The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for the ‘Conference Topics’ Category

Lots of interesting git links via b0rk on Twitter

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/05/22

A few years back [Wayback/Archive] 🔎Julia Evans🔍 (@b0rk) / Twitter asked for tips on learning git which resulted in a wealth of resources.

Related: [Wayback/Archive] xkcd: Git

So the below are for my link archive.

Yes, I have removed most of not all Unicode emojis as they are a pain for visually impaired to listen to from screen readers.

Future

Later I want to categorise all these, maybe using categories like these:

  • Videos
  • Stories/narrations
  • Levels (beginner/intermediate/advance)
  • Direction (inside-out vs outside-in)
  • (Rough) reimplementations
  • Perspectives from different version control systems
  • Failures: learning from or preventing them

I need to contemplate about that for a while.

--jeroen

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Posted in Algorithms, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, Event, git, Software Development, Source Code Management | Leave a Comment »

Watch “Felienne Hermans: How patterns in variable names can make code easier to read” on YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/05/21

A while ago, various sources pointed me to the great video below by [Wayback/Archive] Felienne Hermans: How patterns in variable names can make code easier to read – YouTube.

I responded to the first Tweet with a series of tweets describing my two pet-peeves that I see going wrong when teaching new programmers how to name things (the examples are in Delphi, but I have seen similar shortcuts being taken in C#, VB.NET, and JavaScript being taught in both courses and conference sessions).

The two pet-peeves are:

  • avoid abbreviations as those are context sensitive; given software development already mixes technical context (it’s software development!) and domain/semantic context it makes it extra hard to decipher abbreviations
  • if you want/need to mix technology and semantics in names (most often you do), start with the most meaningful semantics and end with the least meaningful technology
    • if you don’t need technology in your names, at least put the most meaningful semantics and end with the least meaningful technology

Both very well amend what Felienne – a university professor – states in her research backed video:

“Their results show that ‘linguistic code smells’ actually increase cognitive loads,” she said. “Your brain has to work harder to process code that has these type of code smells. So that’s not what we want.”

I saved the [Wayback/Archive] tweets in the [Wayback/Archive] ThreadReader as this text (slightly edited for formatting):

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Posted in Agile, Code Quality, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Software Development, Systems Architecture | Leave a Comment »

Via Chris Oldwood on Twitter: the real meaning of various C++ character types wchart_t, char, tchar and varchar

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/02/21

A while ago there was this great thread of various C++ character types:

And since most above talk about character width:

–jeroen

Posted in C++, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Fun, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Daniel Feldman.yaml on Twitter: “What does JIRA stand for? Wrong answers only” / Twitter

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/12/08

The response to [Wayback/Archive] Daniel Feldman.yaml on Twitter: “What does JIRA stand for? Wrong answers only” were so great!

Just a few that I liked very much:

  • It’s a recursive acronym for “Jira isn’t really agile”
  • Just Issues Rarely Addressed
  • jumbled information, reported arbitrarily
  • Jumping
    Into
    Real
    Agony
  • Just Individual Redtape Actions

–jeroen

 

Posted in Agile, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Fun, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Case insensitivity helps with accessibility and inclusivity in both software development and software use.

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/11/06

We should do more to increase the accessibility of both software developers and users of software.

[Wayback/Archive] Serge Lachapelle 🇺🇦🇸🇪 on Twitter: “Quote of the day from @Vintharas. Don’t think of it as accessibility in your product design. Think of it as inclusivity. #a11y #i9y

which refers to both a11y – (computer) accessibility and i9y – inclusive design.

An important aspect there is to support case insensitive environments for both software developers and software users.

This sounds strange, as it makes systems less strict, but with the diversity of people not doing so makes it less accessible and decreases inclusivity.

It all started with reading [Wayback/Archive] /Fay-lee-nuh/ on Twitter: “Totally agree with this, case sensitivity does not add a lot apart from errors. Also note that some languages (Arabic, for example) do not have uppercase letters! So the whole idea of “case sensitive” to some people is new (and thus can make learning to program a lot harder)”.

Parts of the responses there and in the tweet Felienne quoted, were from people still insisting on case sensitivity or even limiting identifiers and filenames to US 7-bit ASCII.

I totally disagree, so I wrote a long thread in response, starting with [Wayback/Archive] “@Felienne @guido_leenders Sentence 2 in your first tweet should be an eye opener to everyone….” archived at the ThreadReaderApp as [Wayback/Archive] Thread by @jpluimers on Thread Reader App:

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Posted in accessibility (a11y), Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

The JavaScript bookmarklets that saved me a lot of time documenting the Embarcadero docwiki outage

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/09/28

Winter 2022, the Embarcadero docwiki (their most active site which contains all documentation for all their products) was down. Twice. First for a week, then parts of it for almost a week, then only parts of the Alexandria got up in a stable way.

Back then I published The Delphi documentation site docwiki.embarcadero.com has been down/up oscillating for 4 days is now down for almost a day.. The product and library documentation for the most recent version got back up in a week, but the Code Examples and older product versions took much longers.

Usually once learns way more about a system when it is failing then when it is working. That was the case this system as well.

Documenting the failing system took considerable time, but would have taken way more if not for these two JavaScript browser bookmarklets:

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Posted in Bookmarklet, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »

Revision of some JavaScript bookmarklets for WordPress published pages centered around navigation and IDs: WordPress ditched the undocumented HighlanderComments structure

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/09/15

As promised yesterday, I updated the scripts for Some JavaScript bookmarklets for WordPress published pages centered around navigation and IDs

Code (which broke at 20230914 because of WordPress.com changes: the undocumented HighlanderComments structure got removed; I will update the gist later on and post an updated blog post)

Instead of the undocumented HighlanderComments structure, I now use two (also undocumented) link rel elements.

In addition, I found this element that will be interesting in the future: <link rel='shortlink' href='https://wp.me/pvelJ-m8g' />.

You can view the change with the below archivals of the Wayback Machine and Archive.is.

And of course I learned a few things from these MDN entries:

The 20230530 archivals (Wayback/Archive) of wiert.me/2022/02/14/philosophy-of-management have this HighlanderComments structure:

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Posted in Bookmarklet, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, HTML, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Scripting, SocialMedia, Software Development, Web Browsers, Web Development, WordPress | Leave a Comment »

.NET/C#: Small command-line tool to query REST JSON results from a batch file.

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/08/29

Often the power is in the combinations of tools.

Read until the epilogue…

Prologue

In this case, I needed to be able to query the JSON results of calls to REST services from the command-line so I could process them in Batch files.

Since I could not find anything readily available, I originally Originally I opted for the PowerShell command-line scripting tool, as that ships with recent Windows versions and can re-use anything that .NET brings. But though [Wayback/Archive] .NET has built in JSON serialization support, there is [Wayback/Archive] no querying support in it.

Then I thought about Delphi, as it [Wayback/Archive] too has a built-in JSON parser, but even the well known [Wayback/Archive] JSON SuperObject library has no query support.

Back to .NET, which – like Delphi – has a well known and respected third party JSON library as well: [Wayback/Archive] NewtonSoft JSON aka JSON.net and that one [Wayback/Archive] does have support for querying JSON with the SelectToken function.

That’s the fundament of the rest of this article, with the potential to be used in a cross-platform as well.

So no need for a plan B.

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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, .NET, Batch-Files, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, JavaScript/ECMAScript, jq, JSON, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Bruce Tate on Twitter: “What’s the most unique feature of your favorite programming language?”

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/08/24

For my link archive: [Wayback/Archive] Bruce Tate on Twitter: “What’s the most unique feature of your favorite programming language?” / Twitter

From the languages that I have been using most:

It was a kind of follow-up on his earlier tweet that also sparked nice responses at [Archive] Bruce Tate on Twitter: “What is a #programming technique or construct that other people like but you think is overused?” / Twitter.

In my respons I phrased my decades long pet peeve [Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers on Twitter: “@redrapids OOP: inheritance over composition. This leads to deep hierarchies that eventually nobody understands.” / Twitter.

Whereas with OOP (object-oriented programming) one should use composition over inheritance, often the reverse is true.

Actually my take can be generalised into two directions as these hierarchies:

  1. often crowd a single namespace, so: crowding namespaces is bad.
    One does see this outside the Object Oriented realm a well.
  2. often have many levels of indirection, so: overdoing indirection is bad
    One does see this outside the Object Oriented realm a well, just not as pronounced.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, C#, Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Development, Event, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Pascal, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Programming is hard; Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich: Exact Instructions Challenge – THIS is why my kids hate me. | Josh Darnit – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/03/01

[Archive.is] Exact Instructions Challenge – THIS is why my kids hate me. | Josh Darnit – YouTube

We asked the kids to write instructions for a simple task but left out that we were going to be following their instructions EXACTLY as written. Great lesson for communication and a fun practice in patience!

Via [Archive] Maarten van Smeden on Twitter: “This is why programming is an acquired skill ” / Twitter

Q

It spurred all kinds of reactions about software development, like that programming should read like poetry, software development is about slowing down your thoughts, and that some high schools and some universities do this experiment at the start of their software development curriculum.

This is a cool experiment to do, even outside the USA, as many countries or regions have their own sandwich style, some of which are way harder to make than PB&J (:

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Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Software Development | Leave a Comment »