Erik_
Work and more so COBOL has gotten me into the habit of...
Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:44am

jumping to documentation when I have a question about how/why something is working not like I expect it to.

COBOL is full of weirdnesses and multiple ways to do things.

Example, here's one of the DISPLAY statement's possible syntaxes:

Source: https://www.microfocus.com/documentation/visual-cobol/vc50pu8/VS2019/HRLHLHPDF80D.html

I don't think I really ever read too much in the QB help until I made Santa's Christmas Rescue. Since then, it's my go-to for info first. It's actually really amazing documentation and has basically everything in it short of the assembly hacks people did later on. Visual Basic's built in help (at least the ones I've used) is on par as well.


  • You read the manual for the PRINT statement? - Puckdropper, Wed Sep 01 2021 6:41pm
    Who does that? Seriously, WHO DOES THAT? I get why they did that, it's kinda annoying to do a cout when you want to make a simple table. print "My Values", value, value2, value3 is much cleaner. (I think I read the manual for print back in like 1999. Oh those wild "end of the millenium"... more
    • Work and more so COBOL has gotten me into the habit of...- Erik_, Tue Sep 07 2021 2:44am
      • I think I pretty much learned QB from the docs - Puckdropper, Sun Sep 26 2021 3:54am
        We didn't really have Internet, I didn't really have good books (or a library), so it was all the stuff included on the system. It's too bad good help like QB had never really took off.
        • I sort of did as well... - Erik_, Tue Sep 28 2021 11:24am
          at least in the beginning. That said, I feel like I rarely got into more than a small set of the commands available and just found ways to hack together the same few commands to make things "work". Grimace, Wry, and the Dragon Slayer Demo are great examples of this. It's a ton of spaghetti code done... more
          • I didn't really understand what most of those things did - Puckdropper, Sun Oct 10 2021 12:07am
            until I was introduced to them in college... I may not be super familiar with Perl, but Larry Wall's philosophies changed the way I view certain things. One is if an operation is really common, maybe someone's already got a command for it. So there's RTRIM$, LTRIM$, etc because people needed to remove... more
            • The notorious "is-even" npm is an extreme example of that.. - Erik_, Mon Oct 11 2021 2:03pm
              32 million downloads: https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-even But in a rational sense, that's a good philosophy. These days, I find myself looking to see if someone already created a package or library online before attempting to reinvent the wheel myself. I think my first real experience with... more
              • Wait, so there's an entire package that just divides by 2 an - Puckdropper, Tue Oct 12 2021 4:57am
                d tells you if the result has a remainder? (Or shoot, you can just look at the last bit. If 1, not even.) It would kinda make sense in C, where the package could handle different numbers and number types, but isn't a number in JS just a number? (Been a while since I've looked at JS.) One area... more
                • It's crazier than that. is-even requires 3 packages. - Erik_, Mon Oct 18 2021 2:44pm
                  It relies on another package called "is-odd". This is the entire code for "is-even" From: https://github.com/i-voted-for-trump/is-even/blob/master/index.js /*! * is-even * * Copyright (c) 2015, 2017, Jon Schlinkert. * Released under the MIT License. */ 'use strict'; var isOdd =... more
                  • Wow... You never know what people show they need. - Puckdropper, Sun Oct 24 2021 4:34am
                    I guess that could be a good programming language feature. After all, you're better off with well used libraries than you are writing your own in most cases. (The number of "Apps" on Android that are rewritten versions of other apps--with no more features or even a different design is staggering. How... more
                    • I think there in lies the issue with Javascript in that case - Erik_, Mon Nov 01 2021 2:18am
                      Most languages have a standard library or an equivalent but Javascript doesn't really have an official one. This leads to packages being created to fill this void. Which is fine, but sometimes people hijack these "standard" packages used by many and introduce vulnerabilities or malware into them on purpose... more
                      • It's not too late... - Puckdropper, Mon Nov 01 2021 3:19am
                        They just have to create an official standard library. It'd work kinda like CPAN: You don't get them included with the library but they're easily accessible from a trusted place.
"Forces act when not restrained" - Puckdropper