* Posts by jake

26584 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007

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C: Everyone's favourite programming language isn't a programming language

jake Silver badge

Re: Bad definition

I don't use COBOL, Fortran, C, perl and bash to annoy anybody ... I use them because they do the job I ask them to do quite nicely. Annoying the younglings is just gravy.

jake Silver badge

Re: Nothing new...

I don't actually love any particular programming language ... but I do like COBOL and Fortran. And I generally reach for C (and sometimes a little assembler), because I know I can get the job done in it. Likewise BASH and perl.

If I were to code for a more commercial line of software, or much larger projects, I might use other options. Maybe.

jake Silver badge

Re: Nothing new...

"So in some respects it isn't 'C' that has aged or been out-grown, but the worldview behind Linux/Unix as they currently stand."

It's not the language or the OS that is the problem, rather it is the expectations of the humans using the tools. Kids today expect, nay DEMAND that the computer does all the thinking for them. Any language that requires you to pay attention to what you are doing is "hard", and hard is bad because computers are supposed to make life easy.

Sadly, easy is as easy does ... programming a kernel or a compiler isn't supposed to be hard, it actually IS hard! No amount of whining is going to ever change that.

I place the blame squarely on Apple, with its "ease of use" myth.

jake Silver badge

Re: Nothing new...

"we live in an age of 8 bit and 16 bit (simple microcontrollers), 32 bit (older kit), and 64 bit (newer kit)"

Each of which (at least on my personal systems) have their own, individually kitted out environments geared to making my life easier.

"and when 128 bit rolls around"

It's here, and has been ... The IBM System/360 Model 85 could handle 128-bit floating point arithmetic back in 1968.

"will we have long long longs?"

At DEC, the VAX line called 'em octawords and HFLOATs, using four consecutive registers ("four longwords").

From little acorns ...

jake Silver badge

Re: Bad definition

Rare? 20 years ago? Shit, it;s not rare today!

I can think of any number of bits & bobs that require their own special code running on bare metal in order to operate, from the clock on the wall (synced to the Master Clock downstairs), to the equatorial mount under the telescope in the corner, to the garage door opener and it's remote, to the greenhouses in the distance and the gate to the main road beyond that. Need I go on?

jake Silver badge

Re: Bad definition

When you consider that MS-DOS isn't actually an Operating System (it is just a glorified program loader), your comment makes even more sense.

jake Silver badge

Re: Genuinely thanks

It's in the Barrister's bookcase over my left shoulder ... A couple years ago, the Wife etched the top glass panel with the words "In case of retirement, Break Glass" in a rather lovely embellished copperplate.

jake Silver badge

"The result was Ada and it didn't have a happy ending."

Sadly, it hasn't ended yet.

jake Silver badge

Re: Nothing new...

Considering the base units of the human concept of time (the day and year), I rather suspect it originated quite a few millennia before that ... Certainly by the advent of farming, some 12,000 years ago, it would have been something that most people paid attention to.

The manufacture of bread (~14.5Kya), beer (~14K ya), cheese (~10Kya) and mead/wine (~8Kya) would have started the naming of multiple day-units and sub-day units, at least among the set of people producing these items. Yes, you can ferment things for human consumption without a clock or calendar, but getting the timing right nearly always helps.

The IBM System/360 Model 40 told you to WHAT now?

jake Silver badge

Re: No rude but I always laughed

Not Shout Factory TV

Shout TV Inc.

Crunchbase sez "Shout TV enables users to play and compete on mobile phones during live sports and entertainment events."

Looks to me like he's still separating fools from their money.

jake Silver badge

Re: Stupid

I was born ugly, so I intend to live forever.

Or die trying ...

jake Silver badge

Re: No rude but I always laughed

Wiki, the well known bastion of all that is true in the world, suggests he is currently CEO of Shout TV Inc., whatever the hell that is. Not even Wiki knows, from the look of it. Sounds like a good place for him.

jake Silver badge

Re: No rude but I always laughed

The source for false is the same as the code for true. Only the names are changed.

To be more precise, the code for false.c consists of two lines:

#define EXIT_STATUS EXIT_FAILURE

#include "true.c"

Well, it would be two lines if it weren't for ElReg's dismal handling of whitespace.

jake Silver badge

Making their mark ...

Many HP and TI calculators had hidden embedded mini-games. Likewise, many HP printers had "design team" type easter-eggs as well as the normal test page. My HP 54600B oscilloscope has a tetris game built into it. My HP 54622D 'scope has Asteroids. My HP 54645D 'scope has the design team alongside a picture of a badger (!!), and also a game called BUGS! as well as a hidden hardware hacking menu.

Tektronix test equipment has all kinds of weird easter eggs. I had a logic analyzer with a pong game, and another with breakout. Both are long gone, and I don't remember the model numbers. My 2232 oscilloscope has a wizard riding a skateboard, and my 1751 digital 'scope can display fish swimming.

As I don't go out of my way to collect kit with such 'eggs, I rather suspect that such distractions are quite common ... perhaps the rule rather than the exception. I even have a fscking coffeepot (Mr. Coffee PRX30) that'll display the designer's name, and has a hidden "diagnostic" mode that displays the temperature in degrees C. The mind boggles ...

jake Silver badge

Re: On a very old website..

That's not geekcode, that's leetspeak.

It's arguable which is the least useful ...

jake Silver badge

Re: Stupid

"but I now just mash the keyboard or write “test-test” repeated for the length required, it comes the same as putting something ‘daring’ in there"

Personally, I put in something explicitly relevant to whatever it is I am doing at that point in the code. Might as well make it useful, instead of nonsense.

Yes, I actually make use of meaningful comments, too. How'd ya guess?

jake Silver badge

Re: No rude but I always laughed

Not really. It's written in straight forward C with minimal embellishment. You can read it for yourself, it's included in the Coreutils package. Here's the archive going back to 5.0, when Fileutils, Shellutils, and Textutils merged back in '03..

jake Silver badge

Re: No rude but I always laughed

"And this is why Linux ended up with train wrecks like systemd."

Linux (the kernel) has absolutely nothing to do with the systemd-cancer. Various brain-dead distributions of GNU+Linux, on the other hand, choose to use it (for reasons that they have never satisfactorily explained).

Thankfully, there are plenty of GNU+Linux distributions that run better/smaller/faster and less buggy inits with much, much less feaping creaturism than the systemd-cancer.

jake Silver badge
Pint

Who among us ...

... never patched binary code to change text strings into something pithy?

As a grad student I was near constantly yelling at the freshmen who thought they were being clever in a way that nobody had ever been clever before ... The advent of Usenet brought some relief from this (at the expense of those of us actually using Usenet), but that only lasted a month or so. Until Delphi, followed by AOL, allowed the Great Unwashed in to revel in the Eternal September ... but that's a rant for another day.

A pint for the old fogies who can commiserate ... The rest of you kids, get orf me lawn!

jake Silver badge

Re: how did that escape?

"Temporary code was not reviewed as it was not shipped."

I think I see your problem ...

Android's Messages, Dialer apps quietly sent text, call info to Google

jake Silver badge

Who is surprised?

Google is a multibillion dollar international internet advertising company. Stalking individuals is what they do. It is the job they have invented for themselves. Anyone with any sense has been shunning the slow-motion train-wreck that is now called alphagoo right from the git-go.

As I said right here on ElReg over 11 years ago ...

Unable to write 'Amusing Weekly Column'. Abort, Retry, Fail?

jake Silver badge

Re: Turbo Pascal - Missing Semi-Colon at line 454

But Bottom was an ass, not an arse.

jake Silver badge

When I die ...

... if I get sent to the place where they write code, I'll tell 'em to fuck off and send me to the other place. I've done more than my fair share in this plane of existence.

A programmer writes code to make the hardware do what it is supposed to do.

A developer writes code that his management tells him to.

jake Silver badge

You know you've been coding far too long when ...

... you see an error message, parse it, and become confused.

Example: Look at clock. It's 4:04. Mind thinks "time not found", followed immediately by "WTF‽‽‽".

jake Silver badge

Re: "Best" error messages, etc.

Thus leading to the name of the open source BeOS clone.

Server's poor response

Not quick enough for browser.

Timed out, plum blossom.

jake Silver badge

Comments, too.

I damn near killed an idiot who insisted on commenting in Klingon, but only on bits of inline assembler embedded in C ... I wouldn't have cared, but the comments popped up during a surprise visit from the CEO with a couple clients in tow looking to see how their customized version of the code was coming along.

An open-source COBOL contender emerges

jake Silver badge
Pint

This may be a RedTop, but that doesn't mean the commentardariat automagicaly descend to gutter humo(u)r. Nor do most of us (TINU) dwell on the former idiot-in-chief's toilet habits ... at least I sincerely hope not!

Good try, though. It's Friday ... this round's on me.

jake Silver badge

Re: IZAL?

That's only because every time somebody entered the loo and saw it, they exclaimed "Izal? Jesus Christ! Why me?"

jake Silver badge

In the 1890s, newspapers didn't have a drastic ink-rub problem, thanks primarily to the letterpress that they were printed on and the solvents and inks in use. It wasn't until the advent of the Vanguard Web Press in the mid 1950s that newspaper rub-off became a major issue.

By the 1990s, however, rub-off had been solved. In fact, the San Francisco Chronicle even advertised it's new flexographic presses with no-rub ink as a selling point in the late '80s or early '90s.

There's a couple brain cells that you'll never get back ... We now return you to the usual bickering.

jake Silver badge

I suspect that was some kind of weird attempt at a joke. As far as I know, the former idiot-in-chief knows absolutely nothing about using computers, much less programming one.

jake Silver badge

COBOL IS DEAD!

LONG LIVE COBOL!

Seriously, there are more functional lines of COBOL and Fortran working in big business today than the average kid who never used a dial telephone could possibly imagine. I do not know of a single COBOL or Fortran programmer who is currently out of work. I can't say the same for Java(script), VisBas, C++, C#, and what-have-you. Not a month goes by when I don't get email from a former student, thanking me for suggesting COBOL or Fortran as another programming language to learn ... The two are pretty much ubiquitous in big business.

First posted here: https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2009/01/07/64-bit-cobol-for-aix/#c_398757

jake Silver badge

Picture This was released in '78 ... OO_COBOL in 2002,

You can stop now, it's safe.

Are we springing into a Y2K-class nightmare?

jake Silver badge

Re: In the UK, the longest month of the year

Officially Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station has no time zone, but it could be almost[0] any of them for what should be obvious reasons. However, by convention, because most flights arrive from or depart for New Zealand, they run on New Zealand time. Yes, they follow DST per NZ.

;0' I'll leave why I say "almost" as an exercise for the reader.

jake Silver badge

Re: USA change its date format ...

Midnight and noon aren't actual times, they are just markers between the old Roman notion of ante meridiem (before midday) and post meridiem (after midday). They both have zero duration, and as such are logical constructs, not actual times.

Thus "midnight" marks the time when the prior day stops the new day starts. As it is time of zero length, it doesn't actually belong in either day.

Put another way, there is no "midnight on Monday", but there is a "midnight between Sunday and Monday" and a "midnight between Monday and Tuesday".

It follows that the time 24:00:00 doesn't actually exist, and is an illogical construct.

jake Silver badge

Re: USA change its date format ...

Sorry to tell you that the Imperial gallon and the US liquid gallon are two completely different measurements, with the former being about 25% larger than he latter[0]. Perhaps you grew up close to the Canadian border? Or maybe yer DearOldMum found a sale on mis-directed gas cans at the local hardware store?

[0] Note to the inevitable pedant(s): I said "about" for a reason. Find something else to bitch about. Ta.

jake Silver badge

Re: USA change its date format ...

"Determinedly killing off the intermediate units"

You lot finally managed that, eh? That's sad, in the old meaning of the word.

I was in the UK just prior to, on, and immediately after Decimal Day. From what I recall, a pint was still twd a half bob on Feb 15th 1971 ... By 1980ish, it was 50p, but my favorite beertender was still asking ten bob ... his wife asked for "ten shillings please, luv". Likewise in all the local shops near where I lived.

And we all bitched about it ... imagine, half a quid for a fuckin' pint! What was the world comin' to?

jake Silver badge

Re: USA change its date format ...

Wait. Let me get this straight ... you are blaming the Yanks for ThoseInCharge of procurement and installation at British schools (and other places) being unable to read and understand the specs for the equipment and software they are ordering?

Wow. Things must be worse over there than I thought.

jake Silver badge

Re: I run three clocks.

My master clock allows me to tell the rest of the kit on the network what time to set themselves on boot (or any other arbitrary time, for that matter).

jake Silver badge

I run three clocks.

The first is TheWife's monthly cycle. If you are married to a woman, you'll grok.

The second is the seasonal clock handily provided by the Solar Year & the Earth's axial tilt with respect to its orbit. It is totally out of my control, but I plant my fields & breed my critters by it, as humans have since time immemorial. Trying to change this is a fool's errand.

The third is the clock provided by the Master clock on my network, which syncs up to an atomic clock once per day (ntp.org works for most purposes ... I use something else), which all of my machines adhere to. This is for computer record keeping more than anything else.

Context is the key. There is no "SingleTimeStandard[tm]", and never will be. With the exception of The Wife's, of course ;-)

As a side-note, I don't wear a wristwatch day-to-day ... and haven't in nearly half a century (since my HP-01, back in 1977). In my mind, they are completely pointless. Everywhere you look these days you can see something giving you a pretty good approximation of "local time". Humans living life to the second or minute (or even ten minutes!) is counter productive. Even when baking bread ... Relax, be patient, learn to make homebrewed beer :-)

I do have a dive watch, and wear it when appropriate. It's kinda important in that context.

jake Silver badge

Re: USA change its date format ...

The US and Canada (except Quebec, of course) got the date format from the Brits, blame them. (Do you take The Times? The London Gazette?)

But talk about first-world bitching.

"Oh no, the letterhead & envelopes are the wrong size! Woe is me!"

jake Silver badge

Re: historical memory loss

"How do people without a brain ever get elected?"

Because most of the electorate is equally brain-dead, or worse.

jake Silver badge

Re: historical memory loss

In the early '70s, kids made their own way to school.

These days, the little apple-dumplings are driven to school by a parent/guardian.

Shit, I've seen recent college graduates shepherded to job interviews by their mummy ...

jake Silver badge

Re: USA change its date format ...

"We inherited all that crap from the British."

Who still drive miles to get that perfect pint, instead of jogging to shed a few stone ...

jake Silver badge

Re: USA change its date format ...

Just to set the record straight ...

... so-called "Freedom Fries" was the brain-child of disgraced Republican congressman and convicted felon Bob Ney (served 17 months of a 30 months sentence at Club Fed (Federal Correctional Institution, Morgantown)).

Nobody in the US paid all that much attention to the supposed name change, other than the Press and the usual rabid Republican sycophants, who are a very small, if vocal, subset of the population as a whole. I can quite honestly say that I never saw the item on a restaurant menu, even when it was supposedly an in thing.

Salesforce sued in attempt to block release of Capitol riot info

jake Silver badge

Re: All parties

Ah, yes, the MAGA set ... "Muppets Annoying Genuine Americans".

jake Silver badge

Re: All parties

"the part I don't understand about Q is why he moved from antagonising Picard to trolling Americans"

This is the wrong place to ask that question. Instead, ask the kiddies on 4chan, who invented Q for the lulz. Report back, we could use some lulz, too.

jake Silver badge

Re: Buttery males

"Why would that lot bother to understand something when every problem they ever faced in life, big, small and insignificant, can be solved by shouting and being angry at the Democrats?"

FTFY

Someone should explain the meaning of the psychological term "projection" to the Republicans.

US imposes sanctions as Russia invades Ukraine

jake Silver badge

Re: @martinusher - Sanctions and Resources

I didn't twist anything, I corrected your incorrect statement.

Doesn't alter the fact that within living history[0], people from Europe decided what to do with land that didn't belong to them, and in fact had belonged to a completely different group of people for a couple thousand years. The people living there for many hundreds of generations had no say in the matter whatsoever, and were unceremoniously shoved aside in order for Europe to sweep an embarrassing refugee problem under the rug. Is it any wonder that the rightful landowners are a trifle pissed off? What the fuck do you think they should do? Shut up and take it? Perhaps you feel the same about the Ukraine?

Put yourself in the rightful landowner's shoes ... Wouldn't YOU be more than slightly miffed if your home was suddenly ripped away from you without so much of a by-your-leave?

[0] Rapidly fading, but close enough.

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