These are the big ones I use, specifically because of the standard libraries:

Python (decent standard library) - It's pretty much everywhere. There's so many hidden gems in that standard library (difflib, argparse, shlex, subprocess, cmd)

C#/F# (.NET)

C# feels so productive because of how much is available in .NET Core, and F# gets to tag along and get it all for free too. With C# you can compile executables down to bundle the runtime and strip it down so your executables are in the 15 MiB range. If you have dotnet installed, you can run F# as scripts.

These are definitely some good thoughts, thanks!

Do you worry at all about the future of F#? I've been told it's feeling more and more like a second-class citizen on .NET, but I don't have much personal experience.

I used to, but the knowledge of .NET seems mostly transferrable to C#. It's super useful to do `dotnet fsi` and then work out the appropriate .NET calls in the F# repl.

That's a really good point, thank you. I'm running Elixir in prod right now, so F# would be up my alley.

As someone with all the memory of a fruit fly, I love a good REPL when I'm trying to recall the various magic incantations that make the computer go.

It doesn't take much power or time to run your own local git server. My first one which lasted years was parts I mangled together from old computers from garage sales.

There's instructions on running a Git server in the git book: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-The-Protoco...

I played an incredibly amount of SimCity 2000 and SimCity 3000, and Metropolis 1998 looks *amazing.*

FASTBuild[0] is super fast for large projects and comes with distributed builds and caching out of the box. It requires a bit of effort to set up, but it supports globbing sources, there's no separate generate build step, and it can also make Visual Studio solutions.

[0]: https://www.fastbuild.org/docs/home.html

Another great resource for vets getting started in software development (and other fields) is American Corporate Partners[1]. I had a great mentor through that group.

[1]: https://www.acp-usa.org/

Thanks for this. I've been dabbling with code for ~20 years, have the diploma and the t-shirt, but I lack the mentorship. I feel like it would be even more helpful in this time as I attempt to pivot from my general-IT career with dev as one tool into solely development. So, anyways, thanks for sharing additional resources.

> However, existing programming languages have little or no subtyping

Every "type" you use in Ada is actually a subtype.

In Ada, "A subtype of a given type is a combination of the type, a constraint on values of the type, and certain attributes specific to the subtype".

You don't ever refer to actual types in Ada, since creating a type with "type" actually creates an anonymous type and the name refers to the first subtype.[1]

    type Token_Kind is (
       Identifier,
       String_Literal,
       --  many more ...
    
       -- These are character symbols and will be part of Token_Character_Symbol.
       Ampersand,
       --  ...
       Vertical_Bar,
    );
    
    --  A subtype with a compile-time checked predicate.
    subtype Subprogram_Kind is Token_Kind
    with Static_Predicate => Subprogram_Kind in RW_Function | RW_Procedure;
    
    subtype Token_Character_Symbol is Token_Kind range Ampersand .. Vertical_Bar;

> If you have a pointer with more permissions, it should still be usable in a place that only requires a pointer with fewer permissions

This is exactly how "accessibility" of access types works in Ada[2]. If you have a pointer ("access type") to something on the heap, you can use it wherever an anonymous access type can be used. You can also create subtypes of access types which have the constraint of a "null exclusion".

[1]: https://ada-lang.io/docs/arm/AA-3/AA-3.2#p1_3.2.1

[2]: https://ada-lang.io/docs/arm/AA-3/AA-3.10

> no one cared back then if he was real,

This was directly addressed in 2 John 7

"I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world."

> Plenty of ways to trigger undefined behavior

I'm curious about this list, because it definitely doesn't seem that way these days. It'd be interesting to see how many of these are still possible now.

I didn't make a list, but let me give an example. Page 22 where variable declarations are introduced:

If a variable is declared and not given an initial value then great care must be taken not to use the undefined value of the variable until one has been properly given to it. If a program does use the undefined value in an uninitialised variable, its behaviour will be unpredictable; the program is said to be erronous.

Search engines seem to no longer produce an estimate of the hit count, but here are some of the ways: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=site%3Aada-auth.org+%22errone...

Ada

The open source tooling has significantly improved since I started using it in the last five years.