Archive for the ‘Software Development’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/13
Often after having taught a topic for decades, somebody rephrases it in a beautiful concise way:
[Wayback Comment Only What the Code Cannot Say | by Kevlin Henney | Medium
Kevlin has the same two quotes I have included teaching software quality for a long time:
A comment is of zero (or negative) value if it is wrong.
Instead of writing apologies and apologia, follow Kernighan and Plauger’s advice from the 1970s:
Don’t comment bad code — rewrite it.
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Posted in Agile, Code Quality, Code Review, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/12
Posted in .NET, Batch-Files, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/07
On my research list [Wayback/Archive] html – What can cause Chrome to give an net::ERR_FAILED on cached content against a server on localhost? – Stack Overflow
The reason what that back then this would fail (but worked in Firefox and Safari, and because I was in a hurry I didn’t research further): [Wayback/Archive] https://www.office.com/
This site can’t be reached
The webpage at https://www.office.com/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.
ERR_FAILED
Thanks [Wayback/Archive] Mason Wheeler and [Wayback/Archive] Joel Davey.
Details:
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Posted in Chrome, Communications Development, Development, Encryption, HTTP, https, HTTPS/TLS security, Power User, Security, TCP, TLS, Web Browsers, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/06
Sometimes I need [Wayback/Archive] Redirect Checker | Check your Statuscode 301 vs 302 on the command-line, so cURL to the rescue: [Wayback/Archive] linux – Get final URL after curl is redirected – Stack Overflow. The relevant portions of answers and comments further below.
TL;DR:
Since I prefer verbose command-line arguments (you can find them at the [Wayback/Archive] curl – How To Use on-line man page) especially in scripts this HTTP GET request is what works with Twitter:
% curl --location --silent --output /dev/null --write-out "%{url_effective}\n" https://twitter.com/anyuser/status/20
https://x.com/anyuser/status/20
This failed (twitter dislikes HTTP HEAD requests):
% curl --head --location --silent --output /dev/null --write-out "%{url_effective}\n" https://twitter.com/anyuser/status/20
https://twitter.com/anyuser/status/20
Notes
Given so many of my scripts now run on zsh, I added the new-line because of command line – Why does a cURL request return a percent sign (%) with every request in ZSH? – Stack Overflow. You can strip that bit.
Note that these do not perform client side redirects, so they do not return the ultimate originating URL https://x.com/jack/status/20 (which was the first ever Tweet on what was back then called twttr) as Twitter on the client-side overwrites window.location.href with the final URL. Similar behaviour for getting the Twitter user handle of a Twitter user ID, more on Twitter tricks below.
Tweet by TweetID trick via [Wayback/Archive] Accessing a tweet using only its ID (and without the Twitter API) – Bram.us.
Further reading (thanks [Wayback/Archive] vise, [Wayback/Archive] Daniel Stenberg, [Wayback/Archive] Ivan, [Wayback/Archive] AndrewF, [Wayback/Archive] Roger Campanera, and [Wayback/Archive] Dave Baird):
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, Batch-Files, Bookmarklet, Communications Development, Conference Topics, Conferences, CSS, cURL, Development, Event, HTTP, Internet protocol suite, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Scripting, SocialMedia, Software Development, TCP, Twitter, Web Browsers, Web Development | Tagged: 76 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/01
A few notes after I helped updating [Wayback/Archive] Chocolatey Software | SetACL (Portable) 3.0.6.0 to version 3.1.2.0 and [Wayback/Archive] Updates glab from 1.22.0 to 1.24.1; fixes #2 by jpluimers · Pull Request #3 · corbob/ChocoPackages.
As the burden on maintainers (not just Chocolatey ones) is high, not all packages get updated soon after new underlying software versions arrive.
Which means the maintainers are often very happy when an occasional user helps and preferably sends in a pull request.
That brings me to the an important point IN DOCUMENTATION DO NOT LIMIT EXAMPELS TO ONLY ABBREVIATED PARAMETERS OR VERBS as that scares away occasional and novice users of your software.
Chocolatey documentation is no exception on this, hence this blog post meant for people other than maintaining chocolatey packages on a day to day base.
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Posted in CertUtil, Chocolatey, CommandLine, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Tagged: 2, 2850, 3, 309, 561 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/31
I try to stay on the default shells of environments as much as possible, especially as that makes life easier when needing to work on an non-customised system.
Apple switched back from an ancient latest GPLv2 version 3.2 of bash (they regard newer GPLv3 as toxic to their revenue stream¹), introduced MIT-license based zsh and introduced a bash nag screen a few years ago forcing users to switch. Suppressing that message reliably is trickier than you might think².
After so many years of bash, I still stumble over things that zsh does differently: [Wayback/Archive] command line – Why does a cURL request return a percent sign (%) with every request in ZSH? – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] Travis and [Wayback/Archive] zaTricky) is a “feature” with a simple workaround for cURL:
This is a zsh feature that prints a percent-and-newline after a command completes if that command does not already include a newline at the end of its output. If zsh did not do this, you would either not ever notice the fact that the command didn’t print a newline – or you’d see zsh’s command prompt not start on the margin and think it was a bug in zsh.
…
$ curl http://api.macvendors.com/0015c7
Cisco Systems, Inc%
$ curl -w '\n' http://api.macvendors.com/0015c7
Cisco Systems, Inc
…
Since the above example now writes a redirect messages (good bye HTTP, welcome HTTPS), and I very much dislike short command-line parameters, here is version with the long form of the [Wayback/Archive] curl -w or --write-out parameter :
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, bash, bash, Development, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, macOS 14 Sonoma, macOS 15 Sequoia, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, zsh | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/31
For my link archive [Wayback/Archive] Out of Control. An essay on paradigms, refactoring… | by Kevlin Henney | Dec, 2020 | Medium.
Neither because Kevlin describes how to refactor a basic algorithm to convert Roman numerals into Hindu-Arabic numerals (in part by using the fact that an if statement can be considered a bounded case of a while loop), nor because he splits the resulting algorithm in coded data and coded statements, or because he mentions the [Wayback/Archive] Gilded Rose Kata but because well, you should just read it in full.
Remember though: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Configuration Management, Development, DevOps, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 