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Archive for the ‘Software Development’ Category

Don’t use the TPL as it still has rough edges in unsuspected places

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/08/20

A few posts on why not to use the TPL and be very careful with regular RTL threading code:

[WayBack] Ondrej Kelle – Google+
- [WayBack] Delphi To Go: Don’t lose time with a known Delphi bug affecting TParallel.Join
[WayBack] TThreadQueue one of the two generic thread safe classes is broken. RSP-18521 states that it got fixed in Tokyo release, but *is not*. See in https://qua… – Kiriakos Vlahos – Google+
[WayBack] delphi – Strange behaviour of TParallel.For default ThreadPool – Stack Overflow
[WayBack] multithreading – How can I use TTask.WaitForAny from the new threading library? – Stack Overflow

In my opinion, threading code needs to be written and maintained by people that live and breath multi-threading. Over the years, RTL and TPL have not lived up to that, but a library like [WayBack] OmniThreadLibrary has.

If you still insist on the TPL, or want to break it, start with these posts: [WayBack] Parallel Programming Archives • Stephen Ball’s Technical Blog

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | 1 Comment »

windows – Batch-file: undocumented wild card characters to check for file pattern existence – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/08/19

I wish I had known these undocumented wildcards exists like two decades ago: [WayBack] windows – Batch-file: Check if file with pattern exist – Stack Overflow, thanks Squashman:

There are undocumented wildcards that you can use to achieve this as well.
IF EXIST "D:\*Backup*.<" (
   ECHO "file exist"
) ELSE (
   ECHO "file not exist"
)
This wildcard option and other were discussed in length at the following two links.

[WayBack] http://www.dostips.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6207

[WayBack] http://www.dostips.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5057

From those links:
The following wildcard characters can be used in the pattern string.

Wildcard character  Meaning

* (asterisk)
Matches zero or more characters

? (question mark)
Matches a single character

" 
Matches either a period or zero characters beyond the name string

>
Matches any single character or, upon encountering a period or end of name string, advances the expression to the end of the set of contiguous >

<
Matches zero or more characters until encountering and matching the final . in the name

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

TMonitor versus Critical sections revisited: when possible, use SRWL over TMonitor, then TCritical section

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/08/19

Via [WayBack] TMonitor vrs Critical sections revisited. Back then (https://www.delphitools.info/2013/06/06/tmonitor-vs-trtlcriticalsection/), it was found that critic… – Kiriakos Vlahos – Google+ as he re-did the measurements that DelphiTools did before Delphi XE5 came out:

Slim Reader/Writer Lock (SWRL) is even faster than TMonitor:

CriticalSection 0.035

TMonitor 0.019

SWRL 0.012

Of course if you have a speedy lock-free solution, that is always favourable, but few people know how to write lock free data structures or how to find the libraries (despite Julian Bucknall covering quite a few of them in Delphi back in the days).

[WayBack] TMonitor vs TRTLCriticalSection – DelphiTools
Fixed in XE5 by doing a TSpinWait.SpinCycle instead of YieldProcessor: [WayBack] The Oracle at Delphi: Monitoring the Monitor (the underlying function got introduced back in [Archive.is] SyncObjs.TSpinWait.SpinCycle – XE API Documentation)
[WayBack] Slim Reader/Writer (SRW) Locks (Windows)

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | 4 Comments »

Nick Hodges on SOLID in TypeScript using Angular

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/08/18

For my link archive: after a long history of Delphi programming, Nick Hodges did a

SOLID series with TypeScript using Angular

[WayBack] Writing SOLID Code: SRP – Angles and Types on the Single Responsibility Principle
- via [WayBack] Single Responsibility Principle The Single Responsibility Principle states that a class should do one and only one thing. Uncle Bob says that it means “… – Nick Hodges – Google+
[WayBack] Writing SOLID Code: OCP – Angles and Types on the Open/Closed Principle
- via [WayBack] Open/Closed Principle The Open/Closed Principle states that a class should be open for extension but closed to change…. – Nick Hodges – Google+
[WayBack] Writing SOLID Code: LSP – Angles and Types on the Liskov Substitution Principle – Wikipedia
- via [WayBack] Liskov’s Substitution Principle is named after Barbara Liskov, the person who identified it…. – Nick Hodges – Google+
[WayBack] Writing SOLID Code: ISP – Angles and Types on the Interface Segregation Principle
- via [WayBack] The Interface Segregation Principle states that “Clients should not be forced to depend on methods that they do not use.”… – Nick Hodges – Google+
[WayBack] Writing SOLID Code: DIP – Angles and Types on the Dependency Inversion Principle
- via [WayBack] We’ve already seen the Dependency Inversion Principle in action when we looked at the SRP…. – Nick Hodges – Google+

They explain these SOLID – Wikipedia concepts:

After that, he did a series on:

[WayBack] Angular 101 – Angles and Types

[WayBack] Angular 101: Step 4 – The Main Pages – Angles and Types

More Angular and TypeScript

Since Nick likes that combination so much:

and his TypeScript series start:

and what started as a trilogy in 5 parts of his [WayBack] Angular 101 – Angles and Types became much longer:

DIID update

Nick also updated the public repository with the changes that did make it in his Dependency injection in Delphi book earlier:

[WayBack] Code for DIID Updated – Delphi-losophy
- via [WayBack] Thanks to the comment of a generous reader — whom I am ashamed to say I can’t remember — I have updated the code for Dependency Injection in Delphi to r… – Nick Hodges – Google+
[WayBack] NickHodges / nickdemocode / diid — Bitbucket
[WayBack] NickHodges / NickDemoCode / Commits — Bitbucket
- [WayBack] NickHodges / NickDemoCode / commit / c6c5763aa7e9 — Bitbucket: Removing use of the Global Container
- [WayBack] NickHodges / NickDemoCode / commit / e0e207911ca9 — Bitbucket: 000000: Changes to demo code

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Design Patterns, Development, Scripting, Software Development, TypeScript | Leave a Comment »

In the series “avoid Variants when coding in Delphi”: the comparison operator

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/08/18

For Variant types, the = comparison operator in Delphi maps to the VarCompareValue in the Variants unit.

That function fails to handle various comparisons and for some it knows it can handle raises a VarInvalidOp through various code paths (like CheckType) to VarInvalidOp because the implementation limits itself to varEmpty..varUInt64, which I think means that these are unsupported:

varRecord
varStrArg
varObject
varUStrArg
varString
varAny
varUString
varArray
varByRef

This fails when using the = operator:

What is this code supposed to do, if v1 and v2 are variant arrays with the same content?
if v1 = v2 then
  WriteLn('equal')
else
  WriteLn('not equal');

Spring4d has a function SameValue in the Spring.pas unit which handles more cases, at least the case when both operands are arrays having the same content.

Source: [WayBack] I think I may have mentioned that I hate Variants: What is this code supposed to do, if v1 and v2 are variant arrays with the same content? if v1 = v2… – Thomas Mueller (dummzeuch) – Google+

Thanks to Thomas Mueller and Stefan Glienke for this.

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Some PlantUML links I needed for complex component diagram editing

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/08/18

A while ago, I had to create a bit more complex component diagrams than the simple ones I used to create in PlantUML.

Some links that helped me:

Linking between packages:
- a
  - Note I still do not understand why I cannot name a package like cloud [Back Office] as BO { .... }
Class diagrams have [WayBack] package styles (Node, Rectangle, Folder, Frame, Cloud, Database); component diagrams have various grouping keywords (package, node, folder, frame, cloud, database) which you can nest.
- Note you can perform [Component Description] as ComponentName, but not database [Database Description] as DatabaseName.
For a tool that does automatic lay-out, influencing the lay-out is always a bit of pain, see for instance:
- [WayBack] Better control of the layout of class diagrams – PlantUML Q&A
[WayBack] General and common command to handle graphic layout in diagrams.
- Comments ('), header/footer, scale (for zooming), title, caption, legend
- via [WayBack] Restricting the width of diagrams – PlantUML Q&A
[WayBack] PlantUml define relative position of components – Stack Overflow
- [WayBack] class diagram layout together and hidden (only for left to right and top to bottom relations)
[WayBack] PlantUML Pleasantness: Layout Elements With Hidden Lines – Messages from mrhaki:
- ' Layout Logging under BackendClient BackendClient -[hidden]- Logging
You can even hide components: [WayBack] Hide function in components diagrams – PlantUML Q&A
Lots of visual settings can be configured using skinparam as explained in [WayBack] Changing colors and fonts.
Even more advanced are
- [WayBack] templates/plantuml/class-diagram-tips.md – mark.george/templates: Controlling Class Lay-out as part of [WayBack] templates/plantuml at master – mark.george/templates and – next to many other tips – shows NodeSep and RankSep like in [WayBack] It is possible to decrease gab between elements – PlantUML Q&A
- [WayBack] PlantUML Pleasantness: Align Elements With Line Length – Messages from mrhaki (not 2 but 3 hyphens: –> into —> to push one level down); it has a few other nice more generic tips; see below.
- Some [WayBack] Class Diagram syntax and features can also be applied in [WayBack] Component Diagram syntax and features
Not sure I’m ready for this, as I have been living include file and macro nightmares in other environments: [WayBack] Use the preprocessor
[WayBack] PlantUML in a nutshell: Open-source tool that uses simple textual descriptions to draw UML diagrams.
You can add notes:
- to elements at a certain position (using note left of elementName, note right of ..., etc)
- the position is only applied when the note is within the same group as the element (otherwise the position is not taken into account)
- you cannot add notes to groups, but the first added note (not bound to any element) is usually close to the group name: [WayBack] Note at package not class – PlantUML Q&A [Archive.is]

[WayBack] Grouping and Positioning of Packages/Components: Having Issues – PlantUML Q&A: it is possible to link to/from packages, but their names need to be globally unique.

package PPP {
  [AAA]
  [BBB]
}
package QQQ {
  [CCC]
  [DDD]
}

' Linking between packages
PPP --> QQQ
'Linking a component to a package
AAA --> QQQ
'Linking a component to another component
AAA --> CCC

You can use UML2 style ([WayBack] Component Diagram syntax and features: components and interfaces look different),
but many people still like UML1 better:

UML2 style examples for skinparam that are equivalent:

skinparam component {
  Style uml2
}

skinparam {
  componentStyle uml2
}

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Diagram, PlantUML, Software Development, UML | Leave a Comment »

PowerShell: checking minimum version

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/08/13

Nowadays, often your PowerShell code uses features unavailable in older PowerShell versions. When running it on a version that is too old, you usually get an error message, for instance like this:

Unable to find type [Ordered]: make sure that the assembly containing this type is loaded.

Back in the days, this was a new feature introduced in PowerShell 3.0: [WayBack] Use cases of [ordered], the new PowerShell 3.0 feature – Stack Overflow

It is way friendlier to show a message indicating the version is too old in stead of throwing this error.

That’s where the # Requires Version 3.0 directive comes in: [WayBack] about_Requires | Microsoft Docs.

Adding this line to the top of a script gives output like this on a stock Windows 7 SP1 system that has PowerShell 2.0:

# PowerShell -f List-Delphi-Installed-Packages.ps1
The script ‘List-Delphi-Installed-Packages.ps1’ cannot be run because it contained a “#requires” statement at line 1 for Windows PowerShell version 3.0. The version required by the script does not match the currently running version of Windows PowerShell version 2.0.
+ CategoryInfo : ResourceUnavailable: (List-Delphi-Installed-Packages.ps1:String) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : ScriptRequiresUnmatchedPSVersion

Note that PowerShell 3.0 is also the minimum version for debugging it in Visual Studio Code (which means you do not have to use PowerShell ISE any more; it is still there , but so far behind as a development tool that many prefer Visual Studio Code):

–jeroen

Posted in CommandLine, Development, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

PowerShell: finding WSD printer details enumerating through HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SWD\DAFWSDProvider

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/08/13

WSD seems the way Microsoft Windows 8+ does printing, which makes it a lot harder to find the IP address of a printer, for instance to configure a Mac to print to it.

The key seems to be enumerating over HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SWD\DAFWSDProvider.

Some links that should help me doing this:

–jeroen

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

A load on agility related posts referenced by Markus Eggers – Google+

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/08/13

A while ago, Markus Eggers – Google+ started following me on G+, so I found out about his posts: most of them refer to very useful agility related ones.

So my reading list just got a bit longer, with tuples on Markus Eggers – Google+ and where it points to.

[WayBack] Details on Zombie Scrum and it’s origin…:
- [WayBack] Zombie Scrum -LeadingAgile ; TL;DR: See Scrum “rules” as a starting point, not an end state.
[WayBack] “How to Sell Refactoring?”
- [WayBack] How to Sell Refactoring? The Case of Nordea Bank AB; Refactoring is often not a technical challenge. Teams can accurately diagnose inefficient code design. If they have sufficient time and budget at their disposal, they would probably get things done. In this article, we focus on the strategic code refactoring. This distinction was introduced by the BNS IT consultants as part of the method called Natural Course of Refactoring.
[WayBack] How to Avoid Daily Scrum Traps
- [WayBack] Scrum Alliance – Member Articles: How to Avoid Daily Scrum Traps; TL;DR: A paradigm shift from person-centric to work-in-progress-centric
[WayBack] “We’re really good at knowing when we haven’t started something. We’re pretty good at knowing when we’re done with something. We’re horrible anywhere inbetween…
- [WayBack] Why Getting to Done Is So Important; TL;DR: avoid starting multiple things in parallel; make sure that at the end of each iteration, all work is either:
  - Not started
  - Done
[WayBack] “Louise Elliott discusses why people tend to blame and punish others, the impact of self-blame, the unintended results from punishment, and the alternatives…
- [WayBack] Punishment-Driven Development
[WayBack] “We tried that and it didn’t work.” – Choose the right tool for the task ahead… #agile #scrum
- [WayBack] We Tried That, and it Didn’t Work -LeadingAgile I once used a hammer and it didn’t work. Therefore, people should never use hammers. If you find that reasoning satisfactory, then you may also appreciate the following statements: We tried pair programming and it didn’t work…
[WayBack] “How to introduce Agile to non-IT teams” #agile #teamwork #non-it
- [WayBack] How to introduce Agile to non-IT teams:To encourage non-IT teams to embrace Agile, you should first demonstrate the value that an Agile mindset can deliver.
[WayBack] Estimation: Hours Versus Story Points
- [WayBack] Scrum Alliance – Member Articles; Estimation: Hours Versus Story Points: here is a comparison that highlights some benefits realized by moving to story-point estimation.
  - Absolute versus relative
  - Personal versus team evaluation
  - Effort in hours versus size
  - Abstraction
  - Burn-down versus velocity
[WayBack] “Don’t underestimate on-premise data center influence on your organization’s culture”
- [WayBack] Don’t Build Private Clouds – Subbu’s Blog:
  - You don’t need to own data centers unless you’re special
  - Private cloud makes you procrastinate doing the right things
  - Private cloud cost models are misleading
  - Don’t underestimate on-prem data center influence on your organization’s culture
[WayBack] “Think how powerful it would be if, rather than relying on just a few key individuals, your whole team were experts in their field.”
- [WayBack]Project Overload: Are You ‘Killing’ Your Best People?: Experts are vital to your business, but you risk losing them if they become inundated with work. So how can you use their expertise without overloading them?
[WayBack] “5 Tips To Re-Energise Your Daily Standup”
- [WayBack] 5 Tips To Re-Energise Your Daily Standup Meetings • Girl’s Guide to Project Management some tips I really like!
[WayBack] Who the Heck Wrote This? 3 Ways to Deal with Bad Code (is there a universal way to write good code? No, but you can limit bad code)
- [WayBack] Who the Heck Wrote This? 3 Ways to Deal with Bad Code Dealing with bad code is a daily reality for some developers. Here are some of the best—and worst—approaches to take.
[WayBack] “Cost is easy to measure: salaries, time, tools, licenses, computers, material. But can we put a number of value?” #agile #roi
- [WayBack] ROI Is Dead!: Last month I was in Huib Schoots’ testing workshop. He talked about being asked “What’s the ROI of testing?”. To which he replied “I don’t know, what’s the ROI of management?”.
[WayBack] “How to Create the FASTEST Teams” #agile #team #projects
- [WayBack] How to Create the FASTEST Teams | 101 Ways
[WayBack] “User stories are not requirements”
- [WayBack] Crisp’s Blog » User stories are not requirements: Elephants are not giraffes and user stories are not requirements. They share some traits and you may find them in the same context, but that does not make them the same. Despite that, many believe that user stories are the new requirements because there has to be requirements for a project, right? I give that a double “no”, they are not requirements and that is not anything we really need. User stories are about being able to explore options and seize opportunities. Requirements are about deciding up front and sticking with that.
[WayBack] The Water Fall Myth
- [WayBack] Herding Cats: The Water Fall Myth: a historic perspective on some software development methodologies and where they are applicable.
[WayBack] “An Iterative Waterfall Isn’t Agile”
- (2015) [WayBack] An Iterative Waterfall Isn’t Agile Lately I’ve seen teams create an iterative waterfall process and call it agile. Here are some differences between iterative waterfall and agile.
[WayBack] Retromat – “Planning your next retrospective? Get started with a random plan,…
- [WayBack] Lean Process A3 Agenda Example with 5 Steps: 1-7-69-72-109
- [WayBack] The Best Retrospective for Beginners | Finding Marbles
[WayBack] Planning Poker Online
- [WayBack] PlanningPoker.com – Estimates Made Easy. Sprints Made Simple.
[WayBack] “No. Agile Does Not Scale. (but agility scales quite well, thank-you-very-much)”
- [WayBack] No. Agile Does Not Scale. – Jurgen Appelo – Medium (but agility scales quite well, thank-you-very-much)
[WayBack] The Story with Story Points
- [WayBack] The Story with Story Points I don’t like story points. I think this is part of my crusade against complexity…
[WayBack] “Unready work creates churn for the delivery team, they spend more time tryin…
- [WayBack] Definition of Ready: Creating Clarity in the BacklogLeadingAgile Just as a “definition of done” is used to create alignment across a delivery team on what it means to be done with a backlog item, the “definition of ready” provides clarity to a product owner or product owner team on what it means to create ready backlog items.
- [WayBack] The Definition of DoneLeadingAgile If you’re in the business of application development, you’ve asked that question before. So what is the definition of done? When asking the question, it’s important to note who you are and your level in the organization. Delivery teams, program teams, and portfolio teams define done differently.
[WayBack] “Estimates on Split Stories Do Not Need to Equal the Original”
- [WayBack] Estimates on Split Stories Do Not Need to Equal the Original I’m often asked if the sum of the estimates on the smaller stories must equal the estimate on the original, larger story. The answer is no.
- [WayBack] Separate Estimating from Committing Remember the difference between an estimate and a commitment and keep the two activities separate, educating management and customers as necessary.
[WayBack] Do What Works… Even If It’s Not Agile.
- [WayBack] Do What Works… Even If It’s Not Agile. -LeadingAgile I think I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘agile’ as we know it isn’t the best starting place for everyone that wants to adopt agile. Some folks, sure… everyone, probably not. For many companies something closer to a ‘team-based, iterative and incremental delivery approach, using some agile tools and techniques, wrapped within a highly-governed Lean/Kanban […]
[WayBack] Tooltip Cube for Agile Meetups, User Stories and WiP limit
- [WayBack] Concept Cubes | Share your knowledge, teach, and coach in a fun way with cubes
[WayBack] “When you’re dealing with complex systems, failure is going to happen; it’s a given. What we do after that failure, however, strongly influences whether…
- [WayBack] Postmortems, sans finger-pointing: The O’Reilly Radar Podcast – O’Reilly Radar
[WayBack] “Blameless post-mortems assume that humans have good intentions in the genera…
- [WayBack] Blameless Post-Mortems Blameless post-mortems of production incidents are increasingly seen as an essential fixture of any organisation’s procedures. Mathias Meyer, from Travis CI, shared how blameless post-mortems had a profound effect on him. InfoQ took this opportunity to have a look at post-mortem practices of organizations like Etsy, GitHub or Chef.
[WayBack] Crisp’s Blog » Priorities and WIP
- [WayBack] Crisp’s Blog » WIP and Priorities – how to get fast and focused!

Roderick Gadellaa auf Twitter: “@ingnl Ik begrijp dat jullie gaan stoppen met TAN codes. Juich ik toe, 2FA met sms is behoorlijk lek. Maar nu moet ik jullie app gaan gebruiken. Ik werp 1 blik op de permissions die jullie app wil en denk: Neen.…”

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/08/12

[WayBack] Roderick Gadellaa auf Twitter: “@ingnl Ik begrijp dat jullie gaan stoppen met TAN codes. Juich ik toe, 2FA met sms is behoorlijk lek. Maar nu moet ik jullie app gaan gebruiken. Ik werp 1 blik op de permissions die jullie app wil en denk: Neen.…”

Reminder to self: check what permissions are needed now.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Power User, Security, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

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

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Archive for the ‘Software Development’ Category

Don’t use the TPL as it still has rough edges in unsuspected places

windows – Batch-file: undocumented wild card characters to check for file pattern existence – Stack Overflow

TMonitor versus Critical sections revisited: when possible, use SRWL over TMonitor, then TCritical section

Nick Hodges on SOLID in TypeScript using Angular

SOLID series with TypeScript using Angular

[WayBack] Angular 101 – Angles and Types

More Angular and TypeScript

DIID update

In the series “avoid Variants when coding in Delphi”: the comparison operator

Some PlantUML links I needed for complex component diagram editing

PowerShell: checking minimum version

PowerShell: finding WSD printer details enumerating through HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SWD\DAFWSDProvider

A load on agility related posts referenced by Markus Eggers – Google+

Roderick Gadellaa auf Twitter: “@ingnl Ik begrijp dat jullie gaan stoppen met TAN codes. Juich ik toe, 2FA met sms is behoorlijk lek. Maar nu moet ik jullie app gaan gebruiken. Ik werp 1 blik op de permissions die jullie app wil en denk: Neen.…”

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

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Recent Posts

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Tag Cloud Title

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Archive for the ‘Software Development’ Category

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SOLID series with TypeScript using Angular

[WayBack] Angular 101 – Angles and Types

More Angular and TypeScript

DIID update

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