Posted by jpluimers on 2011/01/31
If you have an account on SourceForge.net, then now you need to reset your password by visiting https://sourceforge.net/account/registration/recover.php.
SourceForge.net was attacked recently (the whole story is on exploit-DB), so they are requesting everyone to reset their passwords.
I got a mail about it last weekend, and their blog now contains this message: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Power User, Software Development, Source Code Management, SourceForge | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/01/20
Thanks to this thread, which regrettably has vanished from the Embarcadero Forums server*, I learned that Yooichi Tagawa (also known in the Delphi world as [Wayback/Archive] Tagawa-San) got himself a Twitter account named [Wayback/Archive] YooichiTagawa.
Boy didn’t I know he was involved (dead link, alive at WayBack and on Archive.is) at the end of the 80s with the [Wayback] UNIX and [Wayback/Archive] VAX/VMS versions of [Wayback/Archive] LHa/LHarc during my university years. From the last link:
Upstream Authors:
LHarc 0.01-1.00: Yooichi Tagawa (LHa code taken from here, 1988-1989) Nikkei-mix ID: y.tagawa (Now this is defunct BBS, Licensing term in manual page come from his licence for lharc) His new web page seems to be www2s.biglibe.ne.jp/~yex/ yooedit2001@yahoo.co.jp is the contact e-mail address for another software. Page updated at least July/2001
LHa 0.01-1.00: Masaru Oki (LHa original author, 1991-1992) E-Mail address: oki@netbsd.org
Trivia: [Wayback/Archive] Years ago, he entered the team as a localization engineer.
Some LHARC history dating back to 1988:
[Wayback/Archive] Availability heuristic. I think your perspective may be warped by two things: no… | Hacker News (2014):
One of the most capable engineers I’ve ever worked with is a guy called Yooichi Tagawa. The guy has an incredible appetite for complexity, as well as spooling up on old codebases and new technologies. But you’ll find very little by him online, both because he’s Japanese and doesn’t use English often, and also he’s squirrelled away inside Embarcadero, working on Delphi compiler as he’s been doing for the past 15 years or so.
Edit 20230619
Added archived links, information from Barry Kelly (barrkel) and remarks about vanishing information.
I wonder how long Delphi 7, 2007 and 2009 HTML documentation on the HTML [Wayback/Archive] RAD Studio Product Documentation – Embarcadero Technologies server will stay available. That page lists most products since Delphi 7 but from Delphi 2010 on, none of the Wiki links still produce the documentation for that specific version hampering for instance maintainers of legacy systems: the products still work (hell would break loose when the license servers stopped supporting legacy versions!), but the built in links to the Wiki produce no or different information.
–jeroen
Posted in Delphi, Development, History, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/01/18
In the past I wrote a few blog posts on posting sourcecode in WordPress.
Nick Hodges‘ last Flotsam and Jetsam blog post pointed me to the SyntaxHighlighter JavaScript that is used by WordPress and many other engines/sites.
Their site contains an even more elaborate list of supported languages.
I had the basic list right in my last post, but was missing all the aliases (which often are easier than the longer proper names).
This is the new table adapted from their list: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, Batch-Files, C#, CSS, Database Development, Delphi, Delphi for PHP, Development, HTML, HTML5, Java, PowerShell, RegEx, Scripting, SQL, VBS, Web Development, WordPress, XML, XML/XSD, XSD | 5 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/01/10
ISO 8601 is a great format for date and time (and combined) values.
It allows for both interchange of information, and ease of sorting values.
Recently, I had to create some backup and logging scripts for a 3rd party turn-key installation at a client.
You know: the kind of installation where the 3rd party manages to break their own scripts, but at the mean time close the system so much, that you cannot do anything but standard batch-file scripts.
The system runs partially on a Workstation that is based on a Dutch version of Windows XP, and a server that runs an English version of Windows Server 2008.
Recipe for some twiddling in order to keep the scripts working on both systems, and not to get bitten by localization.
This answer to a StackOverflow question got me a nice head-start: it was said to work in both the English and Portugese versions of Windows.
This post is the process to get correctly function batch-files towards the end of the post.
Of course, we Dutch are persistent enough to have yet different output for the %date% pseudo variable and the date and date /t commands.
The same holds for the %time% pseudo variable and the time and time /t commands.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Batch-Files, Development, ISO 8601, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 4 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/01/03
Don’t you love automated stuff.
Wordpress has a helper monkey that wrote me an email with stats, very similar to the results below.
From the stats page, I already know that popular posts not only include Delphi (where I originally came from) but also lots of other technologies: vmware, .NET, JRE, infrastructure.
Currently I’m doing quite a bit of iPhone/iPad work, so that likely will be reflected in the results next year.
What amazes me is the most popular day: according to the helper monkey it had 1 view :-)
Don’t you love the computing business :-)
–jeroen
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Delphi, Development, Power User, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware Converter | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/12/29
As a continuation of the previous assembly, the new twitter kylix_rd messages on Delphi x64:
To save people from browsing Twitter history: the first link in the quote has the CHASM64 picture :-)
I wonder what to make of this? http://yfrog.com/h2e20wp
28 dec@davidheff I cannot confirm or deny any relationship CHASM64 has to dcc64 ;-)
24 Deckylix_rd Allen Bauer
As a followup… there is now a CHASM64 folder in the dev tree.
23 Deckylix_rd Allen Bauer
Interesting tidbit; The current Delphi inline assembler is called CHASM internally. Why? Chuck J. wrote it for Kylix. CHuck’s ASM = CHASM
23 Deckylix_rd Allen Bauer
Another reason why writing tools for x64 is a bit more fiddly than x86: http://bit.ly/hh3Q59 . Now consider the restrictions on asm…
15 Deckylix_rd Allen Bauer
Another excellent discussion of the x64 calling conventions ABI: http://bit.ly/hgLl8N
15 Dec
–jeroen
Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | 5 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/12/24
A while ago, I got involved in Mac programming again after more than a decade of absence.
It felt like a warm reunion.
A Mac Mini Server serves as a development machine: it is about the same price as a regular Mac Mini, but packs 2 HDDs which for me is more useful than one HDD and a DVD player.
However, living in the Windows world for a long time long, and having had RSI in the DOS era almost two decades ago, I had a few wishes for using it.
The first was keyboard wise. The second is custom resolutions. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Apple, Development, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, RSI, Software Development, UltraNav keyboards, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | 10 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/12/23
Apple added some of their on-line books to the iBooks store for off-line reading on your iPad (or iPhone, though I double people will use that for readong).
Since you can only get to those from your iPad/iPhone iBook app, I included google search links for the online versions:
Note that iOS Human Interface Guidelines is not availeble outside the USA iBook store.
But it is almost as easy to read your PDFs through the DropBox iPad app (it even links to iBooks if you want to!).
Sharing your PDFs using DropBox has the added benefit that you can have the PDF both on your development machine and your iPad for reference.
–jeroen
via Apple Publishes Six Free Electronic Books for Developers | Cult of Mac.
Posted in Development, Software Development, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/12/22
SRP (Single Responsibility Principle) is not limited to classes.
Often I see source files running like thousands of lines.
That surely is a sign if code smell, and leads to lots of problems, especially when working with teams of people, or sharing sources across multiple projects.
SRP solves these and other problems, regardless of programming language or framework you use:
Hadi Hariri – evangelist at JetBrains – has a great post called SRP, as easy as 123… on his blog (and refers to the fantastic Clean Code book by Robert C. Martin).
SRP originates from objec oriented design, but for me, SRP is not limited to classes.
For me, SRP is all about the design of your apps and the structure of your code.
Classes are just one form of ‘boxing’ things, as are interfaces, source files, services, forms, etc.
All these boxes change, and you need to be prepared for that.
Which leads me to the statement that he only thing you know about code is that it will change.
Did I mention you need continuous integration to get a grip on change?
–jeroen
Posted in Agile, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/12/21
Coming from a Delphi background I’m highly spoiled by the feature that you do noe need to explicitly mark each and every use of a reference, pointer or class type as being a pointer: they always are, so Delphi implicitly knows. No need for a ^reference marker there (yes, there are a few corner case exceptions to this rule).
The same holds for .NET languages: they know when a type is a reference type, no need for those extra characters.
The Objective-C compiler – used for building cocoa applications in xCode – doesn’t know, so you have to include a star whenever a type is to be used as a pointer.
For instance, this will yield a compiler error “Cannot use object as a parameter to a method“: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Development, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 