VBA Rubberducking

Duga

00:08

REFRESH!

[Minesweeper] 72 Games Played. 49 Bombs Used. 9931 Moves Performed. 20 New Users

[Rubberduck] 1 Synchronizations

Hosch250

02:15

@Vogel612 True. Still, OSS is worse in that regard IME. My best experiences, TBH, are OSS when there's a corporate sponsor (C#, Linux [heavily developed by Azure/AWS/Red Hat teams], Mongo, etc.).

Vogel612

02:34

yea, you basically get the best of both worlds from that

Hosch250

I've been thinking about trying to start a couple businesses, but I don't have the drive to work on personal projects anymore.

#1 would be a change-tracking thing for database records. I'd probably go full event-sourcing on it, and would make the tracking piece free, and have people pay to access a nice UI to track things with.

Essentially, track who made the change, when it was made, the object diff, and what other records were changed as part of the same transaction.

It would be used instead of the ubiquitous created/modified by/on fields that don't really give you any useful information.

#2 would be some sort of online yellow pages thing to attempt to fix the issue of businesses out-competing startups simply by virtue of having a high search ranking. The sales target there would be to sell a webpage/online shop front to businesses. Lots of competition there, between existing search engines and website builders, though.

#3 would be some sort of yaml-to-code thing, where someone could provide a spec for a CRUD API in YAML form, and the spec would be fed into a tool that would generate an executable. Kind of inspired by Terraform/K8s.

I'm not sure how I'd monetize that, TBH, but I wouldn't be surprised if something like that cropped up sooner rather than later. OpenAPI kind of is already doing it, but doesn't support the implementation details in the spec.

How's it been going with you. Have you graduated college yet?

Vogel612

currently writing on my final thesis and then will need to finish getting the last credits over the summer semester

Hosch250

Nice. Is this for a masters/PhD?

Vogel612

masters

Hosch250

Nice. Are you going for a PhD after that?

Vogel612

02:50

I'm not going to go into academia. It's just not the way I work

the whole academia setup for postgrads is such a burnout machine here in Germany ...

Hosch250

Fair enough. Over here, a lot of people get PhDs just for the heck of it.

Vogel612

pretty sure I wouldn't come out of it at the end of that

Hosch250

Good to know your limitations.

Vogel612

yea :)

Hosch250

A lot of PhDs over here are actually people who work in industry, find something cool, then write a PhD thesis on their work in the industry.

Probably cuts a lot of the stress out, if you are self-funding and know exactly what you are going to write/present when you start.

Vogel612

02:52

I might write some papers, if I have no idea of what to do with myself in my free time, but I don't think I will work at a company where a PhD thesis would make sense

lots of the writing process feels like cleaning up bad information from other papers, but not the easy way ...

Hosch250

Yeah, that's the case for me too. I would like to get a masters or two some day, but it's not easy to find the time.

Vogel612

subtle mistakes in corners of little-cited papers are quite annoying

@Hosch250 how much of a salary bump is a masters in the us?

Hosch250

I don't think there is one. There wouldn't be for me without a title change.

Vogel612

so it would be just for your pleasure?

Hosch250

Combo. I'd use it to push for a title change.

For example, right now, I'm a "senior 1."

Vogel612

02:55

sounds like a plan 😀 Good luck

Hosch250

Which basically means I can go to client sites on my own and not screw up.

Vogel612

interesting... that would usually just be "not junior" around my neck of the woods

Hosch250

"Senior 2" is my next title, and essentially involves being able to be the first representative on a new client on my own, vs going onto a client we already have a relationship with for a job.

Yeah, I was hired as a "consultant 2" back in 2019. It was a slight title decrease, actually, although it came with a pay bump, because consulting involves a bit of politics.

It's not just the one team you have been working with and knowing the one system. You have to be familiar with a larger variety of systems, and be able to play politics a bit.

I'm working toward the architecture position, but I don't see myself being able to do any of that this summer while I'm at my current client. My role is just doing basic dev work.

If I were to go for a masters, I'd probably go into disaster recovery.

I was actually accepted into one right out of school, but I never took any classes because adjusting to work was too tough at the same time.

I technically still have like 5 years to finish it before they kick me out for not completing it, LOL.

Vogel612

ohhh disaster recovery is complex

Hosch250

I should really start doing that; the courses are only 9 weeks long, IIRC.

I just got a certificate in machine learning. We basically learned logistic regression, loess, random forest, and a few other things over a predefined data set.

It was more a data science cert than an actual ML cert.

My employer has us get certs and stuff every couple years, so I'm off the hook for a bit. I really like learning, but actually going for a cert is stressful.

You know, this summer would be an awesome time to start taking my masters. My client told us we basically aren't going to have deadlines, and we're just going to be meandering toward our goal of adding some new features to a v2 product so the next time some clients renew their contracts they can shift them onto it.

Vogel612

03:06

sounds like the perfect time frame

Hosch250

And I work just as fast as I did here, so I literally have 4-6 hours each day free and still keep up with the team.

I've actually been scolded by my boss before because when we run out of planned work I would go work ahead, but that was irking some people because we didn't have the full discussion on those tickets (which was fair).

So, he basically told me to offer to help other people instead of that, but I've also learned that too many people on a given ticket doesn't help, so normally I just go do something tech-related, like read a blog or book or whatever.

So, this would actually be great. I could definitely do 2 or 3 classes over the summer, and see how it goes.

Vogel612

Something I always found useful to work on is proper documentation and background tech like CI and build process

Hosch250

We have a good CI process. We even have a system that we tell it a repo name and type, and it creates the GitHub repo with stub code and sets up PR/CI pipelines automatically.

We also have dedicated DevOps teams, so I don't get to touch that stuff.

Documentation is for the birds, anyway. I write up a readme file with the basics, and the code is self-documenting. (Well, my code is...)

Do you like reading much?

I read a couple great autobiographies lately. One by Ben Rich (Lockheed engineer), and one by Robert Fortune (botanist who "stole" tea from China and brought it to India).

Vogel612

depends. if it's well-written, I like reading. If it's badly written and I have to read it, I hate it. If it's badly written, but I want to read it I can deal

I have a handful of unfinished christmas and birthday presents

Hosch250

I've also watched a few episodes of Forged in Fire. That's a neat show, although it would be more cool if it showed the details of forging instead of just the most exciting parts of banging on hot steel and quenching and a little bit of grinding.

Vogel612

03:16

lots of youtube channels that show forging processes 😀

Hosch250

Yeah, I should check that out. Before the whole Monica thing went down, I was chatting to a mod from Worldbuilding (James) who did it as a hobby.

You actually probably know him from the mod chat.

Vogel612

probably... the "Monica thing" has been two years at this point

kind of bonkers, really

Hosch250

Only two? I thought that went down shortly after I switched jobs back in 19...

I thought it was before COVID...

I would have guessed a bit over 3 years, TBH.

Vogel612

right. I mixed up the dates.

Hosch250

It seems to have settled down a bit, but a lot of communities still haven't recovered, from what I can tell.

Vogel612

03:20

october 2019

Hosch250

Yeah, and I switched jobs in November '19 :)

Vogel612

@Hosch250 afaict CR is one of the communities that's been struggling since then

lots of old regulars went quiet

Hosch250

The worldbuilding chat keeps being shut down, even though it's a main room.

Codidact seems to still be around, although I'm not sure how much active development it's in.

Vogel612

worldbuilding was smaller than CR and more directly in the blast radius, I think

@Hosch250 they are working on it. It actually seems like it might get off the ground properly

Hosch250

I was in the chat for a while, but I could never find the will to actually commit to contributing.

Vogel612

03:22

been a while since I looked into it deeply, but last I heard, they have some cooperations with some universities

Hosch250

Not that I don't believe in the community, but because I've been struggling to commit to any non-work projects.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll eventually burn out hard and not find the will to work either. I just hope I pay my house off before that happens, so I can take a break if I need.

Vogel612

3 hours since the last change in their main repo, it seems

@Hosch250 the trick to avoiding burnout is to find something that you can get invested in that nobody can take away from you.

something where your efforts are actually appreciated and valued

Hosch250

That used to be RD. I used to go into flow state almost every day working on it.

Vogel612

work usually is not that thing, because politics

Hosch250

I liked my previous job, because I didn't have to play politics as a non-architect, but there wasn't room for growth, and I jumped ship when the company sold. And turns out I made the right choice too.

But contracting work doesn't give me that anymore, even though I still don't really have to do anything but keep my head down and work.

I have my pets, but my dog is getting old, and I probably have 18 months left with her, tops.

And once she's gone, I don't really have anything to work for anymore.

I have my horse, and she's nice, but she doesn't need me the way my dog does.

But, I guess that existential crisis is still several months down the road, so...

I'll face that when it happens, and who knows, maybe Putin will send nukes my way first.

Vogel612

03:29

I doubt that.

and if he does, I'm going to be gone before you are

Hosch250

True that.

I don't even have any volunteer skills to go help over there or anything, at that point. No military training, no truck driving license... I'd just get in the way.

Vogel612

At least you can easily get classes on how to properly handle a gun

Hosch250

Ironically, from where I live, I'd probably escape the nukings unscathed, other than fall out.

There's a range 10 minutes from me, LOL.

Vogel612

I know there's some ranges around, I even know somebody that would probably take me to a small arms range if I asked, but ...

Hosch250

They don't even want that, though, because there's way more to infantry combat than firing a gun.

There's positioning, communications, movement, stuff as seemingly minor as light control. People are getting killed now because they light a cigarette.

With drones, it's even more exciting. They can do double assaults on a position firing toward each other and stopping just before the second prong of the assault comes into range.

They can finally do all the weird combat tactics that didn't used to be possible because the commander essentially lost control of units once they were committed to the fight, either because of literally no way to contact with them fast enough, or because there was no good way to extricate them once they made contact, or a number of other reasons.

I found a cool blog (acoup.blog) by a history professor who discusses all this kind of thing.

Anyway, it's bed time for me. Been fun talking to you.

I feel like I talked your ear off now :|

Vogel612

03:38

don't worry about that :)

been very nice hearing from you

Hosch250

Yeah, you too :)

Goodnight :)

Mathieu Guindon

05:05

update: RPC works! ...almost :D

progress...

almost there!! :)

FreeMan

12:56

@Vogel612 It used to be required for elementary/secondary education (school teachers). When my wife got hers, her pay went up almost enough to buy a reasonable meal out once a month, but she would not have been able to continue teaching past 5 years without it. The requirements vary by state and school district, but many were like that. I'm not sure how many are today.

Feeds

15:09

3D graphs that don't contact the plane in the closure area may proceed as scheduled, but be alert for possible collisions with 2D graph lines that reach the hole and unexpectedly enter 3D space.

FreeMan

That's amusing!

this

oooorrrrr.... just hear me out, guys. You could just use an euclidean plane. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.

FreeMan

But, you have to have the plane really sharp to get a smooth finish.

Duga

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] ChrisTaylorDeveloper starred us

3

Mathieu Guindon

15:41

Went to bed with RPC failing with a weird JSON deserialization error, like, the method sends it a InitializeParams instance, but then it tries to deserialize it as a completely unrelated type that makes no sense; I'll be diving into the lower-level RPC stuff, think it has to do with positional vs named parameters.

Once that's fixed, the PR is pretty much good to go and RD3 kicks off for real

FreeMan

15:56

waits with baited breath!

brushes teeth, as that's really gross

HackSlash

The ducks gather around the fire in, wide-eyed, silent amazement.

2

this

@FreeMan Precisely why you need to have those Boeing jet engines, preferably at least four of them on it.

FreeMan

LOL. Except that Boeing doesn't make engines. ;)

this

@MathieuGuindon That'll be definitely awesome!

Pritt & Whitney then. Rolls royce. Whatever.

FreeMan

hehe!

Duga

20:23

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] pflugs30 created comment on issue #327: Regex Search & Replace

> @NDeLancie Thanks for your detailed thoughts and ideas. We appreciate your time.

It looks like your pictures didn't upload correctly, perhaps due to (what looks like) an email reply instead of using the Github website? Either way, I like your ideas, and I'd like to see more of what you implemented.

May I suggest you create a new item in [the Ideas Discussions section](https://github.com/rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck/discussions/categories/ideas)? This thread is about a different topic, an

Duga

23:53

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] 1712 stars vs. [decalage2/oletools] 2328 stars

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