web developing and is a good choice to get back to programming as a hobby since it's the cool kid on the block. PHP is a good choice also I would think.
 
 

https://xkcd.com/927/
 
Because different languages have different strengths and weaknesses. There's no one language to rule them all. And sometimes people are just plain unhappy with language X, so they create language Y to fix the shortcomings X has (in their opinion), only to create some shortcomings of their own that others fix by creating language Z.

Cause there all better at different things. Many are now in or moving into the legacy group, where there mostly used for older projects.
 
Like for python vs C++. Python is often easier to write, takes less code for a given task, but C++ is a good amount faster. Also compiled vs interpreted language. 

Yeah, your own email is pretty hard to do in 2021. It's much more than just having a server.. you need proper DNS TXT records and DKIM. Some home ISP's won't let you even communicate over port 25, and you have all kinds of spam problems to worry about.. worse you'll have to have some kind of HA or failover because if it goes down, you won't get mail.   it's not as easy as "installing exchange and watching it go"
 
Sysadmins make their money for a reason 😉 heh

No big.. they are both awesome things.. I'm sure I've confused them myself before.

Yep, been running my own mail server for several years now. It*s a fun project to set up, but does take some time and you should have some idea of what you're doing. Also: Do yourself a favor and include a backup strategy.

Ah you too.. haha. Yes, we are weirdos. That being said I've worked for ISP and companys that send millions of messages a day, and even I find it complex at times.
 
Oh and exchange, I wouldn't give that to my worst enemy. A new one that is pretty good is OpenBSD's SMTPD but it's a little immature atm.

Even large companies usually avoid self-hosting email these days due to the inexpensive Office 365, Google Suite, ZOHO Office, Rackspace, Fastmail, etc. options out there. It's just not worth your time dealing with all the anti-spam regulations that come with it, including the possibility of getting your ISP's entire IP range (or a subnet of it) blacklisted. (This assumes your ISP even allows hosting of mailservers from a residential ISP connection - most don't.) Not saying it's impossible, of course; just not something that's recommended to run from a residential home IP address unless you know exactly what you're doing.
 
As for the web server, technically anything that boots and connects to the internet can run a small webserver via Apache / nGinx and PHP, so as others have said: you can use a Raspberry Pi for this, or any other older hardware you have lying around that can boot into Linux. There are many guides on the internet that cover installing Apache / nGinx on various flavors of Linux, though most use Ubuntu (based on Debian) as it's probably the most common consumer friendly distribution available.
https://www.linode.com/docs/guides/web-servers/apache/

Ehr... yes, Postfix for email and Postgres for the underlying database, oops... getting kind of late here 😅

If you want your own mail server, having a static IP and a domain name is pretty much a must. Otherwise other mail servers aren't going to talk to you. Most also don't communicate with IP ranges from ISPs serving home addresses. So a vserver on some hoster is usually the better approach.
 
Here's a good tutorial for setting up a mailserver: https://workaround.org/ispmail

Could do a Digital Ocean droplet for $5 a month.
Apache + reverse proxy for mail.site.com
Zimbra for the email. (he meant postfix not postgres above 😉 )
Let's encrypt for the ssl.
 
It will take some learning though.

Depends on what exactly you want to host on the web server and how much email traffic you expect.
 
For basic stuff even a RasPi would probably be enough, as long as you don't insist on using Windows as the OS. Use some Linux server distribution, Apache/Nginx as the web server and Postgres Postfix as email server, Dovecot for IMAP clients.
 
Do you want that reachable from the internet? Do you have a static IP, domain name, SSL certificates?

I'm not great with Web servers, but assuming you aren't expecting a ton of traffic you can probably get by with a Raspberry Pi. Get like a Pi4 (I think that's the newest one, double check before you buy) and steal the hard drive out of that laptop to use for storage if you need more than 32GB from an SD card. Connect it to the Internet, setup the Apache server (follow a guide for how to do it on Raspian, I'm sure there's multiple) and call it a day. 

The thing is:

what are you gonna use it for?

You can even use a raspberry for a small web server

Slow down the video.

Norwegian online stores or other Nordic countries ones that operate in Norway. What of them decide on the price when I do.
So I voted other.

Overclockers.co.uk or Scan.co.uk are websites where I buy most of the parts (new parts) , everything what is second hand Ebay.

CPU, MB & RAM in my current system are from Microcenter, bought when I was on holiday and happened to be near one in November.
Case & GPU are from overclockers.co.uk
SSD - Ebay - brand new sealed Sabrent Rocket 1TB for about 30% less than they were in stores at the time
PSU was from Amazon UK, I think.

I bought most on my components on Amazon.  I bought my current power supply (Corsair 650) at Best Buy, because the previous one (Cooler Master 550) failed and I wanted to replace it that day.  I bought my monitor (Pixio PX329) from Walmart, because if there was a problem on arrival, I could take it to the customer service desk of the local store to return it and not have to pay shipping.  Fortunately, there were no problems with the monitor.  I got my graphics card off ebay uesed EVGA GTX 1070 FTW for $237 (good price at the time).  Buying used let me jump up a GPU class from the GTX 1060 I was planning to buy new.  I've had no problems with it.

I second B&H, I have bought other stuff from them and liked their prices and shipping.