It seems rainy days and rabbit holes go hand in hand. I keep trying to get back to writing my GnuCOBOL book (having finished the first draft of the Emacs book) and I keep finding rabbit holes. In particular, I got involved in the GnuCOBOL GUI discussion. The main version of GnuCOBOL is a transpiler. It translates the COBOL code to C then uses gcc to compile it. There is a C++ fork being worked … Experiments with IUP Pt. 1Read more
Information Technology
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Posted inInformation Technology
Compiling Qt 5.14 Under Msys2
I went down this road because I wanted to compile one simple test program so I could file a bug with GnuEmacs about how they don’t catch NumLock. This is a really old bug and they seem willing to let it rot until computers cease to exist. My test program was a KeyEvent example I stole from online then added support for NumLock. It took longer to scrape from the Internet than it did to … Compiling Qt 5.14 Under Msys2Read more
Posted inExperience / Information Technology
What surprised you the most in your career as a software engineer?
The race to the bottom. I started in the early 1980s. Employers championed tight code that worked well. During the late 1980s till today there has been a constant dumbing down of software development. Hacking on the fly was always shunned. Now it is called AGILE and expecting people to pay for a hand polished turd is standard business practice. Software quality has fallen through the floor and it is gaining speed as it heads … What surprised you the most in your career as a software engineer?Read more
Posted inExperience / Information Technology
The Upside of Coronavirus
Like most of you, I get a lot of spam. It sucks. Just cleaning out the junk mail folder can be time consuming because the auto-detection sometimes auto-detects the wrong thing. Here is a piece of spam which made me smile. This is something I didn’t really know. The length of the grace period between being canned and being sent home. I did know after going home one could have to wait up to a … The Upside of CoronavirusRead more
Posted inExperience / Information Technology
Most Text Editors Get Tabs Wrong
Why do PC based text editors get tabs wrong? I’ve been getting back into COBOL and writing a book on GnuCOBOL. This lead me to writing a book on Emacs. For no more people than they have, they’ve done an amazing job. This lead me to poking around for the correct editor, preferably one that could be close to a full blown IDE. I know. During my VAX/VMS days I happily used EDT, dropped to … Most Text Editors Get Tabs WrongRead more