Welcome to the Lounge

PIEBALDconsult2-Dec-21 6:34

2-Dec-21 6:34

Coulda had three weeks on the beach though.

Gary Wheeler2-Dec-21 6:40

Gary Wheeler

2-Dec-21 6:40

Yeah, I'm just annoyed at my initial "Chicken Little"[^] reaction.

Software Zen: delete this;

The Science of King David's Court | Object Oriented Programming with C++

David O'Neil2-Dec-21 7:43

David O'Neil

2-Dec-21 7:43

Any time you delve into a codebase full of magic numbers and other completely odd idiosyncrasies, a chicken little response is appropriate.

PIEBALDconsult2-Dec-21 6:40

2-Dec-21 6:40

That reminds me of the time I had to implement a simple system for writing magnetic cards for a security system. I was handed a reader/writer, the manual, and a few cards.

I implemented it in DCL Cool | :cool:

. I pity tha fool who had to maintain it.

Gary Wheeler2-Dec-21 6:42

Gary Wheeler

2-Dec-21 6:42

DCL = Digital Command Language, from VAX/VMS?

I used that a lot back in the day...

Software Zen: delete this;

PIEBALDconsult2-Dec-21 6:45

2-Dec-21 6:45

Yes. My education and early career (1983 - 2002) were all on DEC systems.

I have four OpenVMS systems here.

Gary Wheeler2-Dec-21 6:55

Gary Wheeler

2-Dec-21 6:55

I was a developer on and the system manager for a number of VAXen in the mid-to-late 1980's, most at our local Air Force Base.

I think my worst abuse of DCL was when I wrote a preprocessor for VAX FORTRAN in DCL that reduced it to FORTRAN-77 syntax with some generated code. Good times.

Software Zen: delete this;

PIEBALDconsult2-Dec-21 7:04

2-Dec-21 7:04

Yeah, I developered, managered, and operatored a variety of VAX and Alpha systems, in education, manufacturing, transportation, and communication fields. So many employers trusted me with full privileges, the fools.

Mostly writing in C, often accessing databases.

Marc Clifton2-Dec-21 7:22

Marc Clifton

2-Dec-21 7:22

Been there two days ago. Forgot an underscore in the SQL for query, forgot to run the integration tests which immediately identified the problem when I did run them, but unfortunately the customer discovered the problem which took a LOT longer to smooth feathers and fix the 6 resulting issues than it did to type the underscore. Laugh | :laugh:

Latest Articles:
DivWindow: Size, drag, minimize, and maximize floating windows with layout persistence

PIEBALDconsult2-Dec-21 7:50

2-Dec-21 7:50

Man, you forget one TPS report cover sheet...

Gerry Schmitz2-Dec-21 8:05

Gerry Schmitz

2-Dec-21 8:05

It happens to me when I think I can save time by skipping the front-end (analysis) stuff that has worked in the past. The time you do not spend thinking you wind up spending rewriting; so, even "no progress" can be progress. (And I don't feel so bad procrastinating)

It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food

Greg Utas2-Dec-21 11:22

Greg Utas

2-Dec-21 11:22

So true. I've also fallen into that trap. Just start writing code that later has to be totally reworked.

Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

Mike Hankey2-Dec-21 8:33

Mike Hankey

2-Dec-21 8:33

Better sheepish then many weeks work!

The less you need, the more you have.

Even a blind squirrel gets a nut...occasionally.

JaxCoder.com

den2k882-Dec-21 22:45

den2k88

2-Dec-21 22:45

It reminds me the time I spent two weeks delving in the depths of the Windows Dinamic Loader, to the point of reaching documentation dated in 1993, because I had a static variable in a DLL randomly blanked.

It was a marshaling mismatch, tha DLL memcpyed 4 bytes more than the application was expecting, overwriting said variable which was just contiguous and of course inside the process space, so no access violation. This exchange structure was sent on external events so it wasn't obvious what triggered it.

A single line of code fixed the issue.

GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X

englebart3-Dec-21 4:02

englebart

3-Dec-21 4:02

Was there a symbol for the two chars before?

How many characters in the new symbol to describe the updated magic number?

I wonder is it was a v1 vs v2 type API. If you have been using the original vendor for that long it seems that they may have provided some backward compatibility.
New vendor may have joined the market at v2.

obermd3-Dec-21 4:29

obermd

3-Dec-21 4:29

Initial assumptions are frequently wrong. Be glad yours were and take the win.

Palendromic ISO Date

jsc422-Dec-21 0:24

jsc42

2-Dec-21 0:24

Today in ISO date format is 2021-12-02; which, without punctuation, is 20211202. When reversed, it is still 20211202.

Next (I guess) will be 2101-10-12

Richard MacCutchan2-Dec-21 0:37

Richard MacCutchan

2-Dec-21 0:37

What about 22-02-2022?

jsc422-Dec-21 0:55

jsc42

2-Dec-21 0:55

I did say that I had guessed! Obviously wrongly. Thanks for the correction. Frown | :(

OriginalGriff2-Dec-21 1:04

OriginalGriff

2-Dec-21 1:04

Not ISO format!

"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

jsc422-Dec-21 1:10

jsc42

2-Dec-21 1:10

Just spotted that! Was going to edit my answer. Brain fog day.

OriginalGriff2-Dec-21 1:38

OriginalGriff

2-Dec-21 1:38

We all have 'em!

stoneyowl22-Dec-21 3:20

stoneyowl2

2-Dec-21 3:20

Hey Joe, when did you escape from the volcano? Laugh | :laugh:

Thar's only two possibilities: Thar is life out there in the universe which is smarter than we are, or we're the most intelligent life in the universe. Either way, it's a mighty sobering thought. (Porkypine - via Walt Kelly)