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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for August, 2019

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Mapping Ecosystems of Software Development – Stack Overflow Blog

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/22

On the data team here at Stack Overflow, we spend a lot of time and energy thinking about tech ecosystems and how technologies are related to each other. We use these kinds of relationships all over the place, from making the user experience of everyone coming to Stack Overflow better by suggesting relevant content to helping our clients understand how to hire developers. One way to get at this idea of relationships between technologies is tag correlations. Correlation between tags measures how often tags appear together relative to how often they appear separately. You can check out one of the chapters of my book (written with fellow Stack Overflow data scientist Dave Robinson) for more detailed discussion of this.

Must read: [WayBack] Mapping Ecosystems of Software Development – Stack Overflow Blog

Via: [WayBack] Mapping Ecosystems of Software Development – Stack Overflow Blog  – ThisIsWhyICode – Google+

–jeroen

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Posted in Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Delphi built-in data types and their memory sizes

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/21

Though 64-bit support was released back in 2011 with Delphi XE2, sometimes I forget which data type are native size and which keep their size no matter the compiler bitness (wiktionary/wikipedia).

This post was motivated by via [WayBack] Having started with Delphi before the Cardinal type was available (Or has it always? I can’t remember.) I routinely declare 32 bit unsigned variables as… – Thomas Mueller (dummzeuch) – Google+

The most simple distinction is between Win32 and Win64, but there are more non-32 bit platforms, so these do not suffice any more:

The easiest for me are the below tables that only got introduced with Delphi 10.2 Tokyo: [WayBack] Delphi Data Types for API Integration – RAD Studio.

I have bolded the ones that change size.

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Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | 5 Comments »

Delphi generic nested classes

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/21

Reminder to Self: do not nest T generic types as you’re in for a surprise.

Source: [WayBack] Delphi generic nested classes

Via: [WayBack] An interesting question over on SO relating to nested generic classes… – David Heffernan – Google+

The surprise:


type
TClassC<T> = class
private
type
TClassD<T> = class
private
x: T;
end;
end;
var
obj: TClassC<Integer>.TClassD<string>;

view raw

genericMadness.pas

hosted with ❤ by GitHub 

what type would you expect obj.x to be? Integer or string?

The compiler hint:

[dcc32 Hint]: H2509 Identifier 'T' conflicts with type parameters of container type

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | 2 Comments »

Turbo Pascal 7 compatible compiler for 8051 microcontrollers…

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/21

I had seen this before, but was glad about the reminder to put it in my blog: [WayBack] OMG, there is Turbo Pascal 7 compatible compiler for 8051 microcontrollers! http://turbo51.com – Primož Gabrijelčič – Google+:

[WayBack] turbo51.com: Full-featured free Pascal compiler for 8051 microcontrollers, Borland Turbo Pascal 7 syntax, multi-pass optimizer, generates bin, hex, OMF-51 and asm source.

Program Turbo51;
 
Uses FastCompiler, AdvancedOptimizations, SmartLinker, AseemblerFileGenerator;
 
//  Turbo51 is released as freeware. You can download it and use it for FREE.
//  However, if you like Turbo51 you can donate some small amount via PayPal.
//  Donations are a great way to show your appreciation for my software.
 
begin
  DownloadFrom ('http://turbo51.com/download-free-pascal-compiler-8051');
  InstallAndConfigure;
  Repeat
    CreateProject;
    CompileProject;
    TestProject;
    While ThereIsAProblem do
    begin
      CheckCode;
      CheckDocumentation;
      TryAgain;
      Case ProblemSolved of
        True: Break;
        else  AskForHelp;
      end;
    end;
    If InstalledVersion < '0.1.3.17' then Update;
    If Satisfied then Donate ($20);
  until NoMoreProjects;
end.
a

–jeroen

Posted in Development, History, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal | Leave a Comment »

Some Markdown links on phrasing more difficult markdown for correct rendering

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/20

After blogging on Markdown notes in 2014, Markdown support has come a long way. It also means that the documents written in Markdown has become more complex, and that more tools can render it.

Given the vague aspects of many Markdown dialects, rendering can be troublesome (see my post Babelmark 2 online Markdown checker), so below are some links on some aspects I had trouble with getting right.

Note that there are two markdown linters:

Sometimes, issues are present in one, but not in the other; see:

The command line interface to the Ruby version is easier to install than the JavaScript version as everything is in one gem: mdl, unlike the npm, where the cli is in markdown-cli and the library in markdownlint.

–jeroen

Related:

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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Development, Lightweight markup language, MarkDown, pandoc document converter, Power User, Ruby, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Python line continuation: only use backslash if it gives cleaner code

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/20

Since Python is a [WayBack] line-oriented programming language, sometimes you want to wrap longer lines into more readable shorter ones.

Many people struggle with this, see for instance these questions (and excellent answers!):

This struggle is likely why it made it to the [WayBack] style guide. Relevant sections are below.

I had this struggle wile passing multiple parameters to a method creating a very long line, but found I did not need a line continuation as the Python language understands this construct perfectly fine:

    threadManager.append(
        UrlMonitorThread(monitor, "http://%s" % targetHost),
        SmtpMonitorThread(monitor, targetHost, 25),
        SmtpMonitorThread(monitor, targetHost, 587),
        SshMonitorThread(monitor, targetHost, 22))

You could use the line continuation backslash to do this, but often that is not needed or a better way exists (for instance wrapping an expression in parentheses), so here are are the relevant style guide sections:

Code lay-out

Indentation

Use 4 spaces per indentation level.

Continuation lines should align wrapped elements either vertically using Python’s implicit line joining inside parentheses, brackets and braces, or using a hanging indent[7]. When using a hanging indent the following should be considered; there should be no arguments on the first line and further indentation should be used to clearly distinguish itself as a continuation line.

…

Maximum Line Length

Limit all lines to a maximum of 79 characters.

For flowing long blocks of text with fewer structural restrictions (docstrings or comments), the line length should be limited to 72 characters.

Limiting the required editor window width makes it possible to have several files open side-by-side, and works well when using code review tools that present the two versions in adjacent columns.

…

The preferred way of wrapping long lines is by using Python’s implied line continuation inside parentheses, brackets and braces. Long lines can be broken over multiple lines by wrapping expressions in parentheses. These should be used in preference to using a backslash for line continuation.

Backslashes may still be appropriate at times. For example, long, multiple with-statements cannot use implicit continuation, so backslashes are acceptable:

with open('/path/to/some/file/you/want/to/read') as file_1, \
     open('/path/to/some/file/being/written', 'w') as file_2:
    file_2.write(file_1.read())

…

Make sure to indent the continued line appropriately.

Should a line break before or after a binary operator?

For decades the recommended style was to break after binary operators. But this can hurt readability in two ways: the operators tend to get scattered across different columns on the screen, and each operator is moved away from its operand and onto the previous line. Here, the eye has to do extra work to tell which items are added and which are subtracted:

…



To solve this readability problem, mathematicians and their publishers follow the opposite convention. Donald Knuth explains the traditional rule in his Computers and Typesetting series: “Although formulas within a paragraph always break after binary operations and relations, displayed formulas always break before binary operations” [3].


Following the tradition from mathematics usually results in more readable code:


# Yes: easy to match operators with operands
income = (gross_wages
          + taxable_interest
          + (dividends - qualified_dividends)
          - ira_deduction
          - student_loan_interest)



In Python code, it is permissible to break before or after a binary operator, as long as the convention is consistent locally. For new code Knuth’s style is suggested.








–jeroen

				

				
			
Posted in Development, Python, Scripting, Software Development |    Leave a Comment »

		


			

			
… compare two JSON structures and pin-point … the differences – – Nicholas Ring – Google+


			
Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/20


				

					
I’ve added a few WayBack/Archive.is links to the interesting comments by Zoë Peterson from Scooter Software (of Beyond Compare fame) at [WayBack] … compare two JSON structures and pin-point … the differences – – Nicholas Ring – Google+:


Beyond Compare 4 has an optional “JSON sorted” file format that uses jq to pretty print and sort JSON data before comparing it. It’s not included out of the box yet, but you can get a copy here:


If you’re interested in an actual algorithm and not just an app, I don’t have a suggestion handy, but could dig one up. Tree alignment is more complicated than sequence alignment and we did do research into it, but it was quite a few years ago and didn’t get incorporated into BC. XML alignment algorithms were being actively researched back in the aughts and they should trivially transfer to JSON.

…


It looks like our research mostly ended around 2002, and I wasn’t personally involved in it, so I don’t know how helpful this will be, but here’s what I have:





The general idea in the thread is that JSON – though not as formalised as XML – does have structure, so if you can normalise it, then XML ways of differencing should work.


Normalisation also means that you need to normalise any floating point, date time, escaping, quoting, etc. Maybe not for the faint of heart.


–jeroen

				

				
			
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Beyond Compare, Development, diff, JavaScript/ECMAScript, jq, JSON, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, XML, XML/XSD |    Leave a Comment »

		


			

			
Enable/Disable Windows 10 “tray” notification area icons


			
Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/19


				

					
It looks like they reorganised the way you can enable/disable the Windows Notification Area icons (often called “Icon Tray”) in Windows 10.


Up until Windows 8.1, you could run this:




%SystemRoot%\System32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Options_RunDLL 5




There you would end up editing the application specific icons.


As of Windows 10, you need to:


    

  1. Run %SystemRoot%\System32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Options_RunDLL 6
    2. 

  2. Click on “Select which icons appear on the task bar” (or Dutch “Selecteren welke pictogrammen op de taakbalk worden weergegeven”)
    3. 



So both the index changed, and you need an extra click to get at the application specific icons.


Further more, you can now only turn them on or off, where up until Windows 8.1, you could also choose only show notifications. I think on means only show notifications as for instance the Java Updater with a setting on on Windows 10 disappears after a Java Update has been installed, whereas on Windows 8.1 it would stay unless you switched from on to only show notifications.


The above commands are based on [WayBack] Create Direct Shortcut for “Notification Area Icons” in Windows Vista and Later – AskVG and


–jeroen

				

				
			
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10 |    Leave a Comment »

		


			

			
THE PRINT VERSION


			
Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/19


				

					
Conference Call Bingo, the viral meme created by E Gilliam. Designed to bring hilarity to your daily drudgery.


Cool: [WayBack] THE PRINT VERSION – PDF


Other versions:



–jeroen


Via: [WayBack] This is one game I hate playing. – Steven Vaughan-Nichols – Google+


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Posted in Fun, LifeHacker, Power User, Quotes, T-Shirt quotes |    Leave a Comment »

		


			

			
Windows: running “mklink” as Administrator “You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation.”


			
Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/19


				

					
Via “mklink” “You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation.”:


The [WayBack] mklink tool can create NTFS links so multiple directory entries point to the same object.


It requires the [WayBack] SeCreateSymbolicLinkPrivilege (in English Windows versions [WayBack] “Create symbolic links”) which is by default not granted to users as it can expose security vulnerabilities.


Even if a user in the Windows Administrators group has the privilege, it still cannot be executed from a regular command-prompt:


C:\Users\Develope>mklink "%temp%\Recycler" c:\$RECYCLE.BIN

You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation.


If you grant a regular user the privilege you can execute if from a regular command prompt.


However, as member of the Administrators group, you have to run this from an elevated command-prompt:


C:\Windows\system32>mklink "%temp%\Recycler" c:\$RECYCLE.BIN

symbolic link created for C:\Users\Developer\AppData\Local\Temp\Recycler <<===>> c:\$RECYCLE.BIN


The reason is that members of the Administrators group get two security tokens when they logon: an elevated full-access token and a regular filtered access token.


They key here are the words full-access and filtered: the elevated token gets more access permissions than the account is configured for, but the regular token gets less access permissions than the account is configured for.


This means that a standard command prompt will not get all the access you might exec, as the regular token is the access permissions minus the filtered permissions.


By now you probably guessed that – despite the documentation [WayBack] Windows Vista Application Development Requirements for User Account Control Compatibility leaving out SeCreateSymbolicLinkPrivilege – that is actually part of the filter. So the regular command-prompt lacks the SeCreateSymbolicLinkPrivilege permission and gives you an error message when executing mklink.


This is opposite to a regular user: if you grant it the “Create Symbolic Links” any command-prompt will get the SeCreateSymbolicLinkPrivilege permission.


–jeroen


via:


				

				
			
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