The IT Thread

[mordant]

If there are any other developers or former developers around here, I'll just leave this semi-rant for what it's worth.

I have no real regrets that I've focused for the past 25 years or so on the Microsoft dev stack. The tooling is generally excellent. Except ...

Except that Microsoft has a really bad habit of pushing something to be adopted that's the Next Great Thing and Final Answer, and then suddenly deciding that it's not.

One I remember from awhile ago was .NET Remoting. If you needed to do IPC, it was Da Bomb and SO superior to its unmanaged predecessors. Until it wasn't. Then it became, IIRC, Windows Communications Framework. Remoting would be supported as to bug fixes for an indefinite time, but this utterly different API meant that I'd have to convince clients to completely rewrite solutions I'd provided based on Remoting, if they wanted to not have difficulty maintaining code that now, some 15 years later, no one remembers or understands anymore.

One of my responses to this kind of thing was to style myself as mainly a back-end guy. There's enough churn there, without dealing with all the crazy conflicting approaches on the client-facing side of things. But now the trend is "full stack development". Employers, as usual, want it all, so they insist you know the front end. Angular, React, Vue, jQuery, etc etc etc as well as platform-specific architectures.

So I just spent six joyless months figuring out something that used to be pre-MVC ASP.NET but is now slathered with proprietary JavaScript and XML, which translates to basically nowhere. And now I'm being moved to a team maintaining ASP.NET MVC v5 with a side helping of jQuery, that they want to move to .NET 6 in coming months, so yay -- except now that I look at it, Microsoft has decided that the way forward is something only vaguely compatible that requires significant refactoring to move your code base forward, called "ASP.NET core with MVC".

I miss the days when you could just focus on solving problems for people instead of keeping up with someone else's committee and marketing-drivers vision of how your architecture should work. I would say that since unwillingly re-entering the corporate development world, some 60% of my time is spent either on migrations like this or figuring out something that's stuck in the past. Neither is any fun at all, apart from how occasionally some small aspect of it resolves a chronic pain point.

It's one thing to take someone else's poorly written code and make it great. It's another to break everything in the service of your vendor deciding to rename stuff and move it to different namespaces and changing former best practices.

Is it any better on the open source side? I'm doubtful. Too much in software development is fad-driven. It's as much about the promise of bright shiny new playthings to placate management about why things aren't Moving Along at the desired pace, as it is about engineering.

Thus enders the rant.

Curious what other's experience or coping strategies may be here.

Mine would be to have sole responsibility for an app or system and just do what I felt was best and be held responsible for results. That has always served me well. I don't see a way to do that anymore. It is all about chanting "no blockers" in scrum standup meetings and working tickets.

[SYZ]

Remember these (then) hot shit devices that you could actually move the cursor/pointer
through a full 360º on-screen.  Wow!      And fire your gun or bat your ball with an actual
dedicated button.  Wow again!     (Atari XE, 1977 I think?)




This was the first mouse (actually a "puck") that I used professionally, probably circa 1988.




The "mat" is an AutoCAD digitising tablet, connected to the computer.

[PopeyesPappy]

circa 1988.

circa 2021 the mat is built into the mouse. 

[jimhabegger]

Maybe god is an atheist?

Mine is. 

[jimhabegger]

It seemed to be a law that at least one person you were sharing the line with was some old biddy with nothing else to do but listen in on your calls.

  I remember that!

[mordant]

Remember these (then) hot shit devices that you could actually move the cursor/pointer
through a full 360º on-screen.  Wow!      And fire your gun or bat your ball with an actual
dedicated button.  Wow again!     (Atari XE, 1977 I think?)




This was the first mouse (actually a "puck") that I used professionally, probably circa 1988.




The "mat" is an AutoCAD digitising tablet, connected to the computer.

It's amazing what could be accomplished with the relatively limited hardware of that era.

My first hard drive had a capacity of 5 megabytes and cost $2,000. It was connected to my 8 bit TRS-80 model 4 (128K of bank-switched RAM, Z-80 processor at 4 mhz) by a 50-pin cable and resembled (and was the size of) a cash resister drawer. And it was about one-tenth the speed of modern mechanical hard drives.

But at the time, it was magic.

[skyking]

They have come a long way, but coffee still killed my chromebook today. you'd think Coffee-proof-ness would have been figured out long ago.

[mordant]

They have come a long way, but coffee still killed my chromebook today. you'd think Coffee-proof-ness would have been figured out long ago.

"They can send men to the moon, but they can't coffee-proof a laptop."

[Cavebear]

They have come a long way, but coffee still killed my chromebook today. you'd think Coffee-proof-ness would have been figured out long ago.

Stop drinking coffee?

I had a rollerball once.  Never got used to it and some programs wouldn't recognize it.

[c172]

Ive seen the "blue screen of death" many a time...but just a minute or so ago, I was met with a red screen for a number of seconds. IIRC, there was also some coding, in black, with a yellow background. Just maybe a line or two, but no clue what it means. Never seen a red screen. Googled it, and just got info on a "pink screen", which is very pink, and I have also never seen.

[SYZ]

I haven't seen the BSOD for... um... probably 20 years now.
It used to be a familiar friend with MS-DOS 3.1.       

[Dom]

They have come a long way, but coffee still killed my chromebook today. you'd think Coffee-proof-ness would have been figured out long ago.

I wasn't paying attention, but there is an ad running for some computer brand that is now pushing a spill proof version.

I remember long ago the keyboards had a spill proof coating, some sort of plastic overlay. I don't really know why that was abandoned.

[SYZ]

I wasn't paying attention, but there is an ad running for some computer brand that is now pushing a spill proof version.

I remember long ago the keyboards had a spill proof coating, some sort of plastic overlay. I don't really know why that was abandoned.

I'm using a 'Cougar' keyboard—with Cherry browns—which is pretty spill-proof.
The switch openings have a a little... um... wall around them, which stops coffee
or Coke flooding its innards.    

[Minimalist]

Okay here's one for the techies to think over.

Last night after working perfectly all day my computer started getting really hinky.  Now, this only happens on certain applications and luckily the web is not one of them, so far.

When opening a spreadsheet program the cursor immediately starts flying to the right.  I have no idea how far it will go but I am assuming to the end.  I can stop it but only by pressing the left arrow key and holding it but then I can't do anything else so it is really no help at all. 

In another program, one of my gaming items, if I click on a drop down menu it starts scrolling down - to the bottom. 

I also get the madly down scrolling issue in windows setup boxes, as when it told me to run something out of the System - Devices - and it scrolled to the bottom.

Worse if I touch the control key it changes my screen size to small without me touching the minus key.  I can override that by pushing the plus key but it is still a pain in the ass.

I ran a full scan on Malwarebytes - nothing.  And Windows Defender runs every morning and that says that everything is just peachy.

Before anyone suggests it I did take out an old keyboard and try it but there was no effect.

I have not downloaded any new programs since before xmas and everything was working perfectly until about 6:30 last night.

The mouse is as ineffective as the keyboard although both work fine except for the situations I mentioned above.

Any ideas would be welcome...including throwing the fucking thing out a window.

[skyking]

Test the RAM, it is easy and free to do. Some freakouts only happen when you are using enough of the RAM to get to the bad bits.

[Vera]

A system restore to a previous point in case Windows installed some crappy update?

[Minimalist]

Test the RAM, it is easy and free to do. Some freakouts only happen when you are using enough of the RAM to get to the bad bits.

Came up "no problems detected."

[Minimalist]

A system restore to a previous point in case Windows installed some crappy update?

I thought of that and even started to do it.  Then I got a message telling me that there was a problem on my D: drive.  Of course when I check the D: drive it says that everything is fine.

There was a suggestion to use Windows Power Shell for chkdsk /R but then it tells me that the "volume" in in use by another process and says that chkdsk "may run" if the volume "is dismounted first."  It then asks if I want to force a dismount and gives a Y/M choice.

I approach that as if it were the self-destruct button in an awful sci-fi movie.

I did think about disconnecting the d: but then it will probably tell they it can't do system restore because the goddamn thing is not there.


I do have a restore point on 12/24 which was before any of this started but it seems like a mirage at this point.

[Inkubus]

Any options to run a system check from the bios at startup?

[Thingymebob]

Any options to run a system check from the bios at startup?

I think you're onto something there.

[Minimalist]

Any options to run a system check from the bios at startup?

I'll have to look that when I start it up in the morning.  I wrote myself a note to go in BIOS when I turn it on.  Otherwise - in my coffeeless morning fog I'll never remember.

It's bizarre.  I guess the sporadic nature of it is what confuses me most.  In only happens on spreadsheets - or drop-down boxes.

You'd think that if it were systemic or keyboard/mouse related it would do it all the time.

[Inkubus]

You'd think that if it were systemic or keyboard/mouse related it would do it all the time.

Aye it's an odd one that, sounds like drivers.

[Dom]

Okay here's one for the techies to think over.

Last night after working perfectly all day my computer started getting really hinky.  Now, this only happens on certain applications and luckily the web is not one of them, so far.

When opening a spreadsheet program the cursor immediately starts flying to the right.  I have no idea how far it will go but I am assuming to the end.  I can stop it but only by pressing the left arrow key and holding it but then I can't do anything else so it is really no help at all. 

In another program, one of my gaming items, if I click on a drop down menu it starts scrolling down - to the bottom. 

I also get the madly down scrolling issue in windows setup boxes, as when it told me to run something out of the System - Devices - and it scrolled to the bottom.

Worse if I touch the control key it changes my screen size to small without me touching the minus key.  I can override that by pushing the plus key but it is still a pain in the ass.

I ran a full scan on Malwarebytes - nothing.  And Windows Defender runs every morning and that says that everything is just peachy.

Before anyone suggests it I did take out an old keyboard and try it but there was no effect.

I have not downloaded any new programs since before xmas and everything was working perfectly until about 6:30 last night.

The mouse is as ineffective as the keyboard although both work fine except for the situations I mentioned above.

Any ideas would be welcome...including throwing the fucking thing out a window.

Wireless mouse? Just unplug the receiver thingie from your computer, wait a minute and plug it back in. Voila! I speak from experience here. Don't know much about computers otherwise.

[Dānu]

If it's a mechanical mouse, clean the ball and rollers. I use a mechanical trackball and it does that when it's dirty.

[Minimalist]

But does it only do it on specific programs?

I'll try the thing with the wireless whojiggy.  Can't hurt but the problem seems too involved the keyboard as much as the mouse - and that is wired.