Thank you. Mrs Rice isn't what would make Dropbox unsafe, it's their lack of encryption and other insecure practises. A quick DuckDuckGo search yielded these articles:
If you're a student / novice working on small projects, aiming to learn and improve yourself maybe. If you work in a production environment "learning" isn't a strong enough reason.
I worked for years without an "IDE", within Emacs, spanning multiple languages, including Java and Scala. I was defining snippets for boilerplate, I was using ctags for navigation and the agility with which you can jump around and edit text makes up for the lack of intellisense, etc...
Got used to IntelliJ IDEA for about a year ago. It's nice, but my actual work productivity hasn't increased. Seriously, I now use an IDE because I feel more comfortable within IDEA, as when you're using a text editor, you don't just use a text editor, but rather the entire Unix toolchain and I got tired of stressing out my memory. And btw, I still open Emacs a lot because I'm missing Emacs' macros and undo capabilities amongst others.
If you want an IDE, sure, use an IDE. Learning a new language with an unfamiliar IDE on the other hand is a really bad idea, since instead of learning the actual language, you end up dealing with the toolset.
You always need to learn the tools you're using. If you rely on autocomplete to learn those tools, you're going to write the kind of shitty software I loathe.
Autocomplete is not for learning "tools". It's for saving typing speed.
Features like "find references", "go to implementation", "find implementations", "show parameter list" are useful for understanding and navigating large code bases. They have nothing to do with how you write "shitty software" they have to do with how you navigate and understand the code base structure.
Writing shitty software has nothing to do with autocomplete.
The language is nice, but the compiler uses its own lib.d.ts which has all sorts of definitions for browsers and even proprietary MSIE ones. This doesn't make any sense when using TypeScript in any other context (like Gjs, NodeJS, Rhino, Seed, etc.). TypeScript shouldn't assume a browser by default, or at least provide an option for compiling without lib.d.ts.
This is why browsers show you the link target in the status when you hover a link. It reads "googleads..." when you hover it, so those who still think it's legitimate when they see that deserve to get pwned.
It's quite obvious, the site is all static content so even if you can't tell the ads from the contents by their visual appearance, just press F5. It also quite literally says "download" right at the top:
On the second page, scroll down if you don't see the buttons. Notice that the advertisement has an AdChoices button (and it also changes on reload). Also, the instructions are right there underneath the ad:
On the final download page, there are obvious signs to tell where you should click. The download button is surrounded by a huge click target in a box that features an AdChoices button and if you look closely you'll see it quite literally says "Advertisement" (FFS). Most importantly, the page tells you to click the link labelled "Free Download Now" to the right, where the ad sits below.
I wouldn't say it is obvious. The ads you got when you took your screenshots weren't the most confusing that show up. Here is what I got on the site: http://imgur.com/a/WvFd6
First impression for me of the page is that the content is on the left, and the ads are on the right. That's because the part I have circled in red looks like Google-style text ads. My mental ad blocker filters them out.
The download button I have circled in yellow then sets off alarms. It's in what I have decided is an ad column, and the color reminds me a bit of the deceptive download ads CNET's download.com likes to use on their site to trick people into downloading the wrong thing.
I return to the left column, which I have identified as the content column. The download button there, which I have circled in green, is in a place where a download button would not be unexpected. This is the one I will probably click, unless the small, greyed out, notice that it is an add for "Free Zip" somehow catches my attention.
If instead of trying to download from the front page, I click the download link at the top, we get to the second page. What I'd do there depends on how tall my browser window is. If it is tall enough to show the real download section at the bottom, my attention would be drawn to that, because it looks enough like download sections at other places (because of the layout, and because it lists versions, sizes, and mirrors).
However, if that ends up not visible, then I'd probably click the ad I have circled in green. This ad fits right into the flow of the content and is a place where a download link for paint.net would make sense.
I think pages can be classified into "consumption" pages and "activity" pages. A consumption page is a page where the reader is there to consume the content of the page. For example, a product page at an online store would be a consumption page. The reader is there to read the information about the product. The front page of the paint.net site is a consumption page.
An activity page is a page where you are there to perform some activity. At an online store, the checkout page would be an activity page. At the paint.net site, the download page would be an activity page.
Third party ads on consumption pages can be fine. People on consumption pages are often just looking, and ads give a chance to get some money from such visits. When people get to activity pages, they have usually gone beyond the just looking stage. You've got them on the hook, and now you want to reel them in. There should be no outside temptations or distractions put up at that point.
