Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/20
1983 Apple IIe ad (thanks Apple2History.org) click to enlarge
Some of you might remember that Apple ][ plus and Apple IIe was part of my early programming days.
I vividly remember the Vlasveld Computers shop in Leiden (back then at Morsweg 21 in Leiden), then ran by Aad Vlasveld as one of the first Apple dealers in The Netherlands. Back then I barely could afford floppy disks, but a few months ago I was able to buy the hardware we used at high school.
Well, I bought an Apple IIe from (from a private person as ClassicComputerShop.eu failed to react in time), so here are some links to stuff I’ve used: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in //e, About, Apple, Apple ][, BitSavers.org, History, Personal, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/19
Even when not using Visual Live Binding, Delphi generates empty .VLB files in both Delphi XE3 (virtually always) and Delphi XE4 (most of the time).
Visual Live Binding is one way of binding data to UI in FireMonkey and can also be used in VCL, but does not have to (Alister Christie made a nice video ▶ Delphi Training Tutorial #77 – Visual Live Bindings – YouTube about it).
Empty VLB files, and a batch file to delete them
The “empty” VLB files are almost empty, as they are exactly 3 bytes long and contain the byte sequence EF BB BF which is the Unicode BOM (byte order mark) for the UTF-8 encoding. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Delphi, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, Encoding, QC, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, UTF8 | Tagged: Delphi, VLB | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/19
Another episode in the Missed Schedule series that was originally scheduled for 20131201:
Until I read the comments at Monitoring the Monitor, I only knew the early days of Matt Pietrek‘s work at NuMega and as co-author of one of the first Undocumented Windows books (another one appeared about the same time).
Now I know Matt was one of the people interviewing Allen Bauer for his first position at Borland.
A bit more search revealed Matt worked at Borland from 1988 until 1992, roughly the era from Turbo Pascal 5 until Borland Pascal 7 (when Borland already had started researching Delphi), but more importantly with Turbo Debugger versions 1-3 that were indispensable when programming using Turbo C / Turbo C++ and Borland C++.
When Borland was working in Delphi 95, and Microsoft on Windows 95, he moved to Nu-Mega (later Acquired by Compuware) doing lots of work in debuggers.
Some interesting links from or involving Matt:
–jeroen
Posted in Borland Pascal, Debugging, Delphi, Delphi 1, Development, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/19
Almost a year ago, a thread on “premature Delphi optimization” came by on G+ about this code:
procedure ExchangeInteger(var AValue1, AValue2: Integer);
begin
AValue1 := AValue1 xor AValue2;
AValue2 := AValue1 xor AValue2;
AValue1 := AValue1 xor AValue2;
end;
I don’t think that was premature optimization, just some code from an old fart that had already been programming in the era where processors had reasons to use it:
Back then, the only efficient way to exchange two variables of the same data type was using the XOR swap algorithm.
Nowadays you have more options, and this is where the fun in that thread began, which I will show in a minute.
First a bit of history
The XOR swap algorithm was widely known in the 80s of last century and before, especially because the 6502 processor (oh the days of LISA Assembler) was vastly popular, as was the Z80. Together, they powered the majority of the home computers in the 70s and 80s.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Borland Pascal, Delphi, Delphi 1, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi 8, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, History, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal, UCSD Pascal | 7 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/18
Thanks StackOverflow user splattne (Stefan Platnner) for explaining the differences between the various parameters you can pass to Server.MapPath, and giving some very clear examples.
You can also use it with HostingEnvironment.MapPath, which has the added benefit that it doesn’t require HttpContext (for more detail on it, see Working With HttpContext.Current).
–jeroen
via:
Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, ASP.NET, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/17
The Mono.Options single .cs source file seems very well suited for arguments parsing of (especially) console application:
https://github.com/mono/mono/blob/master/mcs/class/Mono.Options/Mono.Options/Options.cs
so it is on my research list, like some other .NET/C# based command line parsing libraries (:
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/16
When Google Chrome keeps coming back with “Install the Hangouts Plugin to get started”, then try this solution:
I solve this problem for my self. Manualy turn on Google Talk Plugin in chrome://plugins/ (one of three plugins was turned off).
–jeroen
via: Issue 162588 – chromium – Google Hangouts requests plugin installation forever – An open-source project to help move the web forward. – Google Project Hosting.
Posted in Chrome, G+: GooglePlus, Google, Power User, SocialMedia | 7 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/16
Thanks DevShed:
ls -l –time-style=full-iso
Emits full ISO 8601 time stamps and it works on:
- SuSE Linux
- Mac OS X
- Cygwin
–jeroen
via: list date with seconds from ls command – Dev Shed.
Posted in *nix, Cygwin, Linux, Power User, SuSE Linux | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 