The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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My first computer, which I bought way after my first programming contest

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/15

1988: my first computer

Earlier this year, I found back the ad on the right of the first computer it bought including monitor: at JWC Computers in The Hague¹ where after the the warranty period was over I found out the 16 Mhz 286 processor was a 12 Mhz configured with zero wait state. Luckily I could exchange the VGA card which wasn’t really compatible with a more compatible one.

The machine really boosted my software career and made me start my own company in august 1989 at age 20.

The start of the career however was about a year after attending this programming contest:

Using the computers at university, I showed off some more Turbo Pascal things I created (including a graphical mouse cursor in text-mode²) right after the CP/M and CP/M-86 support was dropped in favour of DOS at the end of the combined Turbo Pascal CP/M and DOS versions. Hello Turbo Pascal 4 with units³, .EXE support, new IDE and new-style manuals, Turbo Pascal 5.0 with integrated debugger, Turbo Pascal 5.5 with objects, Turbo Pascal 6.0 with Turbo Vision and MDI, and Turbo Pascal version 7.0 with DPMI and Windows support (the last two in Borland Pascal; and Windows support also separately available in the OWL based Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.0 and 1.5) sharing the same DLL and DOS Extender support system, syntax highlighting.

1986: my first and only programming contest

I found back JWC computers a few days after finding back my first ever computer programming contest in 1986 [Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers: “@bert_hubert @ionica Jullie …” – Mastodon

Bij Micro Masters Holland in 1986 ging het dus al om de UI en niet om de inhoud (:
In educatieve software bleek toen al nauwelijks brood te verdienen.
Misschien als ik toen @WGAvanDijk gekend had…

Followed by [Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers: “@bert_hubert @ionica @WGAvanDi…” – Mastodon

Oh kijk: het andere interview van Nico Baaijens (Paul van der Bijl van het vorige interview teruggevonden op Twitter: @paulvdb)

Wat wist ik toen al veel en weinig tegelijk.

Dat is niet heel veel veranderd (:

That contest was a result of The calculators that got me into programming (via: calculators : Algorithms for the masses – julian m bucknall).

I was quite good at Turbo Pascal programming, which landed my first freelance gigs and led me – after FORTRAN and x86 assembly language side-steps – to Delphi, C# and many scripting languages on many platforms. Of course DOS, Windows and OS/2, but also VAX/VMS, BSD (including MacOS, SunOS and the migration of the latter from BSD to SVR4), HP UX, AS/400, AIX, and of course Linux including embedded varieties of some.

There is remarkably little information about Micro Masters Holland via Google Search, but other searches have more results. From those, my conclusion is that the contest ran at least 3 times. Below some articles grouped by the years it ran.

Micro Masters Holland 1984

Micro Masters Holland 1985

Micro Masters Holland 1986

Micro Masters Holland 1987

Micro Masters Holland generic

Interviews with me about Micro Masters Holland

The full article by Paul van der Bijl from [Wayback/Archive] Leidse Courant | 21 mei 1986 | pagina 13 – Historische Kranten, Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken

Did you spot the image behind the lamp. Yup: Karateka – a game I loved and still do. Thanks Jordan Mechner for creating that!

The full article by Nico Baaijens (also interviewing Jos de Klerk who now works at Settels Savenije) from [Wayback/Archive] Algemeen Dagblad » 17 mei 1986 – Art. 227 | Delpher

The insert on the top right is about addiction. Even back then I thought that wording was too strong: it is an addiction when things run out of hand. Looking back, it never really did. The time spent programming was a combination of passion and avoiding my mom. Only much – at age 50 – I found out the cause for that: she had been narcissistic since her youth and kept pushing me beyond my limits to compensate for the shortcomings of my mentally retarded brother. That was the real problem and combined with my autism and skills the reason I ended up in IT: a kind of mental safe space.

--jeroen

Footnotes

¹ [Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers: “… Thuis dus niet aan de orde: mijn eerste PC was een bij elkaar verdiende 286 van JWC op de LvM in Den Haag. Dat waren afzetters, dan die 16 Mhz was een 12 Mhz op zero wait-state. De advertentie net terggevonden op aan de p…” – Mastodon

JWC computers advertisement picture from:

Way more of their ads: [Wayback/Archive] Resultaten | Delpher: jwc computers

A tiny bit of history on them in the replies of a blog post describing a very similar store: [Wayback/Archive] Weans, Den Haag – blafhert

Weans & sunshine zijn een en de zelfde, op een gegeven moment (bijna tegen het einde) kwam er nog een filiaal & kantoor bij in de Pasadena in den haag. Dit was de “groothandel” hier kochten bedrijven zoals DES en King computers (wie kent die nog) hun spullen.

…

Owja Weans staat idd voor we are not stupid.

…

Die ene Marc, heeft in een veel later stadium in onze organisatie gewerkt, dat was bij EURO P.C. met vestingen op de segbroeklaan en 2 in de fahranheitstraat,het klopt wel dat ook dit een vestiging was van Sunshine N.V.
Onze holding is begonnen met computerverkoop in 1983 !!!, onder de naam EPC ,JWC computers , Necom en RE-Paco. met 5 vestigingen in den haag en 1 in Rotterdam, spectaculaur was onze vestiging in de weimarstraat te den haag waar een omzet
op zaterdag gerealiseerd werd van 1 MLN, het einde van deze vestiging is geweest een overtreding van BUMA er werden namelijk firenzo DOS bij een systeem geleverd welke uitstluitend geleverd mocht worden bij FIRENZO systemen.

…

Dat weans geen belasting betaalde is niet juist het bedrijf is ten onder gegaan door het opstarten van een memory fabriek in nederland en zoedoende alleen grondstoffen te hoeven importeren om zodoende de anti dumpheffing te ontlopen, die in die tijd 60% was, wij kregen een navordering van 150 MLN voor in ogen van overheid ontdoken invoerrecht, uit eindelijk heb ik de bete afgekocht voor 32 mln.

…

Ik blijf de verhalen van Jan hier boven hilarisch vinden. 90% een leugen. Heb er bijna 3 jaar gewerkt tot aan het bezoek van de FIOD. Bleek bij het GAK dat er voor het personeel nooit iets was afgedragen, terwijl wij dachten van wel. Jan was een briljant zakenman, kon iedereen oplichten waar je bij zat, draaide vele BTW carrousels en verdiende zich scheel. Maar ieder woord uit zijn mond was meestal onzin om zijn handel te verkopen.
Toch kijk ik met veel plezier terug op de tijd dat ik daar gewerkt heb.

…

² It was cool to see a similar solution mentioned at [Wayback/Archive] mouse – Graphics Cursor in Assembly – Stack Overflow.

³ A unit like modules concept was already in the beta version of the never Borland released Turbo Modula-2 later released as

Images

Queries

Posted in About, Development, Pascal, Personal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal | Leave a Comment »

Compiler Explorer does Rust. Rust really is strict: some Tweets that helped me learn how strict.

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/15

Just remembered that I had a fall 2021 note lying around about Compiler Explorer having evolved and been doing Rust for quite a while now: [Wayback/Archive] Compiler Explorer: G54Mb9Es3

gcc.godbolt.org
Compiler Explorer - Rust (rustc 1.55.0)
pub fn add(a: u64, b: u16) { println!("{}", a + b);

It shows that integer types [Wayback/Archive] u16 and [Wayback/Archive] u64 cannot be added together without conversion or casting. Which is an example of the strictness that Rust requires. I think that is a good thing,

Via this tweet tree (as opinions on idioms vary so it is good to understand why):

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

Upptime: GitHub-powered open-source uptime monitor and status page

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/14

I wonder how long this can be hosted on GitHub. Will start using it, just to learn more about the GitHub computing infrastructure.

Links:

--jeroen

Posted in Cloud, Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, GitHub, Hosting, Infrastructure, Monitoring, Power User, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Early Firefox history thread by @asadotzler on Thread Reader App (from before it was called Phoenix, heck from before Phoenix was created!)

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/14

A few years back I bumped in this cool [Wayback/Archive] Thread by @asadotzler on Thread Reader App on early Firefox history (from before it was called Phoenix or Firebird, heck from before Phoenix was created!).

It is important to keep telling these bits of history as they are fundamental to understand the Web Browser landscape as it is now.

Great material that complements Wikipedia articles like these:

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Posted in Development, Database Development, Firebird, Power User, History, Web Browsers, Firefox | Leave a Comment »

10-inch racks have apparently been a thing for the last few years. Some links.

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/13

When at look at a local Amazon site, they have plenty of stuff: [Wayback/Archive] Amazon.de : 10 inch rack

2023 example via [Wayback/Archive] Ikea Eket DIY 10″ Rack (UK) [build showcase] · Issue #22 · geerlingguy/mini-rack · GitHub:

Via [WaybackSave/Archive] Jeff Geerling on X: “Everyone in #Homelab knows about the DIY 19″ IKEA LACK rack… but did you know IKEA makes the perfect mini rack furniture, too? Presenting stirkage’s Eket rack! …”

[Wayback/Archive] Tweet JSON (image on the right).

That tweet and [WaybackSave/Archive] Jeff Geerling on X: “Indeed… there’s gotta be some nerd at @IKEA who’s ensuring certain furniture fits standard sized rackmount gear, right?” (image below via [Wayback/Archive] Tweet JSON) have some interesting replies, making the list of usable IKEA products at least this:

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Posted in Development, Hardware Development, IKEA hacks, LifeHacker, Power User | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Coo responses to b0rk no Twitter: “is there an easy way (in the browser, at runtime) to generate a call graph of which functions called which other functions in a javascript program?”

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/13

For my reading list, the various responses to [Wayback/Archive] Julia Evans on Twitter: “is there an easy way (in the browser, at runtime) to generate a call graph of which functions called which other functions in a javascript program?”

--jeroen

Posted in Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Scripting, Software Development, Web Browsers, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

William Le’s Perpetual Motion Machine ver.2 – (plz visit my Amazon sto – LovelyWings)

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/12

Want: [Wayback/Archive] William Le’s Perpetual Motion Machine ver.2 – (plz visit my Amazon sto – LovelyWings

I think I like the transparent version most, but the wood versions (yellow or brown) of course have more mystery.

There are more products in [Wayback/Archive] Wooden Kinetic Sculpture for Art Lovers – LovelyWings.

You can buy some of them at [Wayback/Archive] Amazon.com: LovelyWings, for instance the brown version of the [Wayback/Archive] Amazon.com: Perpetual Motion Machine – Infinitive Marble Machine – William Le’s Perpetual Motion Simulator : Handmade Products.

Via: [Wayback/Archive] You can’t hide the batteries when it’s transparent! – YouTube

--jeroen

Posted in Development, Electronics Development, LifeHacker, Physics, Power User, science | Leave a Comment »

Victron battery management status codes

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/12

From [Wayback/Archive] ESS design and installation manual: 6. Controlling depth of discharge:

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Posted in LifeHacker, Power User, Solar Power | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Epic Games v. Apple: Apple has never lost this hard before – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/09

For my link archive: finally Apple had to broadly accept apps to allow other forms of purchases than through Apple itself.

[Wayback/Archive] Apple has never lost this hard before – YouTube

focussing around this quote from the court order (full PDF below):

Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover- up made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple.

More details in for instance:

--jeroen

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Posted in Apple, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

How to remove an entry from Chrome’s Remembered URLs from the url bar? – Super User

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/09

The delete trick below not just works for the Chrome Omnibox, but for any autocomplete list in Chrome.

[Wayback/Archive] How to remove an entry from Chrome’s Remembered URLs from the url bar? – Super User (thanks [Wayback/Archive] cmcculloh, [Wayback/Archive] Gaff and [Wayback/Archive] User 张 源 – Super User):

Q

I’ve got a URL in Chrome “local.mysite.com” that autopopulates when I start typing “local.my” into the URL bar.
Note that this URL DOES NOT EXIST in my browser history (at chrome://history/#e=1&p=0) because it isn’t a real site and therefore couldn’t ever be successfully visited and therefore never shows up in my history.

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Posted in Chrome, Chrome, Google, Power User, Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »

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