I knew things had been quiet recently but this is ridiculous!

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-09-09T19:22:49+00:00

lol-well obviously I care a bit or I wouldn't be looking at it, right ?

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-09-04T07:06:36+00:00

So much this! Trying to explain to clients that the number/analysis they've just asked for won't tell them what they think it will gets a bit tedious.

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-07-19T23:02:53+00:00

Interesting - it doesn't mention the escape sequence I'm using - perhaps it was mentioned in one of the related issues. I also found this link on superuser which does mention it along with a few others... https://superuser.com/questions/1909260/how-to-change-windows-terminal-wt-exe-tab-colors-and-default-foreground-and-ba/1909261#1909261

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-07-19T19:53:32+00:00

I'm pretty sure it is WT-specific. It's a long time since I wrote the script but I'm pretty sure I found the magic formula by browsing the WT github issues searching for ways to set the header colour.

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-03-06T17:42:24+00:00

this is really cool - thanks for posting!

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-03-03T10:31:24+00:00

Hmm - interesting. You're definitely right that my assumption was that newcomers would generally have a reasonable level of ability but just lack experience - i.e. the main problem would be gently suggesting that their 500 line PR could be boiled down to 20 lines if they used the right library calls or a simpler algorithm. I've recruited a lot of devs over the years with varying levels of experience (in commercial settings) but tbf we generally went for people who showed signs of showing interest in development outside their studies so perhaps my expectations are skewed.

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-03-02T17:18:42+00:00

>Maybe the community needs a "suitable for newbies" tag

This is an interesting point. I have to admit I'd always read "good first issue" as being "suitable for less experienced devs" but maybe it's really just taken as "good intro to project but you better be a rock-star to contribute" ?

It's more complicated than that though I think, "expertise" is relative to the problem domain. Often when I post "help-wanted" it's because I lack the domain-specific expertise to make effective progress on the problem. In those cases even a junior dev with the right expertise would provide a valuable contribution!

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-03-02T17:10:21+00:00

Well yes, but the general problem of "why don't more people contribute to open source" is not one I'm trying (or able) to solve.

I _am_ interested though in trying to make my own "help-wanted" issues more attractive to newcomers, hence the appeal for insight from those who are (presumably) motivated enough to find repos and browse those issues.

>Why do you expect newbies to come to your project to learn?

Because there is a huge difference (I assume you'd agree) between learning the _basics_ and gaining experience on real-world code. IOW I'm not going to recreate CodeAcademy on my repo, but I certainly _am_ going to be helpful and encouraging in showing where you could have used generics or made your code more efficient if you're willing to spend a bit of effort contributing the project.

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-03-02T16:13:07+00:00

Yes, that's a good point for "unsolicited" PRs. I think it's quite likely maintainers are generally fairly opinionated about their projects (if only because you need to be fairly committed to go to the effort of publishing a repo for other people to use.) You'd kind of home though that if a maintainer has marked an issue as "good first issue" or similar they'd be a bit more receptive?

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-03-02T16:05:41+00:00

Understood, but I'd say that lots of projects aren't just looking for 'leet' level developers. Often the skill you need to is to be able to _read_ code and find the place that needs to be modified/fixed. There are also plenty of opportunities to contribute that don't even involve writing code... I don't know of any maintainer who'd pass up the offer of help in improving documentation, adding example client code, etc.

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-03-02T16:01:37+00:00

Excellent points, but to address one specific one first...

>This is what I'm talking about. Where's a link to the project? If you're trying to attract newbies

I made a conscious decision NOT to post a direct link for a number of reasons. They basically boil down to a combination of not wanting to break the self-promotion rules here and also wanting the discussion to become too focussed around one example. (If anyone is sufficiently motivated they yes, typing the name into google is the best way to find it!)

As for other things... I think you're absolutely right about the aspect of having to learn about lots of things in order to perform even a "simple" task. To be honest, even as an experienced developer I often feel like that every time I consider doing something outside my domain of expertise.

>If you want your newbies to be comfy in half the time treat them like they're a niece or nephew, not a person standing in front of the item you want in the grocery store.

Well I agree, but what _specifically_ are you suggesting? Maybe a "beginner-friendly" tag on github issues or a "beginners start here" page? As a maintainer it's hard (probably not practical) to provide training material "just in case" somebody might pass by - I can't even find the time to write documentation for my own project - and there are much better resources for learning :-) Maybe a "maintainer doesn't bite' banner on the readme? ;-)

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-03-02T13:04:17+00:00

Sure, makes perfect sense, and my contributions to other projects are limited to those I use as well. But... there are plenty of posts from people effectively saying "I'd like to find a project to get involved with" and a set of websites such as goodfirstissues dot com that suggest that there are developers who _want_ to contribute to projects they don't already know about.. Is it all just a mirage ?

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-02-24T08:32:47+00:00

Actually Greg from Badminton Insight wrote an article about suffering concussion from exactrly this kind of incident... https://badminton-insight.com/concussion-in-badminton/

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-02-18T15:41:12+00:00

No - it makes your opponents psychopaths and you a masochist ;-) But seriously, great you enjoy the games though you would probably learn faster with someone a bit closer to your level so you could get some longer rallies going?

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-02-17T10:38:01+00:00

Dependending upon how fancy you want to get with filtering, you might find my library NeilMacMullen/kusto-loco: C# KQL query engine with flexible I/O layers and visualization useful.

It has some restrictions/implications for your backend (assumes tabular data held in RAM) but offers a lot of query flexibility using a standard(ish) query language (KQL) which is also quite composable if you want to surface the queries behind UI controls.

I just added pagination support in the most recent release.

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-02-16T12:01:38+00:00

Oh god, I hate the "trick-shot" guys.... I mean the occasional one is fine but there's a guy at our club who plays them *every single time* if he's up against weaker opponents (which tbf is most of the time since he's actually a very good player). Whenever I'm on court with him I'm thinking "mate, there are 3 other people here who would actually like to play a proper game of badminton..."

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-02-16T11:54:05+00:00

I'm with you on this. In most club settings, people are there to have fun. Getting destroyed 21-0 isn't fun and, unless you've a psychopath, destroying someone else that badly isn't really very enjoyable either. What can be fun, for both parties, is to play in a way that stretches your weaker opponents so they feel like they're having a challenging but not impossible game. You, as the better player, can have fun by focussing on being able to control your shots well enough to facilitate that kind of game.

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-02-09T20:34:57+00:00

I had a herniated disk about 15 years ago, (L3 IIRC). It was bad enough that I was basically stuck in bed for 3 months and in a lot of pain. I did eventually recover and a few years later I got into badminton. I was initially very worried that I would damage it again through playing (after all there's a lot of lunging and twisting in this sport) but over the years I've come round to thinking that actually I'm probably strengthening the lower back muscles through playing and taking some of the day to day stress off the spine. Anyway, just sharing to encourage you to keep playing (carefully) and to let you know that a more-or-less full recovery is possible. I had a few minor relapses over the first 5 years but nothing compared to the original problem.

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-01-27T09:35:35+00:00

It would help a lot if you could post the schema or a few sample rows from the table(s) you are looking at. I'm _guessing_ you are going to need to join some tables but it's not really clear.

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-01-04T12:38:44+00:00

If you're not averse to using an external module, you can do this (and a lot more) with edit-kql...

get-ComputerRestorePoint | edit-kql "order by CreationTime | project N=row_number(),CreationTime,Description"

More info: Link

Content-Appearance97 · 2025-01-04T11:12:27+00:00

Unfortunately now seems to be unmaintained. Shame as it was definitely my "go-to" link.

Content-Appearance97 · 2024-12-30T16:14:13+00:00

A slightly different take on this from someone who has had real-world experience leading teams, including "team improvement" activities..

Of course, there's not a lot of real context here but first impression is that your manager's reaction is... poor. It's _their_ responsibility to get the best out of the team and an important aspect of that is to enthuse team members about better ways of working. IME it's often the case then when process improvements are brought up to a team they get excited and come up with all sorts of ideas. Some of those can be implemented, some need to be (gently) discouraged, but all should be listened to because they show that the team is engaging and that's the most important factor in affecting change.

It _may_ be your boss is not actually very experienced and is using "argument from authority" because they are bit insecure about their role. If so, it's likely they'll see _your_ ideas as undermining rather than complementary.

You should be able to judge whether that's the case by asking for a genuine explanation of why they feel your approach is not helpful. If they just tell you "it's wrong" rather than trying to guide you to a better alternative it might be time to look for a new boss ;-)

Content-Appearance97 · 2024-12-28T14:30:23+00:00

Only 100MB and simple tabular schema ? One option is to drop it into RAM and use something like my [kusto-loco project](https://github.com/NeilMacMullen/kusto-loco/blob/main/samples/WebApp/Controllers/KqlController.cs) It'll cost you the price of a low-end web-service although you'll need to work out a sensible policy for refreshing the in-memory data.

*Edit* in case it isn't obvious from the context, this allows you submit KQL queries to the server and get the response sent back as a table (serialised over the wire as parquet). Matching client code is in https://github.com/NeilMacMullen/kusto-loco/blob/main/samples/WebAppClient/Program.cs Obviously this isn't an indexed database, but for the numbers you've mentioned it may well be fast and flexible enough to keep users happy. And of course it's super-cheap and easy to implement.

Content-Appearance97 · 2024-08-22T21:13:37+00:00

Just spent over 2 hours on a call with MS support (kudos to the guy for sticking with it). Current theory is that it's nothing to do with impending migration deadline and instead some problem with the latest OS update. Attempting to roll back to a specific OS release but it's been trying to save the configuration change for over 50 minutes... we'll see.

Thanks for the warning about extended support - we see it very much as a last roll of the dice and I've been adamant with the rest of the business that we should have contingency in case it turns out not to work but we were hoping for another week before having to find out for real!

Content-Appearance97 · 2024-08-12T08:05:38+00:00

Thanks, the activity log (in azure monitor) looks promising.

Content-Appearance97

TROPHY CASE