Programming languages, much like the jackass in the middle, are tools. Different tools are for different things. The right tool for the job can make your day. The wrong tool can make you question your entire career.
"We have decided that we will use deck screws to build our deck, it's the right pattern and architecture for the job. Now get started with this hammer, the tool you use doesn't matter as long as it's functional as a tool. If it's not working well that's an optimization problem because you're bad at your job."
I generally don't do GUIs for C. But I'm also an embedded C person.
When I have I'll generate DLLs for the C portion then just pull them into a python based interface or something with easier to deal with gui implementations.
Programming languages are tools. Would you use a wrench to drive a nail? You could. But it would be painful, you're gonna miss and whack your hand at least once.
If it's a learning exercise, go for the C implementation, why not? I've written an XML parser in LabVIEW. (I never stopped to ask whether I should...) Is that the right tool for the job? Fuck no.
If this is an exercise in software engineering be an engineer and use the 99% already built and verified system to do the job it's meant to.
Or you can write an entire theme park simulator in assembly because you like pain or something.
I can't tell you that a baofeng is gonna outperform any of these radios. I can tell you that I've got two of them, a programming cable, a mag mount vhf/uhf antenna, a nagoya antenna, and an antenna I made out of some leftover Romex and a painting pole. All this was well within that budget.
I can also tell you that I, not without some antenna placement experiments, can consistently activate a local repeater from around 15 miles. And have been complimented on audio quality on multiple occasions.
You are not going to find an ht with a rubber duck antenna that's going to perform the way you'd like. You will need to try out some different things.
Save yourself some heartache and get an sma to BNC adapter for the radios you wanna play with some antennas on and some whatever your antennas have to bnc adapters, get a few antennas instead of another ht, and just try stuff out. Or hell, throw $16 bucks at a gt-5r, they're clean transmitters now, the build quality is surprisingly good (on mine anyway) and even if it's hot garbage you didn't spend a fortune on it.
You will always wonder if you're screwing things up, you just get better and faster at diagnosing the issue through practice.
Off lease corporate thin clients with fresh ssds. You can get something that runs off a laptop power supply, will handle more than you're going to throw at it, and they're insanely cheap.
I moved to one from a pi when I got serious about home assistant.
I also run a stack of networking utilities on my OPNSense router.
Jellyfin has been a bit more difficult to transition, I'm still running it on my wife's gaming computer. I've pre transcoded most of our collection, but not all of it. I need to find something very cheap but also capable of handling the odd 4k transcode.
Our system, the US, but also the west in general, is designed to make you feel alone. It is designed to fragment and alienate the working class. It is designed to exploit and extract as much from you as it can.
The fact that we don't all feel like this constantly is a miracle. There's been a war on since this place was founded and it's always been the rich vs the vast majority of people.
Therapy can help and I highly recommend it. Understanding your enemy can also help. Ultimately, I find the most relief in connecting with other people. Talk to your spouse, talk to random strangers, talk to your kids. I'm an introvert and socializing is exhausting, but it's also the only cure for the malaise of a sick society, in my opinion.
We have the food. Our government could remedy this situation easily. It is currently mid-own-goal and If it continues it will radicalized an entire generation against capitalism.
They will not be able to hide the contradictions of capital accumulation from regular ass Americans. It will be obvious, even to those not paying attention that the system is violent and it is violent along class lines most especially.
The door monitor mostly helps when a kid walks off leaving it open thinking they closed it.
The freezer temperature monitoring has saved the contents several times. A breaker had tripped once and I didn't notice, it let me know that I needed a generator during a power outage, and one of the kids snuck an ice cream and left the lid wide open.
So yeah, it's been useful. It's not needed 99% of the time.
It's not the actual tech, generally speaking, that people are upset about. Although your Luddite reference is probably more accurate than you intended.
The Luddites weren't anti-tech, they were anti- the damage it was doing to the people who did the work.
Most people who hate these new technologies aren't mad at the tech itself, they're mad at the quality that's produced when the only concern is lowering costs and the extractive infrastructure built around it. A monthly fucking subscription for heated seats. This exists now.
The alternative to this is the galaxy brained take: "THESE PEOPLE HATE HAVING A COMFORTABLE ASS WHILE DRIVING"
That's the most hilarious thing about being good at being an engineer it seems. I'm more than 10 years into my career at this point and I spend more time correcting other people's work and outlining the technical work that needs to be done than writing things myself these days.
I believe you and I'm sure they were fine.
I wrote an XML parser in LabVIEW once. Just because you can doesn't mean it's the right thing to do lol.