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I like the design simplicity of SmallTalk; Squeak is the dialect I investigated.
The design of the Boolean class is very pleasing to the eye. Doubleton, anyone?
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COBOL is one of my superpowers 
Coding challenge: is a point in a polygon?[^]
"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." ― Gerald Weinberg
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Time to learn Serverless COBOL (AWS Lambda)?
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Should be no problem for a time traveller like yourself! 
Ok, I have had my coffee, so you can all come out now!
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I have never written any COBOL code but I watched a guy do it once.
That was lifted from a very, very old AAMCO commercial.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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In the very early seventies I got bored with what I could do with the limited BASIC interpreter we had access to at school. I'd read about other languages, including COBOL, and decided COBOL looked cool. But how to test my COBOL code? Obvious solution (to the 14-year old me): write a COBOL interpreter in interpreted BASIC.
It ran just fine, and surprisingly quickly. Of course being a COBOL interpreter it wasn't actually COBOL, but the syntax was correct and pretty complete.
Years later, when the company I worked for was migrating from mainframes (with an IDMS/R database) to a client-server architecture using Windows NT, and in running down its mainframes wanted to move support and dev onto PCs. We had MicroFocus COBOL on PCs, but no database; so I "cloned" the IDMS/R DBMS using (this time) compiled COBOL. The design was simplified by the fact I'd previously worked for Cullinet, the builder / vendor of IDMS, and had been on all the internal IDMS courses. Again, it worked sufficiently well that we were able to switch a lot of the development + test cycle onto PCs, with a final compile + test on the mainframe.
Those two experiences illustrated to me that choice of language is largely irrelevant; most languages can do most stuff, you might just miss some of the shortcuts. These days I use mainly C# but am not fussy and switch back to VB.Net quite often; not found anything it can't do yet.
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DerekT-P wrote: These days I use mainly C# but am not fussy and switch back to VB.Net quite often; not found anything it can't do yet.
Geek & Poke: Spoilsports[^]
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The year is 1999, a COBOL programmer, tired of all the extra work and chaos caused by the impending Y2K bug, decides to have himself cryogenically frozen for a year so he can skip all of it.
He gets himself frozen, and eventually is woken up when several scientists open his cryo-pod.
"Did I sleep through Y2K? Is it the year 2000?", he asks.
The scientists nervously look at each other. Finally, one of them says "Actually, it's the year 9999. We hear you know COBOL."
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I take it I'm fit for purpose ? (10)
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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Well that's an APPROPRIATE way to start the week...
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Nope
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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I knew that 😂😂
( not really... I should have counted letters!)
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I take it ACCEPT
I'm fit ABLE
for purpose
ACCEPTABLE
"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!
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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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The usual pet peeves that we all have in common are pretty straightforward. But, what about pet peeves that you have that others don't? What's something that drives only you up the wall, while other people are just fine with it?
I have a few absurd pet peeves. Whenever I think of miniature golf, my inner dialogue explodes into a vulgarity-laden tirade. I don't know anyone else who shares the same experience. Even just driving past a miniature golf course is enough to compel my thoughts into darkness. Don't get me started on that stupid windmill thing! Every miniature golf course has one. Just thinking about it makes me want to set it on fire. I get this image in my head seeing it engulfed in flames while its windmill continues to rotate, as though it's still taunting me. And then there's the putter they give you. That thing is nothing but a device of torture. It's like going to a restaurant and ordering a bowl of soup with nothing but a pair of chopsticks. By the time I get to the last hole, my blood pressure is through the roof and I hate the entire world. Upon completing the last hole, what's your reward? They take away your golf ball! Once it falls into the hole, it disappears, and that's it. It's like you can hear them whisper into your ear. "You're done now. Give us back our golf ball and go away!". I don't understand. I need to return the golf club to the front desk anyway. I might as well return the golf ball, too. Do they think I'm going to steal their golf ball? Do they think I'll inadvertently forget to return it and mistakenly bring it home with me? If they're going to take my golf ball away, why not rip the golf club from my hands and punch me in the face?
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My pet peeve is when the cat wakes up at 03:30 to throw up because he's been raiding bins and eating the aluminium foil somebody else cooked food over - leaving a messy, sparkly, smelly couple of piles of yuck in the perfect place to squidge up between your toes in the dark. Or on the duvet you are sleeping under.
"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!
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I think there's a few million of us in the UK with that exact same peeve. However...
The (related) peeve I have is when one of my two cats eats a mince pie late on a Saturday night, so that you have to disassemble another one from the packet to count the raisins, then google to see how many raisins are fatal for a cat, (then panic), drive an hour through freezing fog (as it's very nearly Christmas) and pay £500 to an emergency vet who fails to make the cat throw up (because that's really hard to do with cats, apparently) and drive all the way home; to repeat the journey the next day for a comparative kidney function test (which leaves the long-haired cat with a bald spot that you know will take about 9 months to look half-way decent). All this when the other cat will throw up to command by feeding it a tiny, tiny bit of brie (that he loves and will steal, with inevitable consequences) at any opportunity.
Don't let your cat get to the (closed, sealed) packet of mince pies in the (99.9% of the time) closed kitchen, folks.
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DerekT-P wrote: the other cat will throw up to command by feeding it a tiny, tiny bit of brie
Yep. Most adult cats are lactose intolerant, but love cheese. (They lose the enzyme to digest lactose as part of the weaning process as they shift to an obligate carnivore metabolism, but the memory of milk takes them back to a "kitten comfort" state, I think).
"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!
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You all have my sympathies...
We have a 20 year old cat and two 18 year olds.
We know the drill but we feel we have been doing something wrong here... 
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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• Members of the royal family attending Remembrance Day events in fancy dress as Colonels, Rear Admirals or Air Vice Marshals.
• People spending an eternity attempting to eat food using only a fork when a perfectly serviceable knife is in front of them. If I asked you to dig a hole, would you eschew for proffered shovel and look instead for a pair of tweezers?
• The word “actually” which has no reason to exist other than to effectively say “Now, you can dismiss most of what I say as fantasy, but this one piece of information should be regarded as true.”
• Any traffic jam with no obvious cause being described on the radio as “due to sheer wight of traffic.”
• The omni-present use of the non-phrase “for free”. It is “free of charge” or indeed “cash free”, I will happily accept the contraction to “free” but not “for free.” If I want a vegetarian burger, I might describe it as “meat free” but I couldn’t change that into “Can I have a burger please, for free.”
• TV announcers who for reasons I cannot begin to imagine, feel the need to tell you what is about to happen in the programme that you are about to watch. This seems akin to a newspaper preceding every article with an article telling you what the article is about. Better still, imagine it in the theatre “And now, the Macbeths discover that being rich and living in a castle isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be.”
• The ubiquitous use of candles for seemingly any situation. Someone dies, light a candle (ironic if they are a climate change protester), an anniversary of something – light a candle, want to show support for a cause, light a candle. Christmas, light lots of candles. Can anyone tell me why? Does this benefit anyone whatsoever besides people in the candle industry?
• Garage doors. When we park in the garage, most of us pull over to the left to allow the door to open on the right. So why are garage doors always in the centre, and not off to the left?
• TV journalists who mistake their job for being that of “Leader of the other party.” Your job is to question and illicit responses, not to attempt, whatever the situation, to prove the incompetence of the person in front of you or, the ultimate prize, to get them to admit to “a U-turn.” This is seen by them as the zenith of achievement, whereas to most normal people I know, someone changing their mind based on evidence is a sign of wisdom.
• Cooks. If your recipe involves the use of flowers, tweezers or liquid nitrogen or in any way attempts to “tell a story” just stop. Your job is to make dinner, to eat.
• Poor standards of trolley pushing in supermarkets.
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Quote: People spending an eternity attempting to eat food using only a fork when a perfectly serviceable knife is in front of them. If I asked you to dig a hole, would you eschew for proffered shovel and look instead for a pair of tweezers?
I'd amend that to "people using the nearest tool to do a job rather then the actual, appropriate tool that is designed for the job and is just over there". Herself is in this group, which explains a set of cheap and nasty basic tools at the front of my tool cupboard where she can see it first ... I then hover them up from anywhere she might have used a tool because they never go back where she got them. Which is another peeve of mine! 
Quote: Any traffic jam with no obvious cause being described on the radio as “due to sheer wight of traffic.”
Trouble is, it';s pretty much accurate: the higher the traffic density, the more likely a jam is, because one set of brake lights going on, slows X cars down in response, and they slow a further Y, and "slowness wave" propagates back through the traffic getting slower and slower until some traffic does stop, even momentarily. Which makes more people stop, and you rapidly build a jam for no reason other than the amount of traffic.
It's weirdly beautiful to watch in models, but frustrating if you are driving!
Rich Leyshon wrote: TV announcers who for reasons I cannot begin to imagine, feel the need to tell you what is about to happen in the programme that you are about to watch.
On W, we watch Masterchef Australia. And just before the program starts, and sometimes during the advert breaks they show an advert for the program we would be watching if it wasn't for your stupid advert!
"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!
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Re the traffic, I don't doubt the truth of it, it's just that every single radio traffic reporter, on every station appears to use the same wording "... sheer weight of traffic." Nobody ever says simply "Weight of traffic" or "Heavy traffic" or even "Rush hour."
Makes me wonder if they all go to Traffic Reporting school where they are drilled in the mandatory phraseology.
And whilst I'm on it, here's another that is becoming very prevalent around this area. Drivers now seem to think it is too much trouble to turn the wheel on their power steering car to turn right properly. Almost every day, if I'm waiting to turn right at a Give Way, and someone is approaching from my left, wanting to turn into the street I am exiting, they stop and usher me out so they can turn into my street on the wrong side of the road rather than apply the few extra degrees of steering wheel rotation. On a wide junction I've even had someone turn in on the wrong side of me over the Give Way sign.
And the Royal Mail can have some too. Important documents arrive Friday apparently having just about survived what appears to be an attempt to put them through a shredder before they dunked them in a puddle. I now have paperwork scattered around the house to dry. Meanwhile, friendly Postie is ringing the bell to ask if I have a package he's mislaid. I know the guy it was meant for and he lives on the other side of the road at the far end of the street, so, even if he was out, why would I have the package when there are 50 houses closer by he could have left it with? But no, the machine says I have it, so that's that. Probably get billed for it soon ... 
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RM can have some more as well: Amazon tracking shows where the parcel is, and a window for delivery: when it gets close switches to exactly where the truck is, and how many deliveries between there and you.
The Royal Mail Track system says "we've picked it up it" and "we'll update this status when we have delivered it". 
"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!
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OriginalGriff wrote: The Royal Mail Track system says "we've picked it up it" and "we'll update this status when we have delivered mangled, submerged or lost it".
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Post office here is the same way unless you pay extra.
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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