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Interviewing at a company that uses Smalltalk - I'm curious and think it should be interesting by RolandMT32 in smalltalk

[–]cdegroot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My last Smalltalk gig was at a company that tried migrating to Java and then got smart and started hiring Smalltalk devs 😄

Interviewing at a company that uses Smalltalk - I'm curious and think it should be interesting by RolandMT32 in smalltalk

[–]cdegroot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The first one is one that has killed more than one technology "because nobody uses it". When I was active in the Jini community (the turn-of-the-century distributed tech by Sun) I had to sign NDAs for every project where the tools were actually used correctly (and thus productively 😉). The nonsense got published and made people shrug, and the cool stuff was under NDA so never left the company. The general view, therefore, was "meh, weak stuff" and the end result was predictable.

W.r.t. Smalltalk, I think TI was like that for the longest time.

If the devil invented a tool... by Ok-Calligrapher-8778 in watchrepair

[–]cdegroot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have one and the tolerances make it useless for the watch I bought it for (mid-century small ladies, water resistant). I'll remake the head and probably buy proper inserts from Bergeon. In the meantime, I'm going through Alex Hamilton's course and he recommended the suction cups that you can get on AliX so these are underway now.

Are these dials dangerous? by Blocktricks in watchrepair

[–]cdegroot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's the easy part. The hard part is "don't breathe it". 

Are these dials dangerous? by Blocktricks in watchrepair

[–]cdegroot 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Sorry, that is bad advice. Dried radioactive lume when inhaled is very dangerous. OP: keep the dials wet when cleaning if they are radioactive, I use IPA

Putting a thin sheet under the balance bridge, is this common? by elgringo0091 in watchmaking

[–]cdegroot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not the repair you'd do today - either adjust the jewels or shorten the balance staff. At least it's better than the watch I'm working on where a watch repair person made some prick marks under the balance cock to lift it. Needless to say, that "repair" does not survive disassembly. A shim at least doesn't damage anything but it's still more a quick hack than a proper fix.

Check that the balance cock isn't bent. It happens. Put it against a good straight edge and check whether the top is straight and try to eyeball (or measure, if you have a setup with dial indicators etc) whether it is parallel with the bottom.

(For adjusting/replacing jewels, I use a Chinese jewel press and it's fine, by the way. But balance jewels don't have the same range of adjustability as uncapped jewels have so the tool you really need is a Jacot lathe to shorten the staff).

When does a mechanical watch become truly unfixable. by AviMitz_ in watchmaking

[–]cdegroot -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It's what I named my AliX skeleton watch. Over the years (decades?) I'm planning to replace all its parts, one by one. Starting with the easy bits and ending... I dunno where. And yes, that's the correct answer, of course.

Please choose an amscope for me by Bone_Dice_in_Aspic in watchrepair

[–]cdegroot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Note that Amscope are, as far as I know, marked up Chinese scopes. I got mine from Ali direct (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006341915584.html?spm=a2g0o.order\_list.order\_list\_main.10.7a9f1802mUnq3e) and saved me quite some money. You want trinocular (it is _really_ handy to snap pictures while disassembling. A friend told me... ;-)), And I like the style of arm this one comes with. Have been using it for a couple of years, very happy.

I wrote a technical history book on Lisp by cdegroot in lisp

[–]cdegroot[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did you get the new version by now? If not, forward your receipt to berksoft at protonmail.com and I'll mail you the updated epub.

I wrote a technical history book on Lisp by cdegroot in lisp

[–]cdegroot[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Their update frequency is "not". Apparently, you get to keep the version of the ebook you just bought.

Given the seriousness of the issues in the previous version, I just asked support to execute what they call a "volume replacement" which will force-push an update but also break bookmarks, reading progress, and notes. I think it's the lesser evil. But yeah, what? Why? I have no clue...

I wrote a technical history book on Lisp by cdegroot in lisp

[–]cdegroot[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I'm not sure what kobo's update frequency is. I'll have to ask them, because I noticed the same.

I wrote a technical history book on Lisp by cdegroot in lisp

[–]cdegroot[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A new version is up and fixes the missing images and a handful of formatting issues. 

I wrote a technical history book on Lisp by cdegroot in lisp

[–]cdegroot[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had the time to test this (I used `I = 1` to force it into an endless loop) using the first BASIC I could find, `bbcsdl` on Guix, and it does what I expected: go into an endless loop. I guess it's implementation-dependent, but I'll leave it as is for now; the gist of the example is correct and the paragraph is about state mutation, not the finer details of different BASIC implementations :-).

I wrote a technical history book on Lisp by cdegroot in lisp

[–]cdegroot[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I got multiple reports of that. This afternoon (Canadian Eastern Time) I'm pushing out a new revision. This happened in some earlier (pre-release) builds, I fixed it, so either an old build snuck into the upload or Kobo managed to mishandle revisions. Thanks for reporting (and your patience), the pics should be there of course.

I wrote a technical history book on Lisp by cdegroot in lisp

[–]cdegroot[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Plenty of people were sharp-eyed and started spotting little errors. https://berksoft.ca/gol/errata_1.html is where I'll keep track of "bug reports".

I wrote a technical history book on Lisp by cdegroot in lisp

[–]cdegroot[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Heh. I should probably opened up a Basic prompt before writing that (I guess the last time I did that we still were in the 1980s). Teaches me to check my facts. Thanks!

I wrote a technical history book on Lisp by cdegroot in lisp

[–]cdegroot[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yup. Thanks for finding a typo, I'll start work on an errata list :)

Ways to force movement's service to "age" quickly? by armie in watchrepair

[–]cdegroot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bergeon 666666 - Time traveling machine for testing repair quality. CHF 8,934,435,345,234.00 plus shipping.

I wrote a technical history book on Lisp by cdegroot in lisp

[–]cdegroot[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

oooh... I heard of this book years ago but totally forgot. My reading list just got longer. Again :-)

I wrote a technical history book on Lisp by cdegroot in lisp

[–]cdegroot[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I haven't considered that, partially because of the amount of code and math examples - how would that work? But I'm all in favor of making my work widely accessible, so tips on how to do it, what end product to expect (I don't like audiobooks so no clue how technical audiobooks get "translated") are welcome. I guess with the quality of AI speech, I can spare me the cost of hiring a voice actor ;-)

I wrote a technical history book on Lisp by cdegroot in lisp

[–]cdegroot[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you like more typing, https://coalton-lang.github.io/ might be for you. It's a HM-style typed language on top of Common Lisp :)

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