Not OP, but I just use ZeroTier for this since it’s dead simple to setup and free. I’m sure there’s some 100% self-hosted solutions, but it’s worked for me without issue.

Not OP, but my main preference for MacOS comes from the UI/UX of an absolute rock solid OS on top of a unix-like shell. I regularly go months without rebooting my machine with 0 issues like software hanging on wake.

I know there are a lot of exclusive creative apps, but all I really use my MacBook for is code, typical browser stuff, music, slicer/web interface for my 3D printer, and to interact with my home server. I’m not an open-source/Linux purist by any means, but pretty much all the software I use is widely available on all platforms. It probably helps that I bought a MacBook after growing up with Windows/Linux, so I came into it with a set of software I was familiar with that already existed on other platforms.

After upgrading I built a system with it that my mom was using until 6 months ago. I ended up getting a 5800X3D and built her a system with my R5 3600. It was starting to show its age but was doing damn well for a decade old CPU.

Same year for me, but I built a PC with an i7-4790k and a 760. I had just started high school. I also have a bachelor’s and could be any of your coworkers.

Eh, it’s really not that much money to get a half decent set. Learn to sharpen/hone a knife and learn how to use a knife properly and you can make even cheap knives last basically forever. Babish has a <$100 knife set that’s serviceable as a professional set.

I’m very into cooking and have a $700 set of Wüsthof knives and they’re awesome to use, but 100% unnecessary. They’d be no better than a dollar store knife if I didn’t learn to take care of them. So many people drag knife edges sideways on cutting boards, cut on improper surfaces, cut in ways that dull the edge quickly, and then throw them in the dishwasher. Then after a year of not sharpening them replace them for more than the cost of a good sharpener.

With proper care/use and almost daily cooking I sharpen my chef’s knife once a month, and my other knives once every few months. For $50 you can get a sharpening system with a guide that makes it almost impossible to fuck up and you’ll never pay for knives again.

Just because you’re not writing high performance software doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a consideration. Sure, I’m not gonna micro-optimize memory when I’m writing an API in Python, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to write it efficiently.

If I have to store and then do lookups on some structured data I’m gonna use a hash table to store it instead of an array. If I need to contact a DB multiple times I’m only gonna close my connection after the last query. None of this is particularly difficult, but knowing when to use certain DSA principles efficiently falls pretty firmly into the computer science realm.

If you need someone to hyper-optimize some computations then a mathematician might be a better bet, but even those problems are rarely mathematician level difficult. Generally software engineers have taken multivariate calculus/differential equations/linear algebra, so we’re decently well versed in math. Doesn’t mean we don’t hate the one time a year we have to pull out some gradients or matrices though.

I’ve had the opposite experience at my past and current job.

I’ve always been given the choice of Windows or MacOS, with a remote Linux machine available if needed (first job I ran remote IDEs on it, second job I’ve gone full local development). Same with IDEs. As long as I was able to properly write and test code it did not matter what I used as both companies had licenses for the top IDEs (JetBrains suite, Visual Studio, etc.), and would buy one-offs if you wanted to use something else. There was always a general team convention simply due to ease of use, but I occasionally opted for a heavily modified VSCode workspace over PyCharm and the like.

I promise you it’s dead simple to install if you wanna check it out. ModDrop is probably the easiest installation route, just follow the instructions in that link and you’ll be set up!

I think in this case AM4 is fine. I recommended it because OP mentioned the price was a bit much, and AM4 at the moment gets you a lot of value. Especially given they are someone who plays indie games primarily with some heavier games occasionally and isn’t on all the latest AAA games. I’m actually very similar to them where I’ll play the occasional AAA game, but I mainly stick to Minecraft and KSP (which is stupid CPU intensive). My R5 3600 was more than enough for this and my upgrade was 100% unnecessary, so the 5600X should last them quite a while. There is also a decent upgrade path from a 5600X to a 5800X3D or 5900X3D.

We’re starting to see gaps between generations get smaller as Moore’s law fails, so I think parts are going to start lasting a bit longer now anyway. Hell, my 4970k lasted me almost 7 years, and my mom ran it in her work PC I built her for another 3 after that.

I honestly don’t think either path is a bad one, just up to them if they want to save some money or get a little bit more upgradability.

I’m going to preface this with this computer will last quite a while, but you won’t have nearly as much of an upgrade path if you went with an AM5 platform (latest AMD CPU socket) on DDR5 (latest generation of RAM). With that said, your use case seems to be one that will not require keeping up with the latest games, so if you want to save some money this is what I would do.

NOTE: Prices are from Amazon, you can likely find a few components cheaper elsewhere.

CPU: You don’t need an R5 7600. I was running an R5 3600 up until a few months ago and the only reason I upgraded was I found a 5800X3D for a good price. I’d go for an R5 5600X which is $60 cheaper than the 7600 and will be more than enough for City Skylines 2

Motherboard: You can now get a B450DS3H board for that CPU for $40 cheaper

RAM: You’ll now be on DDR4. Get a 16GB kit of CL16 DDR4, will be about the same price as the DDR5 you have. May want to go for 32GB of RAM because sim games eat RAM, but ultimately up to you. You can always buy more down the road if needed as a 32GB kit is like $5 less than 2 16GB kits.

Case: The no-name brand cases on Amazon are actually quite good. You can get a nice case for ~$50. Hell, I just found a Thermaltake Versa H18 for that price. Another $55 saved.

GPU: I haven’t kept up to date on GPUs, but I’ve heard good things about the 6700XT, and benchmarks look respectable for BG3 and City Skylines 2. You could likely get away with something a bit less powerful, but price to performance seems to side with the 6700XT.

This brings the price down to $831. You could ditch the aftermarket cooler and get it under $800 as the 5600X comes with a cooler, but I’m never going to knock aftermarket coolers as they tend to be much quieter and less whiny than stock.

IntelliJ for Java Pycharm for Python VS Code for everything else

I use the Jetbrains IDEs through Gateway to my dev desktop, and VS Code through SSH.

I work at AWS and the tight integration of the Jetbrains IDEs with our internal package manager/build system is a must. I frequently need to do some lighter scripting or text formatting at which point I just use VS Code because it’s faster. I could realistically use any of them for everything, but I’ve realized using 3 IDEs that suit my multiple use cases perfectly has been more enjoyable than using one IDE that does one thing perfect, and everything else just okay.

I’m pretty sure BitTorrent is the protocol, and qBittorrent is a client which makes use of said protocol. The company responsible for the protocol does make their own client named BitTorrent though.

Not me personally, but one of my career mentor’s friend’s took down the entirety of Google Ads as an intern for like 10 minutes. Apparently it was a multi-million dollar mistake, but they fixed the issue so it couldn’t happen again and all was well afterward.

23, US. Yes, but I find them pointless for daily driver cars. Modern automatics are more fuel efficient and just make more sense because they’re much easier to operate and less annoying in stop and go traffic.

They’re great for off-roading and racing, but outside of those use cases automatics are just better.

The issue is when it comes to trial it does the exact opposite. I’ve heard time and time again to be nothing but stoic if you ever get booked because the prosecution will claim you smiling in your mugshot shows you have no remorse.

I never open any ports to the open Internet other than the two my friend client uses.

For remote access I use a P2P VPN called ZeroTier leaving it always running on the Pi, and switching it on for the remote device when needed. It’s free for up to like 50 users and is very powerful, but dead simple.

I engage with politics quite a bit, and do my best to try and stay informed about current issues. However, being bombarded with it 24/7 is a great way to make people numb to politics and stop caring. It’s good to be able to choose when you have the energy to engage with it, and being able to filter it out at times is part of that. Yes it is privileged, but that doesn’t make it negative.

I agree. I had Reddit filtered pretty well to avoid politics, but Lemmy has very few communities which outright ban politics which makes it very difficult to avoid. I even agree with most of the politics on here but it gets annoying and exhausting when it’s absolutely everywhere. I’ve seen the above meme like 5 times already, I didn’t enjoy it the first time and I’m sure as shit not going to the fifth.

I usually just run a ZeroTier client on my Pi connected to a private P2P network to solve this issue, and then have ProtonVPN over Wireguard for all internet traffic in and out of the Pi.

I have a Pi 3B+ I run qBittorrent, Plex, ProtonVPN through Wireguard, and a Samba share on and have had 0 issues. It’s connected to a 2 TB external SSD which is where the Plex media library lives and coincidentally where qBittorrent downloads to by default wink wink. I also have a P2P VPN called ZeroTier that allows me to securely connect to the Pi from anywhere. You should be golden with a Pi 4.

I’ve had zero issues even transcoding 4k BluRay content, but it required adding active cooling to prevent the Pi from overheating. Thankfully you can get a tiny heatsink and fan for under $10.

Edit: Accidentally said RPi 5 which didn’t exist… Fixed.