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I recall a conversation I had, over lunch, with our last summer IT intern. He was helping with some web development.
As he said he was heading into his last year of a computer science degree, I asked him if he took any compiler design courses.
He said, "What do you mean, compiler?"
Turns out, I had to explain to him what a compiler does.
This makes me cry for the future of IT and development.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Don't cry Richard, Chat GPT will save us all...
The best part of this is that old chaps will keep having good and well-paid jobs.
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As long as he didn't pretend to be an expert and was willing to learn, that's cool. Nobody knows everything and personality and willingness to learn says a lot. Learn him up and show him the way. Society and college has failed us, but we also failed the kids by being lazy parents (as a whole) and letting them rot in front of computers and TV their whole life. We were right there beside the kids rotting our minds too.
Which means, if it's going to get better in our lifetimes then it's up to us to fix it. Because by the time our generation is gone it'll be too late and humanity's down cycle will last much longer before we come out of it (we will, life is cyclical). So as long as he's not pompous and recognizes the things he doesn't know... there's hope. Guide the young padawan. If it's coming from a place of love, you'll make an impact on his life.
If he's one of them kids that thinks he knows everything because he learned one or two things that's a different story. But to be fair, I've seen that level of arrogance on CP with old farts. So arrogant ignorance isn't exactly exclusive to the younger generation.
Jeremy Falcon
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So, I have a system I am pitching to migrate to something modern. It was written in the early 80s using a VT terminal interface to a VAX. The customer has attempted to redevelop, migrate, re do this system about a 1/2 dozen times, all ending in failure. What keeps getting miss is that, at the end of the day, the system works. Production knows how to rapidly enter jobs to produce the product.
So, picture a UI that is a series of terminal input. I guess the closest analogy would be entering prompts at the command prompt level. I really don't want to continue in this direction, but the UI is key to the effectiveness of the system. Unlike Microsoft, I abhor screwing with users. It's important that phase 1 of the new project look and behave exactly like the existing system. Any suggestions for libraries or toolkits. I don't care if I have to buy a license.
The UI is the most evident thing about this application. There are users that are simply wizards at flying through the terminal based interface. I also have to migrate from flat files to an RDB and replace all of the report code with a modern report writer but that's another issue.
Charlie Gilley
“Microsoft is the virus..."
"the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
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Terminal could mean a lot of things... there are UI libraries out there that simulate a UI in a terminal. Windows 1 did it. Ncurses does it.
So when you say terminal, are you talking about something like this? Or is it something like this?
In either case, the good news is you don't need any fancy UI library. If they're that resistant to change then less is more and I can't imagine any UI lib that wouldn't have the basic inputs to mimic those two screenshots.
Jeremy Falcon
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It's not that gross, but I'll post some screen captures shortly. I know piebold will understand when I say this is all VT100 based. Works fine in putty.
Charlie Gilley
“Microsoft is the virus..."
"the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
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You might find it worthwhile to read William Galitz, "Handbook of Screen Form Design". It's from that era, but his philosophy should translate to a world of text boxes, radio buttons, etc etc.
When we used his ideas back in the dark ages, it seemed to reduce "forehead meets keyboard" events among the users.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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It might not be a good idea to "upgrade" at all.
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This might in fact be true. We're now on the 3rd generation of developers/support people. I don't think it's going to 4.
Charlie Gilley
“Microsoft is the virus..."
"the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
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I fixed a bunch of bugs in terms of color byte order (I had switched from RGBA to ABGR) which I hoped would fix my SVG rendering, whose colors are off. After finding and squashing a bunch of bugs (and watching the colors change accordingly) the last bug I fixed put my output clear back where I started!
So that was my morning. 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Have a colorful day! 
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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Why you switched from 'RGBA to ABGR'?
From what I remember, 'ABGR' is really a native Windows API thing, which has even corrected with wpf.
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It's not windows. (Well, it can be, but it's embedded/cross platform)
It's based on the fact that the plutosvg library I used uses argb and rgba but LITTLE ENDIAN overall.
The thing is, since shifts are reversed for big vs little endian in C/C++ big endian RGBA = little endian ABGR
My graphics library produces big endian footprints for pixels on little endian systems. The reason for that is almost all display hardware takes its frame buffer memory in big endian format.
I'd change plutovg to use big endian pixels but I don't understand this function:
static inline uint32_t BYTE_MUL(uint32_t x, uint32_t a)
{
uint32_t t = (x & 0xff00ff) * a;
t = (t + ((t >> 8) & 0xff00ff) + 0x800080) >> 8;
t &= 0xff00ff;
x = ((x >> 8) & 0xff00ff) * a;
x = (x + ((x >> 8) & 0xff00ff) + 0x800080);
x &= 0xff00ff00;
x |= t;
return x;
}
The exception would be things like a windows PC, * but * in that case it's 1 byte per pixel, making swapping them easy, whereas byte swapping a 16-bit RGB565 pixel is less straightforward.
So since plutovg is RGBA little endian, my vector pixel format is ABGR big endian. In my library, conversions between different pixel formats is transparent so it really doesn't impact the surface area of the API.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Got it, I think 
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Three lefts make a right.
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Hello all, does anyone here know of a reliable domain hosting company - I'm currently using Webhosting.uk.com who are proving to be unreliable ( been down twice this year for a few days )- my domain name is purely used for email purposes.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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For my personal sites, I’ve been using Dreambost for years. Never had an outage with them. Not sure if they’re US only though.
https://www.dreamhost.com/
Pretty sure they’re Linux only though, but since I’ll never use a Windows server if given the choice… that’s cool.
If it’s for the enterprise, that’s a whole different story. But for personal stuff they’re awesome.
Jeremy Falcon
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Oh, I used IONOS in the past too. Like 15-20 years ago.
https://www.ionos.com/
They’re a lot more corporatey and do data tracking a lot more. Which is why I stopped using them, but the service itself is ok if you don’t mind being their pawn.
Jeremy Falcon
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I use them also. I have not had any problems so far. I use them mostly for email, but I also have a starter website on the service.
I use Thunderbird as my email client; my wife uses their web email client. I am not sure what interface my children use.
__________________
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now.
© 2009, Rex Hammock
“If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” - John Wooden
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And lastly, if it’s just DNS only (and you don’t mean website hosting) I still use GoDaddy. I’ve known peeps that worked there that were pretty smart. Unfortunately, they call it me waaaayy too much with sales crap, but I’ll still use their DNS at times. Never went down for me. But, that’s just DNS only. I refuse to host a site with them.
You’re not talking about a registrar right? But the actual DNS or website hosting?
Jeremy Falcon
modified 10hrs ago.
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All I want Jeremy is some email accounts using my pjksolutions.com domain name. I don't know what the terminology is for that. Thanks for your help
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Gotcha. I’ve used Dreamhost then for DNS hosting and never had a problem. They also have their own web-based email client if you don’t want to use Gmail or your own.
Hope you find a good host man.
Jeremy Falcon
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So are you saying what I need is DNS hosting ? I'm not au fait with all the Web related shite stuff. Thanks again
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Yuppers, a quick over simplification of what's going on... and in which order...
1 You need a registrar. Basically a frontend for a public database that says blah.com is pointing to these DNS servers, etc. For you this is tucows currently, and this has to be public info so the public can find your site. Since I doubt the problem is on this end (otherwise I couldn't do an nslookup on it) and since registrars are just a middleman, not spending too much time here.
2 You need DNS hosting with a DNS server. This is where name server entries come in. Most registrars will fill this in for you. However, in your case this is set to ns173.eukdns.com and ns172.eukdns.com. Which, when going to their site, they don't have a valid SSL cert, so I wouldn't trust them. So, anyway, your domains registered at tucows is pointing there. Maybe your webhost uses these people underneath the hood... who knows. But this could be the why your crap goes down if these people suck.
So basically, you'll need to replace eukdns.com if you have outage problems. To a better DNS server. On that DNS server you want to edit MX records in particular. These records are what allows you to configure your email client.
3 You'll need email hosting (POP3, IMAP, SMTP, etc.) for that MX record to point to. This could be another outage area. Not sure as I'm just looking into this. You can usually tell though if it's server or DNS related by doing some DNS queries or trace routes. Anyway, most places that offer email hosting will also handle number 2. So, you don't have to worry about thinking of them as separate even if they are.
Since email is so common, just about every web host offers email hosting with their service. It'll be harder to find one that doesn't. So, if you find any good web host besides the one you got, you should be good to go. Tucows is most likely still good to keep and having a registrar other than your host is a good idea in case you ever get into a dispute with your host they won't control your domain.
Hope that helps and I didn't make it worse. 
Jeremy Falcon
modified 8hrs 15mins ago.
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Thanks Jeremy - it sounds very complicated to me - if I leave my current hosting company I wiil lose my domain name and email boxes. What I want to do is, transfer the entire setup to another host. Is this doable. You say keep the registrar separate from the host but how will they bill me for renewal? Thanks again
Confused of London
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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