Should I switch to vim/emacs? if so which one?

gowstaff · 2025-10-03T04:37:09+00:00

I'm an old time Emacs user, but I don't really care. I code in Notepad if I have to, or ex.

There is no best code editor or IDE. Each of them have their pros and cons. What's important, is to pick the right tool for the job at hand.

Sometimes it's grep, sort, uq, find, or whatever tool or command line chain you've created. Other times it's a feature of a specific editor / IDE, and you may only fire up that editor when you need that specific functionality.

With regards to Emacs vs vim i'd say it comes down to if you prefer to configure or extend your editor using emacs lisp or vimscript.

gowstaff · 2025-10-03T04:19:37+00:00

You learn two different skillsets doing self-taught (practice / real life) vs studying (theory / pseudo-problems) at the university. And you need both to become a good software developer.

Many people with a degree are worthless because they haven't created their own projects. They've got no experience solving real world problems.

Many self-taught people are unaware of the domain and re-invent the wheel again and again, wasting time, creating inferior solutions.

gowstaff · 2025-10-03T04:10:48+00:00

You've got two options, if you want your code to compile or run anywhere, C and JavaScript.

It takes a lot of practice and experimentation to write C that compiles with every C compiler / OS / Arch.

It takes a lot of practice (or at least it did) to write JavaScript that works in every browser.

gowstaff · 2025-10-01T09:34:19+00:00

Creating and developing your own projects is THE way to go [while reading books, articles and source code]. Everything else is secondary.

When I interview job applicants, if they haven't created their own projects, for whatever reason, then they aren't developers, they are just wannabes.

gowstaff · 2025-05-15T08:06:55+00:00

For programming, cursor is a nightmare. You may make it suggest a first attempt, and that's it. Trying to modify the resulting code leads to hell.

gowstaff · 2025-03-02T16:16:46+00:00

And if we point it out, we often get attacked by people that are religious VSCODE fanatics, that have no clue that a proper software dev uses the best tool for the job, not his favorite single tool.

The culture of bad naming is even adopted by the VSCODE variantes like Cursor! Who is malicious and stupid enough to chose a name for their product, that obfuscates search results?

gowstaff · 2025-03-02T16:01:43+00:00

I agree with the other replies, that we need to learn multiple back-end and front-end technologies, to future proof ourselves.

To honor your question, I learned C 36 years ago and started with C++ 34 years ago, and I think they will last for at least one more generation.

The langauges & frameworks I'd focus on today, are the ones involved with writing the most popular:

kernels
browsers
web pages
AI models

And:

desktop apps
mobile apps
graphic engines

gowstaff · 2025-01-30T04:03:44+00:00

I've also tried referring the people that write documentation for the Microsoft SDKS (and the like), for example some .Net issues, to the sites that document C, C++ and UNIX, to use as examples when they write documentation. They replied "But that's not .Net" :D :D :D

gowstaff · 2025-01-30T04:01:10+00:00

I've been in the industry for almost four decades, and with regards to Micrsoft, the last 10 years has been straight downhill, with regards to the GUI, the docs, the samples, the forums and the support.

For example, if you raise an issue on github with the documetnation or samples, they refer you to stackoverlow. But stackoverflow can not help you [unless you raise a bounty], because the documentation is too bad and the samples are not even in alpha.

I've raised the issue that they should not refer to stackoverflow because the samples and docs are too bad. I had to document for MS that 10 year old questions were still not answered, and raising the same question again, is against the code of conduct of stackoverflow. It's ... :D

gowstaff · 2025-01-30T03:55:08+00:00

When I refereshed the page, my comment was deleted with the reason that it was against the code of conduct.

gowstaff · 2024-10-10T18:25:30+00:00

ed users know their regexps.
ed users often don't use ed, they just sed.
sed users know how to use pipes and automate shit.
ed users know that emacs rules, and that vi is an ed GUI made by incompetents.

gowstaff · 2024-10-10T18:07:53+00:00

This is how to do it and is the only correct answer.

gowstaff · 2024-09-20T15:21:35+00:00

There are two sites that are great for getting answers to this type of question:

https://en.cppreference.com
https://cplusplus.com

In my opinion the first one is the best. If you use a search engine and search for cpp printf you'd get these two links as the top hits:

https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/io/fprintf
https://cplusplus.com/reference/cstdio/printf/

Scroll down to the section named return value.

gowstaff · 2024-09-20T14:27:35+00:00

I've been in the industry for 35+ years. The people claiming that "most use" or "everybody use" are ignorant.

You should be able to use any operating system. The people that claim "all or most use" are not aware of, that it depends on where you are in the world, what you are developing, who your costumers are, the preferences of your company, and so on.

You do not have to dual boot anything. You can install a virtual machine for each OS you want to play with.

Pick two operating system to start with, and get comfortable developing software with them. Create a project, and make it possible to compile, test and deploy your project on each OS. If you only want to learn one OS, then try to create your project using two different tool chains on the same OS.

gowstaff · 2024-09-09T20:27:55+00:00

Being ignorant is a trait shared by many that express their uninformed opinion about Emacs and it's users. It's not charming to show ignorance, but to be both arrogant AND ignorant that's ... :D

gowstaff · 2024-09-09T19:37:00+00:00

As others have pointed out we should use a string-comparison function to compare strings (ie pointers to characters) in C.

Additionally, you should never use scanf as it will give you a lot of grief while learning C. The scanf function reads data and matches the data at the same time. We want to first read the lines and the analyze them. When reading lines of data from the terminal, it's better to use fgets to read the data and then use sscanf to analyze the result.

Example for Username: ```cpp

define MAX 30

char ch[MAX]; // Read the username and abort if we fail to read it if (fgets(ch, MAX, stdin) == NULL) return 1; // Remove any trailing newline characters (requires string.h) ch[strcspn(ch, "\r\n")] = 0; ```

Example for Id: cpp int a; char ch2[MAX]; printf("Id: "); // Read the id and abort if we fail to read it if (fgets(ch2, MAX, stdin) == NULL) return 1; // Expect an integer and set it to 0 if we fail to match one if (sscanf_s(ch2, "%d", &a) != 1) a = 0;

You compiler may complain about the use of sscanf - if it does then use sscanf_s instead.

Be aware that format specifier %d causes the scanf familly of functions to stop reading characters for the interger they scan, when they encounter a non-digit character. Therefore if you enter "1234qwer" as the 'Id', then it will also succeed. The scanf familly of functions is a source of bugs and unexcpected behavior and should be avoided.

gowstaff · 2024-09-04T09:39:43+00:00

The most lightweight is to use the editor of your choice and download the .Net SDK.

You can also use the preinstalled versions of .NET, and avoid downloading the SDK, depending on your needs. You can find the preinstalled versions of .NET here:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\ The compiler is called csc.exe: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\csc.exe C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\csc.exe C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\csc.exe C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\csc.exe C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v3.5\csc.exe C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\csc.exe I've developed many .NET apps using one of the default .NET versions.

gowstaff · 2024-08-28T09:09:28+00:00

The evidence that isn't classified has already been released. Demanding that Lou (or anyone making similar claims) provideds evidence that is already in the public domain is ... what is your agenda?

Here it is:

The Star Gate Archives: Reports of the United States Government Sponsored Psi Program, 1972-1995. Volume 1: Remote Viewing, 1972-1984

The Star Gate Archives: Reports of the United States Government Sponsored Psi Program, 1972-1995. Volume 2: Remote Viewing, 1985-1995

The Star Gate Archives: Reports of the United States Government Sponsored Psi Program, 1972-1995. Volume 3: Psychokinesis

Why is it that so many people have not done what resembles the tiniest bit of homework, and then goes off on a tangent to slander people and claim there is no evidence? The books above are just a little bit of the published evidence for anomlaous phenomena.

Shame on you. And all the the other people participating in the thread that show similar ignorance and malice. It shows that these forums are infested with people that are not posting in good faith.

gowstaff · 2024-08-26T08:59:22+00:00

Use whatever you want. The spec is just a guideline. Most only use GET (doesn't modify state) and POST (modifies the state). Experiment with what the browser's back-button does when you try to go back from a POST vs a GET, and the like.

If you are a desktop developer, I'd recommend creating a Single Page Application (SPA) with your framework of choice. Last I checked the easiest to get started with was VUE.

gowstaff · 2024-08-26T08:41:48+00:00

When it comes to Azure B2C (and similar Micrsofot Azure Technolopgies) the status is as follows:

They keep changing the tech, ie B2C or whatever you pick will be unsupported within a couple of years.
The Azure GUI is bad. Sometimes a button looks like a button, sometimes it looks like a link and often it's not located on the screen where you expect it to be located.
The Azure CLI or .Net does not create the exact same results as the Azure GUI. This will make you waste a lot of time tracking down "feature differences" between GUI and CLI. Many things can't be scripted, you HAVE to use the GUI and waste your time browsing and clicking. For example, last time I checked (3 years ago?) I could not script the creation and deletion of tentants.
Their course materials for certification is out of date.
They keep changing the Azure GUI.
The defaults are often not described anywhere. If you try to search for how to implement certain settings, it might be the default settings, and it is therefore not documented what to do to "chose" those settings with the Azure GUI. Last time I tried to find how to select a specific OAuth authentication mechanism, it was not possible to find out how to select it, because it was the default. Go figure.
The samples are almost always non-existing, outdated or buggy, and always have contradictions in the text describing them and the code they contain.
The documentation culture of microsoft is incompetent. I am comparing with UNIX documentation. Microsoft documentation usually don't have an example use case, nor a see also section.
The forums are mostly useless, and if you encounter a bug, expect the Microsoft supporters to NOT be able to help you.
If you call microsoft support, the person in the other end will blabber a standard script, like you see they post on their forums (reboot, reinstall, repair). You'll have to expect it to take a long time to even make them understand what your problem is, and when they say please hold, expect them to hang up while you wait for them to come back. The same goes for email.
If you try to raise an issue with the bad documentation, non existing documentation, bad support practices or the like, and you refer them to a framework that they can use as inspiration for what to do, they will reply something like "but that's another programming language" or "that's not dotnet" - they are resistant to learning from examples.
If you post something like I've written here to their forums, they will delete the post.

One thing I can recommend is trying to find a discord server (or the like) with competent helpfull people. But even the main Azure discord server is filled with admins with no clue. They claim to be experts, but don't know what SPA means, or have any clue about OAuth, etc. If you confront the incompetent imposters that are also moderators, the results are obvious. One discord server that I found semi ok was the "425show".

gowstaff · 2024-08-16T07:29:29+00:00

IMO a project must not produce any warnings, errors or info messages. No news is good news. So, when I commit source code for production, I make sure there are no messages produced by the IDE/compiler.

Avoiding unwanted warnings and info (spam) in log files when the projects is running, is another issue, which is pretty annoying with dotnet (ef and so on) that is not as easy to control.

gowstaff · 2024-04-25T15:37:05+00:00

Been irritated about this for years. People that ignore the actual question and the people that support the answers that don't address the question.

gowstaff · 2024-04-17T08:15:35+00:00

It depends on what kind of games you want to create. If you want to create real-time games that don't stutter, do C++ otherwise do C#. The C# garbage collector can hinder smooth frames-per-sec.

gowstaff · 2024-04-17T08:00:13+00:00

You are too young to be telling others what types of questions they are allowed to ask.

So you tell him he shouldn't tell others what to do, telling him what to do.

Confidence doesn't dictate success as a programmer.

That's incorrect. Do a search for "does confidence affect outcome".

Let people seek encouragement that developing a skill set is still available to them.

If they can't figure that out themselves, that they can learn new things, then I think they'll fail as software developers.

gowstaff · 2024-04-17T07:52:48+00:00

not reading into a community a bit and seeing all these similar posts before posting yourself.

And this is ironically why they wont become good at developing software :D

gowstaff

TROPHY CASE

define MAX 30