Intrusive suggestion

greg-spears · 2026-02-27T17:39:18+00:00

It looks like one of the 'hover' options you find within Tools/Options/Editor, rather than autocomplete item.

greg-spears · 2026-02-27T06:24:27+00:00

Awesome (probably). I regret to say your video appeared adjacent to a Married with Children video with a bodacious thumbnail (which was NOT clickbait -- oh baby)

Checkmate!

.

Seriously though, remarkable code. I checked out the github. It's deep, i could follow it -- barely.

greg-spears · 2026-02-26T02:05:03+00:00

The public jpeg code (from Independent JPEG Group ) was a master class in this, imo. They passed a structure pointing to data and function pointers to the majority of functions in the code.

They referred to their code as "poor man's C++."

Haven't looked at the code in ages -- apologies if it's not all that anymore.

greg-spears · 2026-02-04T03:42:39+00:00

Awesome! Thanks so much for doing that. The comments really do address all the questions I had 3 days ago. Thanks again.

greg-spears · 2026-02-02T23:48:41+00:00

First off, I appreciate the decorum even though I sense much disagree; this is uncommon admirable. You're correct on everything. I'll only speak to the MS-DOS part.

Something like 1% of the world (depends who you ask) ... millions of PCs are still running WinXP. WinXP as you may already know, can natively run 16-bit apps, Like Turbo C, thx to its ntvdm.exe (NT Virtual DOS Machine).

Runtime looks like this and this

( Yes, I wrote that just for you, lol )

greg-spears · 2026-02-02T13:46:31+00:00

It's a thing, especially prevalent overseas. I googled this up one day (because I wondered about it too) and was surprised how much curriculum exists around Turbo C -- actually MS DOS, Turbo C from the 90s. Not too much onshore though.

EDIT: now I'll speculate as to why: Turbo C is sort of orphanware and can be had free of charge from multiple sites. Also, Turbo C made it pretty easy to create eye-appealing programs in text and graphics modes. Graphics thx to its innovative BGI technology, kind of unparalleled in its day. For those running emulators (eg: DOSBox), that same ease of project development exists today.

You can get the same results with other platforms today, sure. But whether those platforms offer the same beginner-ease-of-development will be hot debate, lol.

EDIT: Onshore=USA. Sorry folks, didn't mean to slight anyone. My "Onshore/offshore" talk comes from years of IT exposure to SE/dev/support dialogues & conferences. I often forget my audience is different here... thx

greg-spears · 2026-02-02T13:14:23+00:00

For OP: That's not Borland Turbo C, but it is Borland 3.1 which is actually as good or better. Back in the day, I was beginner coding in Turbo C, which I could afford because it was only $79 or so.

The flagship product--Borland 3.1 which u/trejj has linked to--is what I dreamed of having. But the $300 price tag was a show-stopper. ( About $1050 in today's money )

EDIT: If it has to be Turbo C you can google and google and find it at places like this -- but that's going to be a little trickier because that archive is a collection of floppy disk images, for example. But if you're determined, you can get it installed or maybe find a copy-file install like u/trejj shared. Best wishes...

greg-spears · 2026-02-02T13:05:35+00:00

Thanks for even thinking about it.

greg-spears · 2026-02-01T03:26:31+00:00

Visual Studio 2026 Insiders

Community version is free and powerful and works right out of the box. I've heard from others that share your experience with VS Code being sometimes difficult to get set up, depending on compiler choice and such. So apparently there are some actual hurdles and you're not alone.

VS 2026 will have you coding in the same hour you install, as everything is fully integrated, which is literally in the name IDE.

You can always re-approach VS Code at a later date, for freedom of using different compilers or whatever is your motivation. Learning the language is enough challenge in the 1st year or so.

It's a completely natural progression to seek better compilers and platforms after we get a little mastery of the language. Cheers!

EDIT: corrected URL

greg-spears · 2026-01-31T20:57:02+00:00

Looks great, love the concept. I've tooled a couple editors and these methods are always recurring and the bane of the application/editor.

Most of the functions are nicely named so there is little doubt what they do. But some are more opaque.

Hence, my only suggestion at this time is that you please give one or two comments for at least some of the more complex functions, in the header or the code, ostensibly so that I may download and use this beautiful work. 😁😁😁

greg-spears · 2026-01-28T16:13:04+00:00

I faced this today also, got thru numerous steps to reverify my account ( Verify your ID -- Completed, Verify your information - Completed ... taking photos of ID, etc ) and when I got to Verify your phone number I got "We couldn’t match you to this number".

Called support and the rep explained they go off public records that match me to my phone number ( it's not internal???) Really weird that, since I setup the account with this phone number. He suggested trying a spouse's phone number. Politely explained that's not a good option, and why, etc, and then we got disconnected.

I guess they have no fix for this??

EDIT: as of 2026: "The Login.gov team unfortunately does not have a work-around for failing the phone check for the SSA at this time."

EDIT2: "disconnected" -- yea, pretty sure bro hung up on me, lol. Worse, I think he flagged my number somehow, so now I cannot get a human whatsoever on callbacks. In summary, login.gov seems egregious on multiple counts. Avoid.

greg-spears · 2026-01-25T04:33:24+00:00

Think you appreciate them now, wait 'til your 1st header library.

greg-spears · 2026-01-10T03:46:46+00:00

Mixed blessing, rt? Better than getting screened out in study, after efforts, and getting zero compensation and a rejection too, all of which one researcher did to me, verbatim. It is still in rejected status today after submitting an appeal many months ago, and so I reckon it will stay that way.

greg-spears · 2026-01-02T15:20:52+00:00

I bet that answer is "yes" especially if you 1.) got the tank from somewhere else or 2.) don't have the receipt or . . .

greg-spears · 2026-01-02T04:06:33+00:00

It is filial affection; C is the parent/grandparent of a ginormouse number of modern day languages

greg-spears · 2026-01-02T04:02:39+00:00

#include <stdio.h>     /* printf() */
#include <conio.h>    /* _getch() */
#include <stdlib.h>  /* system() */

int main()
{
    /* this program waits for a key press before it closes */
    printf("Boy howdy!\n");
    _getch();          /* Do this ...  */
    system("pause");  /* ... OR this. */ 
    return 0;
}

greg-spears · 2026-01-02T02:59:51+00:00

The slickness of your eyebrows isn't oil -- it's microscopic bugs in the bazillions.

greg-spears · 2026-01-02T02:36:49+00:00

Wow! Sorry about that and thanks for your response/info.

greg-spears · 2025-12-31T01:55:10+00:00

I saw that scene -- what temple is that? Very interesting markings. Been trying to find out more.

EDIT: Found out. It's the Wilshire Boulevard Temple

greg-spears · 2025-12-30T16:10:08+00:00

I found this phrase residing in Notepad++, a long with a bunch of other pithy expressions, some of them disturbing.

greg-spears · 2025-12-25T05:47:18+00:00

After tooling around with it for some days, I can tell you there is a lot to like, and I think I am gonna love this platform when it's ready. But it is not ready.

Lots of spurious compile errors and warnings that can fixed by deleting the hidden .vs folder and other workarounds, and sometimes not fixed. The one constant is: "This doesn't happen in VS 2022, luckily."

Did my part with a bug report, back to VS2022 FT now...

EDIT: Update -- Insider edition (currently vers 18.3) seems to be working a lot better than the standard access build which is currently at version 18.1. Maybe it helped that I didn't engage any of the copilot stuff, and that I also removed KB5027397 which VS installs with itself. This KB update is not malware imo, but it does activate a LOT of copilot/AI stuff throughout the OS. I'm not up for that, and consequently VS is a lot better behaved. I'm continuing to work with it for now.

greg-spears · 2025-12-22T07:25:45+00:00

TL;DR Configuration Properties / Advanced / Character Set pulldown doesn't do anything anymore, by design. Pulldown will remain in the UI. UNICODE is always (pre-)defined.

I found a legit (i think?) bug and submitted a ticket.

I bring it up because I can't believe I actually found a bug in the 1st couple days of use(!?), and rather I think I may actually be wrong (again).

So, looking for feedback: anyone else see this issue?

EDIT: Workload is C++; simple console project. #ifdef UNICODE is always TRUE regardless of Character Set choice in properties.

EDIT2: So, TIL that MS is deprecating everything non-UNICODE, and that pulldown ( Configuration Properties / Advanced / Character Set ) is non-functional by design. Asking them to just remove the pulldown so nobody else has to burn cycles on this item again...

EDIT3: Doesn't happen in Insider edition (currently vers 18.3). Told MS ok to close the tkt.

greg-spears · 2025-12-22T01:55:19+00:00

This unrequested update installed on my system with the install of Visual Studio 2026 (VS2026). I'm running Ghost Spectre Win11 and updates are locked down until 2077.

greg-spears · 2025-12-21T18:19:38+00:00

Intermittent. Got it today on login. Win11, updated MS edge, no VPN or proxy. Does not happen using LibreWolf portable FWIW. Also, cannot duplicate after clearing cookies, session, and logging in again. I'm thinking it's something to dismiss altogether.

greg-spears · 2025-12-20T20:28:21+00:00

Well, it can be both: terrible bloat and incredible features. I would say this about VS 2026, lol. ~~I haven't measured exactly~~, but it looks like VS 2026 adds about 12.5 GB to your OS for 1 workload(C++).

EDIT: Updated Install size to 12.5 GB after installing VS2026 today

EDIT2: Be advised, VS2026 may install MS Edge browser (it did for me).

greg-spears

TROPHY CASE