If you have ever used a union in a C/C++ Program let me know. I am really curious to see who in their right minds use unions unironically.

Guess I'll fuckin try again tomorrow.

Building a cross platform c program. On Linux side, just using a makefile. Today I tried using visual studios "clone" feature for git. It just downloads the files and makes them available to the editor, it doesn't make a project, obviously.

But this has some disadvantages. For one, you can't build, or run. Two, you don't get any project properties. My project needs to set the character encoding to Unicode. Can't do that without a project.

So I use their tool to create a project from existing code. It didn't really work. The build profiles were janky at best and I still couldn't set the character encoding.

Ended up just deleting the whole thing.

¡rant|rant

Nice to do some refactoring of the whole data access layer of our core logistics software, let me tell an story.

The project is around 80k lines of code, with a lot of integrations with an ERP system and an sql database.

The ERP system is old, shitty api for it also, only static methods through an wrapper to an c++ library

imagine an order table.

To access an order, you would first need to open the database by calling Api.Open(...file paths) (yes, it's an fucking flat file type database)

Now the database is open, now you would open the orders table with method Api.Table(int tableId) and in return you would get an integer value, the pointer.

Now for the actual order. first you need to search for it by setting the search parameter to the column ID of the order number while checking all calls for some BS error code

Api.SetInt(int pointer, int column, int query Value)
Then call the find method.

Api.Find(int pointer)

Then to top this shitcake of an api of: if it doesn't find your shit it will use the "close enough" method of search.

And now to read a singe string 😑

First you will look in the outdated and incorrect documentation given to you from the devil himself and look for the column ID to find the length of the column.

Then you create a string variable with ALL FUCKING SPACES.

Now you call the Api.GetStr(int pointer, int column, ref string emptyString, int length)

Now you have passed your poor string to the api's demon orgy by reference.

Then some more BS error code checking.

Now you have read an string value 😀

Now keep in mind to repeat these steps for all 300+ columns in the order table.

News from the creators: SQL server? yes, sql is good so everything will be better?

Now imagine the poor developers that got tasked to convert this shitcake to use a MS SQL server, that they did.

Now I can honestly say that I found the best SQL server benchmark tool. This sucker creams out just above ~105K sql statements per second on peak and ~15K per second for 1.5 second to read an order. 1.5 second to read less than 4 fucking kilobytes!

Right at that moment I released that our software would grind to an fucking halt before even thinking about starting it. And that me & myself and I would be tasked to fix it.

4 months later and two weeks until functional beta, here I am. We created our own api with the SQL server 😀

And the outcome of all this...

Fixes bugs older than a year, Forces rewriting part of code base. Forces removal of dirty fixes. allows proper unit and integration testing and even database testing with snapshot feature.

The whole ERP system could be replaced with ~10 lines of code (provided same relational structure) on the application while adding it to our own API library.

Best part is probably the performance improvements 😀. Up to 4500 times faster and 60 times less memory usage also with only managed memory.

Visual studio code

I usually use IDEs and am in love with everything made by Jetbrains. I am also to lazy to setup dual boot on my pc, so I live with windows 10. After one of the recent downgrades Microsoft distribute, they shipped this lightweight text editor called visual studio code with it.

It lied to me, that it's a good editor for coding C. It even tells me that I can compile and execute the code from inside the editor, similar to vim. I went to the settings and found a dark theme, for the best best feature this "editor"has to offer.

I give it a try by opening a source file with a normal double click. Editor gets focused, but the code is nowhere to be seen. Retrying conforms my, that this piece of shit is literally not able to open files UNLESS you drag and drop them into the editor. HOW FUCKING USELESS IS THAT?

Next I want to compile the program. Guess what, that functionality was not given or at least I could not find it (same goes with the manual)

Even with dark theme it burns my eyes to use this editor. There are almost no useful shortcuts. The functionality is not even comparable to vim. I always thought eclipse was bad, until this shit was installed.

It might work well for other people. Maybe it has functions, that just don't work on my pc, but from what I've seen: visual studio in general and especially that editor feels like Microsoft trying to replace the toolet paper with sandpaper.

Which Idea was it to combine C, C++ and Java in one big fucking Project. And who thought that it was a Good Idea to use Eclipse C++ for developing with Java. If the whole Project would have been in Java I could have used the auto Import feature from Eclipse, but if Eclipse doesn't Know that the Java Files are Java Files it doesn't fucking work. So I just had to spent a whole fucking Day compiling the Projects with Maven so that I can write around 100 Lines of Import...
And the best Thing is, a few Weeks ago the Imports existed so a fucking asshole just erased them when he tried to optimize these...
Sometimes I hate this company

I just thought of a potential webapp ideas while talking a shower. Still need to give it some thought but wondering how best to built it out? Sorta like a message board/kiva/change.org

I'm thinking #1 is backend + REST api. Then just create a webapp using React Native so it can be used mobile and browser?

Probably will build the first prototype though using either C# just to test the APIs...

But I guess how do you break a project up. Do you build backend first or do it feature by feature (both backend and frontend)?

And well what about hosting? Do need to decide now like AWS/Heroku... Or can I just build on local? Need a db though...

Worst / best feature of any language:

Lack of / requirement of strict / dynamic / weak / strong typing. Just typing. Typing typing typing just typing.

Having to specify the type in C/++/#, Java/Kotlin is so annoying and delays the project so much by having to do declare weird classes with 3 or 4 fields just because you need it in this tiny line of code.

Not having good type support in JavaScript and Python is a pain in the eyes when you can't find what type each variable is, or when you pass a wrong argument to a function, and when you do, it shows the definition for the type in a .ty or.pyi file and not the definition itself which you have to find elsewhere. Spent half of my uni exams trying to decipher the type while it could've been a piece of cake if you just knew the type.

Love / hate relationship 😝