I decided to give Ubuntu 20.04 a try on my 2015 15" MacBook Pro. I didn't actually install it; I just live booted from a USB thumb drive which was enough to try out everything I wanted. In summary, it's not perfect, and issues with my camera would prevent me from switching, but given the right hardware, I think it's a really viable option. The first thing I wanted to try was what would happen if I plugged in a non-HiDPI screen given that my laptop has a HiDPI screen. Without sub-pixel scaling, whatever scale rate I picked for one screen would apply to the other. However, once I turned on sub-pixel scaling, I was able to pick different scale rates for the internal and external displays. That looked ok. I tried plugging in and unplugging multiple times, and it didn't crash. I doubt it'd work with my Thunderbolt display at work, but it worked fine for my HDMI displays at home. I even plugged it into my TV, and it stuck to the 100% scaling I picked for the othe
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In Canada, where engineering is a professional discipline with legal backing behind it (ie. it's illegal to call yourself a professional engineer if you haven't met the correct accreditation requirements), this is a large part of Software Engineering.
Software Engineering recently became a professional engineering discipline, and while most of the focus is on formal methods, you also *have* to take multiple classes on physics, chemistry, mechanics, thermodynamics, ethics, etc.
A Software Engineer should not be an expert in any of those fields, but must be able to work with domain experts to implement a solution in software.
There are no physics laws governing software in such a way as to guarantee that the safeguards are "strong" enough to keep the software from falling over. I know if a bridge is strong enough; I don't know if a piece of software is strong enough.
It's a young field that still needs a lot of work, but you have to start somewhere. We'll probably never have a software equivalent to f=ma, but you *can* formally prove software designs. It's just really really hard.
Take a look at the invention of steam engines, they were prone to explosions, and most of the refinement came through practice, observation and refinement. I'd challenge anyone to say this is the actual process of engineering, and not very different from what software engineers do.