I'm actually surprised I knew enough python to make this work, besides the whitespace sensitivity python isn't all that different from Ruby so I guess it was easy to pick up
@electronbeam: looks good, have you looked into skypes sqlitedb by chance? Lots of goodies in there they have a python library for that. Also this... resources.infosecinstitute.com/skype-forensics-2 They have ERD stuff there.
On learning C++: I keep hearing a sentiment on Stack Overflow that many online tutorials and books fail to teach good practices. How prevalent a problem is this these days?
I learned C++ in the classroom from a small selection of decent-quality textbooks but they mostly focused on code, not best practices (though they did cover things like "be sure to set pointers to 0 or NULL when freed/deleted").
@bwDraco the problem with C++ is that there's 1000 ways to do anything, and a lot of C++ programmers (including those employed to be C++ programmers) often fail to use the latest available features, or design interfaces in ways that are actively hostile to making clean OO APIs, for example
unlike languages like Java, and "newer" languages like Go and Swift and Ruby, C++ has a huge legacy behind it, and all that legacy code has to compile and work -- but that also opens up the door for new code to be written using those bad old patterns
and a lot of people don't learn C++ in a disciplined way; they simply think, "if it compiles, and the program ultimately does what I want, I'll use it"
not everything that compiles and runs is a good idea, and only a minority of programmers learn how to avoid those bad ideas
that's true of other languages too, but less-so for languages that have less of a history behind them, because they are generally designed from the ground up with "one true way" to do most things
> To adequately describe a set of procedures, a flowchart must be thorough and include every possible detail by testing for every conceivable contingency. Programmers and users who account for every possible condition will not be plagued later by numerous erroneous results.
We no longer use flowcharts for software design but the key principle of checking for every possible situation remains with me.
@djsmiley2k when working with CE (4) and trying to hack the system to running things that did not come with it. we would assemble the DLLs in the folder for the program. and even rename dlls and then hack the program to use these new names. at that time CE suffered from old DLLhell.
@Psycogeek some how I've avoided that so far.... tho it feels lik it maybe approaching
I'm trying to move into one of the teams responsible for creating this mess, so i can fix it from there (or at least get away from doing the shifts here!)
@djsmiley2k this was one of them. turning a HP GPS , into a CE also system, and getting any possible programs to run. 244PAGES , at about page 160 the thing was fully obsolete. on about page 230 mine died.
gpspassion.com/forumsen/… (duh the link) it will still an awesome machine tiny, fast, and like todays smart phones.
they also hacked navmans and any other CE based GPSes there, to turn them into more all-in-one devices. video, games, utilities, file commanders, car GPS (vector) , hiking gps (google sattalite) redoing the interface 3 times over. When looking back i wonder why anyone would do that :-) because of the potential for the device, to be much more than what was embedded.
i wish that in all computer systems, all the parts and pieces needed for a program to operate were Simply put all together in the same folder for the program, up to the base kernel itself. anything wrong with a program at that point would then be only in that program folder. With mainline programs storing every used library seperated from the rest of the system, would not be a big space problem. The assumption often is we need one distribution of that stuff , say .net, for the 50 programs
But in reality and with the quantity of subsystems, people have like 2 programs that use .net, and both are incompatable with that version :-)
If only the (computer) world had evolved different, things would be organised proper, and take 10% more space.
The methods that they used we still have all the "different" librarys , and they were supposed to keep them seperate, but it is anything but that, and has replaced dllhell with just another disaster.
@RobertTheVulpine and @JourneymanInformationTechnologyEnthusiast I shall be making myself eminently available for more fun and games (tm) over the next four (4) days (24 hour periods in US Eastern time, starting this evening) due to a short-lived respite from the vagaries of my daily salaried job.
@Bob @JourneymanGeek gonna be avail for much game as I'm taking vacation tomorrow and 7/4 is a US holiday
@DavidPostill yeah, and the extreme form is called DDOU (Distributed Denial of Upvotes), where a kid gets his entire classroom of devious school children to all upvote one guy
What's the most practical way to learn LaTeX? I have a book in front of me and I've installed a full TeX system (complete with IDE) on my system but I don't want to be just writing dummy documents.
@bwDraco Analogy. My learning of Powershell is driven/triggered by wanting to answer the occasional question. Perhaps you could do the same with LaTex?
@bwDraco Question: Why do you want to learn LaTex? What is your motivation? I've been using computers since the mid '70s as a developer, tech support specialist, trainer, and other IT roles. That's a span of almost 40 years. I've never had occasion to use LaTex in the whole of that time span ...
It's used in the technical fields to write high-quality documentation. It's certainly harder than just Word or LibreOffice (which I've used for years) but the output quality is considerably better.
LaTeX is also a marketable job skill (even if relatively specialized).
Well, any programmer needs to be able to write documentation. I'd rather focus on learning JS (which is in very high demand), but LaTeX is also useful.
I imagine it might have "status symbol"-like uses too; I've heard some people mention that they notice when a résumé was generated from LaTeX and respect it
@allquixotic I should be good at roughly the same usual time slot. I assume you mean yesterday's tomorrow, (in which case I should be good in roughly 5 hours) rather than today's tommorrow (which ought to be fine) unless something unforseen turns up
