Viewing profile — mrlyc

Thank you for writing the "How to Find Lemmy Communities" guide. It was very helpful. https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2023/06/11/lemmy-migration-...

It got me my first programming job. Back in 1984, I wrote a BBS for a Vic-20. It had multiple rooms (message areas) which users could create and make public or private, private ema…

I just wrote echo "open $mainframe\ \nuser $mf_username $mf_password \nsite lr=160\ \ncd ..\ \nmput \*\ \nquit" | ftp -i -n -v > $ftp_log 2>&1 The program collected data from the t…

I rewrote 2,650 lines of C as a seven line shell script. The previous programming team had written a data transfer program with its own implementation of ftp. I just used the one t…

It depends on what you're used to. When I stated programming 42 years ago, it took two days between submitting the punched card deck to the computer centre and getting a printout o…

I live on my own so I prefer being with people at work.

Another interesting documentary about this topic is "Born Rich" by Jamie Johnson, one of the heirs to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. He interviews several of his peers. The film wa…

One thing to watch out for is when the board manufacturer changes its memory map without telling you. Boards built before April booted and the new ones didn't. Fortunately, the pro…

For my dopamine hits, I prefer Reddit (frat party) to Hacker News (church).

Zimbardo was an evil man who tried to justify his behaviour by setting up a sham experiment to "prove" that everyone can be evil, given the right circumstances.

We're trying to do the same with the country.

What worked for me was to tell my employer that I was taking the time off to get allergy shots.

I'm cobbling together a language that is stock standard C with classes. Just classes, nothing more. I'm calling it C+.

Hacker News, The Register Reddit Documentaries from https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/new/ Lectures from https://www.reddit.com/r/lectures/new/ YouTube Subscriptions from http…

Some years ago, Gmail changed so using Eudora with it became difficult. I've worked out the following procedure: after checking email fails the second time, Server SSL Certificate …

That happened to me when I went for a job at Wang to work on Australia's EFTPOS network. The position required using protocol analysers but the recruiter had removed all references…

Do what you love, what you are good at and what people are willing to pay for. Sometimes you have to do the first one as a hobby and the last two as a job.

I started with a Vic-20. I wrote a BBS for it with multiple rooms (message areas), private mail and an online game. Users could start their own rooms and make them public or privat…

Facebook is still moving fast and breaking things, just not their things. The morality of an organisation reflects that of its senior management. Zuckerberg doesn't care about brea…

Sometimes deleting code isn't enough and you have to do a rewrite. I once rewrote 2,650 lines of C as a seven line shell script. The previous programming team had written a data tr…

I deleted Facebook before it was cool. They wouldn't stop sending me "Won't you please come back" emails until I made a formal complaint about the spam to the Australian Communicat…

Google's C++ course at https://developers.google.com/edu/c++/ looks useful to start with.

Oh great. Now my robot wants to go skiing.

Peer review of code and documentation works well. It can be formal or informal. After I was unexpectedly put in charge of a three-person programming team 32 years ago, I started gi…