Lived in Vienna for 8 years, now in Berlin for the past 3. Vienna the city is great but I'd definitely say the biggest downside are the Viennese (I know this is ironically the most Viennese thing I could say).

Basically everywhere in the German speaking world it's considered kinda weird to talk to strangers and people are quite...Shy, I guess? It's always the thing I appreciate most on visits to Canada, the US or the UK, just how talkative and nice people are.

This applies more to Austrians than to (north) Germans, and the Viennese are additionaly also grumpy and complain about everything, despite living in one of the cities with fewest things to complain about.

Also personally felt a lot less accepting of foreigners than Berlin. I far more often felt like a curious attraction and "obviously" you're not really Austrian if you're not ethnically Austrian, even if you speak German and have lived in Vienna your whole life.

There is a difference between paying back and continue receiving the stipend.

In general, you need to complete around 50% of your courses to continue receiving the stipend next year, but you only need to pay it back if you drop out in the first year and have completed less than 25% of the courses. (Exact numbers depend on the type of program you attend)

Details are here: https://www.stipendium.at/studienfoerderung/studienbeihilfe/...https://www.stipendium.at/studienfoerderung/studienbeihilfe/...

That's only true for the first year, and only if you fail badly (ie. stop doing any work at all) -- unless they changed it very recently.

A bit of background: in Austria, many people do an "Apprenticeship" ("Lehre") instead of going to high school. You work at a company and visit a vocational school (about 20% of time).

This is great for practical people -- less theory, more real world experience. But there is a major downside: If you didn't go to high school, you are not allowed to go to university without first completing preparatory courses that can take years.

There is also an upside: If you've worked for at least 4 years, and are under 30 years old, you automatically qualify for "Selbsterhalterstipendium", which is around 700€ per month to cover your cost of living while studying at university (you don't have to pay this back, and there also is no tuition)

Writing software is hard yes, but I disagree with the author: I do blame the tools. Every language since C has been created as a reaction. What I mean by this is:

> C++ was created as a reaction to OOP being so difficult to do in C.

> Java as a reaction to memory management being difficult.

> C# as a reaction to Java not being concise enough.

> Javascript as a reaction to HTML not being dynamic enough.

> Go has a reaction to parallelism/concurrency being difficult.

> Rust as a reaction to what C++ has become.

And it goes on. There are many other languages too that you won't hear of that are created as a reaction to the status quo not being good enough either, but those ones I listed were backed by a big enough majority to become known. There is also the Lisp family and the functional paradigm too, which come round again and again in popularity.

All these languages/tools are the problem because no one is sitting back, and pro-actively realising that the entirety of these languages are no good. I am not saying this to start an argument, I have happily been a programmer for 15 years. But I recognise the problems, and they are the same problems, that will repeat over and over again ad-infinitum. I actually started writing down problems I've found and possible solutions and it's already reached over 30 pages.

What it boils down to is that all languages share the same flaw; they specify the what and the how, but never the why. Until we figure out how to encode the why, we will forever be going in circles.

SE asia. Seriously. You can probably get a 15/20 there but only a 7/20 here.