Archive for the ‘Conferences’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/08/06
[Wayback/Archive] memory spy
It is universal for most other programming languages too as explained in [Wayback/Archive] New playground: memory spy
why is it useful to look at C?
You might be wondering – I don’t write C! Why should I care how C programs represent variables in memory?
In this playground I’m mostly interested in showing people how integers and floats are represented. And low-level languages generally all represent integers and floats in the same way – a 32-bit unsigned int is going to be the same in C, C++, Rust, Go, Swift, etc. The exact name of the type is different, but the representation is the same.
In higher-level languages like Python it’s a little different, but under the hood a float in Python contains a C double, so the C representation is still pretty relevant.
Via
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Posted in C, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/07/30
Ever since introduction of the IfThen functions introduced in Delphi Delphi 2007 in both the Math and StrUtils units (see WayBack radstudio2007 HUpdate4 EN delphivclwin32.pdf ¹), I have been telling people that these do not perform lazy evaluation of the then and else parts which the if/then/else statement provides.
The newly introduced if/then/else ternary conditional operator in Delphi 13 ² (of which I am not a fan, not even of the generic workaround³) – despite the unlucky number – luckily also provides lazy evaluation of the then and else parts.
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Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Development, Event, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/07/22
Some are surprised but because of MS-DOS 2.x compatibility:
`c:tmp.txt` is a valid file path on Windows
Since each drive letter remembers the current directory and that memory bit is not thread-local nor process-local, so relying on it is bad practice.
The above is a quote from [Wayback/Archive] Oleksii Holub 🇺🇦 on Twitter: “So I was trying to understand the difference between <code>Path.IsPathRooted(...)</code> and <code>Path.IsPathFullyQualified(...)</code> and learned that apparently <code>c:tmp.txt</code> is a valid file path on Windows 🤯” which has an image without alt-text on a long bit of Microsoft documentation which I will further quote below.
Many people don’t know this, so here is a list of variations on relative paths:
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Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, EKON, Event, History, MS-DOS, Power User, Retrocomputing, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/07/15
Like many programmers, in my early days I was totally unaware how floating point values were stored. Even seemingly simple data structures are worth explaining, especially when debugging.
So I was glad getting referenced to [Wayback/Archive] Float Exposed and to [Wayback/Archive] Floating Point Visually Explained which I will quote a few bits below.
About bits: did you notice you can flick on the float.exposed bits to flip them? Try it!
The references came from replies to [Wayback/Archive] Julia Evans on Twitter: “floating point representation”
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Posted in 8087, Algorithms, Conference Topics, Conferences, Debugging, Development, Event, Floating point handling, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/24
Planning and feedback loops in extreme programming
TL;DR:
Using LLM in the software development process is shifting the feedback cycle to the top of the development cycle in the graph on the right. This is a costly endeavour.
LLM deliver output that is statistically likely, decreasing the chance to incorporate outliers as they are statistically unlikely but form the burden of software development.
[Wayback/Archive] Mumbly_Bum comments on AI is working great for my team, and y’all are making me feel crazy
Most of our tickets are now (initially) generated using Claude + the Atlassian MCP, and that’s allowed us to capture missed requirements up-front.
I think this is the key disconnect (even taking into account the notes from meetings) in understanding our jobs and why we’re not going away and why LLMs create harm in delivery.
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Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, LLM, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/16
Ever since Chris Hesik spoke on “RAD Studio 2010 what’s new in the IDE debugger”, wanted to write a blog post about it.
Still haven’t found time to do that in depth, but it’s important to at least jot a few notes, so let’s start with the 20111020 conference session notes.
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Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Development, Event, Software Development, Software Heritage | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/05/26
Posted in ChatGPT, Code Quality, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Java Platform, Kotlin, Pingback, Software Development, Stackoverflow, Technical Debt, Testing | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 