Category Archives: Programming

The early days of Linux

Posted on April 15, 2023 by David K.

My name is Lars Wirzenius, and I was there when Linux started. Linux is now a global success, but its beginnings were rather more humble. These are my memories of the earliest days of Linux, its creation, and the start … Continue reading →

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Another Day, Another Boneheaded Move by #CorporateIT

Posted on March 21, 2023 by David K.

I’ve been having mysterious problems with both of my corporate computers. Things that used to run only sort of run now. Today, I finally figured out that this is happening because #CorporateIT, in its ineffable wisdom, has decided to suddenly … Continue reading →

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UNIX co-creator Ken Thompson is… a what user? • The Register

Posted on March 17, 2023 by David K.

Elder statesman of system software makes a shocking revelation: Thompson replies: I have for most of my life – because I was sort of born into it – run Apple. Now recently, meaning within the last five years, I’ve become … Continue reading →

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Can GPT-4 *Actually* Write Code? – by Tyler Glaiel

Posted on March 17, 2023 by David K.

I test GPT 4’s code-writing capabilities with some actual real world problems. Source: Can GPT-4 *Actually* Write Code? – by Tyler Glaiel Can these new large language models really replace software engineering? GPT is showing that it can write trivial … Continue reading →

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Programming vs. Achievement Hunting

Posted on March 6, 2023 by David K.

Last night, in my continuing saga of playing Fallout 76, I finished all the main quest lines, and turned my attention to one of the first side quests that you’ll run into when starting the game. You meet a robot … Continue reading →

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Caring about Costs is Cool

Posted on March 2, 2023 by David K.

But costs aren’t just about the bottomline, they’re also a measure of efficiency. I have a distinct distaste for waste. Money spent on the frivolous or the ill-considered is money that can’t be spent elsewhere. Like an engine drinking too … Continue reading →

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Mastodon

Posted on January 2, 2023 by David K.

So I’m just now realizing that Mastodon is a Rails 6.1 application. I just looked over the Gemfile, and it includes a lot of the usual gems, notably cocoon, right at the end. I have a love/hate relationship with this … Continue reading →

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Don’t Get Involved with Things you Can’t Fix, and You Can’t Fix Stupid

Posted on December 13, 2022 by David K.

Twenty-odd years ago, I was involved in a Product Data Management system implementation. This is just part of a much larger story, but the salient point from the epic saga is that I worked for a psychopath, and he tried … Continue reading →

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37signals Dev — Vanilla Rails is plenty

Posted on November 9, 2022 by David K.

In our example, there are no fat models in charge of doing too many things. Recording::Incineration or Recording::Copier are cohesive classes that do one thing. Recording::Copyable adds a high-level #copy_to method to Recording’s public API and keeps the related code … Continue reading →

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The Case for C# and .NET. It has been interesting as I’ve shifted… | by Charles Chen | ITNEXT

Posted on August 4, 2022 by David K.

It has been interesting as I’ve shifted out of .NET ecosystem which I’ve worked with on the server side (and some stints of desktop… Source: The Case for C# and .NET. It has been interesting as I’ve shifted… | by Charles … Continue reading →

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