Archive for the ‘code’ Category
Posted by jamba on August 17, 2010
much more so than this wordpress stuff….
haha! So, I guess I consider this blog (factorq.net) my “personal blog” of any variety of opinionation and open source and other ramblings. My other website, jrob.co.cc (now jrobb.org), I suppose is my site dedicated to projects I work on and develop.
At work, I have several programs that I have developed, mostly all under the umbrella of one large program–all written in VB6, unfortunately. Anyway, I’m converting all that, and splitting up the one large application into several more focused programs. I was planning to make some sort of blog type thing so that I could easily keep track of my progress and what I do on the day-to-day, since my memory is crap and I get side-tracked a lot with several other projects and things (non-software…well, and some other non-primary software projects).
And, well, where I work we use MS Sharepoint. There is a blog function in there with the “mysite” thing, which would be convenient to use, however…I just couldn’t do it, it didn’t feel right at all.
So, I was going to setup wordpress on the jrob site, but then my webhost charges a little more for MySQL (and I’m very cheap) so I wanted to find some kind of static page aggregator, or write one myself. My main requirements were that it had to be lightweight, free (as in freedom), and preferably written in PHP. I came across a few, but mostly it came down to hlscript and hl– (a fork of hlscript). I think I have settled on using hl–, but I am still testing both for the time being.
I’ve set up this blog, and I plug the RSS feed into my sharepoint site at work so that I can send the internal link to people, and they can see the stuff I am writing about development progress, etc. I have escaped the evil of microsoft….for now. 
hl– (and hlscript as well) is very hackable, I have already slightly modified it. I imagine I will be going in there and updating it more to suit my needs, while still leaving it as simple as possible.
For anyone who wants to see it, that development blog can be reached here: http://jrob.co.cc/blog/ (jrobb.org/blog)
Posted in code, site info | Tagged: software, blog, lightweight, development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jamba on July 12, 2010
Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS, or FLOSS, or F/LOSS) should be “liberally licensed to grant the right of users to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code” (Wikipedia). Here is another description from the Linux Outlaws page.
The whole idea behind this, I believe, is the availablility and portability of the source code, as well as the freedom for users to modify and distribute the code as they see fit. All well and good, I think–definitely not a bad thing, and this is something I can support.
The conundrum that I have is that for the past 4 or so years I have been programming almost exclusively in MS Visual Basic (classic, 6), with just a touch in C for micro controllers. Only recently have we started the conversion to PureBasic, which allows for us to compile cross-platform. So what I am wondering is this: if I create some project using this language and free the source code with something like a GPLv3 license, would this even be valid since the compiler itself is not FOSS which could restrict distribution or other end-user freedoms and things of that sort? Would that be like the Mono projects?
If that would not “count”, or in the more likely case, if it would be shunned by the FOSS community I would rather not even waste my time. In that event, I would much rather get out all of my old C++ books and browse some source code to brush up/re-learn what I have forgotten. Or maybe learn Java, or Python, or…
This would be a much slower process, but if it is the “right way” then that is what I would have to do. It isn’t like I even have a very good idea for a project anyway, just some passing thoughts as arguments against going back to school– So there is plenty of time for me to caught up, I am just impatient.
What is the consensus here? Is it wrong by the FOSS standards to use a non-open source compiler, for an otherwise open and free project? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in code, linux | 1 Comment »
Posted by jamba on July 3, 2010
I had been planning to back to school to get my masters degree in Computer Science (or maybe Information Systems)–Work would pay for the schooling as long as I made at least a B, and all of that would be well and good. However, it would take me 5 or 6 years to complete the program, and it would take up a lot of time.
I am now trying to decide if I would rather do that, or just undertake creating some project program or something on Linux for open source (or maybe for Android). I’ve wanted to be more involved in FOSS for a long time, and if I did start this project it would be me “giving back” something. But I’m not incredibly creative…I would be terrible at making a podcast and things of that sort, and I am not a very good blogger (yes, I realize this). I do have some sort of ability to do some programming, and a desire to learn in that area so I guess that is where I am heading.
Now, the obvious problem with such a project….I have NO IDEA what i is I would like to do. I could create my own distribution, but I don’t see much added value for that. Just a lot of work! But I have always wanted to try Linux From Scratch.
Or I could make some kind of identi.ca client: mobile like mustard or maybe something desktop like HeyBuddy. Or maybe I could start out with some kind of project like this, and then see where I go from there. I am definitely not thinking that whatever I do will take off and be tremendously popular or anything, but I guess it could happen.
I think I will start reading up on the identi.ca API and see what needs to be done, then can work something out!
Posted in code, linux, tech | Tagged: foss, identica, linux | 1 Comment »
Posted by jamba on February 6, 2010
Where I work, I am a software engineer–so I do a lot of coding. In the (almost) 4 years I have been there, we (another se, and me) have used mostly VB6 for just about everything…and we have several programs that we have written in-house that range in function. Mostly data handling/analyzation/stuff.
Anyway, as Win7 and Vista started spreading around and VB6 does not even run the IDE on those OS’s, we started searching for coding alternatives over a year ago.
The primary choices were:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in code | Tagged: .net, c, powerbasic, purebasic, vb6 | 1 Comment »
Posted by jamba on February 4, 2010
Posted in code, linux | Tagged: LinuxCon, php | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jamba on January 29, 2010
GCC to support Google Go
This is interesting, I didn’t think it would happen so fast! Maybe “Go” needs another look. It is interesting for a low-ish level language.
Here is some more info about Go.
Posted in code, linux | Tagged: gcc, go, google | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jamba on January 25, 2010
At the other domain (link on the right, to jrob CodeStuffs), I’ve made a few modifications. I was playing with PHP a bit, and reorganized the pages. Then I added a table in my MySQL db and put the info in there, so the page can be created dynamically from information in the db. It’s still really simple, but it is just a side project, and I’m not putting a whole lot of work into it.
I’ve been programming a lot with PureBasic lately, and on my code page I’ve added a couple of initial simple projects. The first is a “speed test” which I used to time some operations, but was primarily so I could learn the dynamics of the database operation.
The other parses through PureBasic source code, and creates a declarations file (or multiple declaration files, if desired). I use this pretty regularly. Of course, there are several on the PureBasic forums that may work better, but it was more fun for me to write my own. And since I am still getting used to the language, it was a learning experience also.
Now I can really dig in and get to work–I have a pretty extensive program at work that I have written in VB6…looking to see some vast speed improvements with converting to PureBasic!
Posted in code | Tagged: code, php, purebasic, sqlite | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jamba on January 14, 2010
I got the other website up and going again. I am using it to host code sources and other things like that which may be useful.
jrob.co.cc
Currently in the forums I have mentioned doing a speedtest between PowerBasic and Purebasic, I have posted the timing results, and will post links to the sources soon.
Posted in code, site info | Tagged: jrob, powerbasic, purebasic, speed, test | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jamba on January 9, 2010
I added a new “programming” section to the forums. I figured this made sense, as it is what I do for a living, should help me keep things straight, and maybe I can provide some info for people looking for related material.
Although I do mostly…well…predominantly Windows programming, hopefully I can work in some linux coding as well.
Currently I just added these sections:
- General – what it sounds like
- BASIC – basic language, w/ subforums PowerBasic and PureBasic
- C
I use mostly PowerBasic these days at work, converting from old VB6. Things are always subject to change, though.
Posted in code, site info | Tagged: basic, c, forums, fQ contactica, linux, powerbasic, purebasic | Leave a Comment »
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