Day 69 of "learning C#" or "this isn't C++":
Spent an hour maybe trying to figure out why I can't see Trace/Debug messages in the Debug output in WPF app. I have been doing a lot of testing in a Console app and Console.Writeline does what I need for testing and understanding how it works.

Today I am working a WPF app. I am using Trace/Debug.Writline and I get nada. Read up online and it "should" be working. I am compiling for Debug. I think, do I gotta actually run as Debug session to get output? Well, um, actually fucking yes. I know I can get console output if I want by changing app type/option or some shit. Its a group project so I don't want to mess with that for now.

Fuck you C#, WPF, visual studio! Whoever the fuck thought that was good default. I mean it probably is a good default performance wise. Fuck you anyway. lol

So I think I figured out something that may be a huge game changer in the gaming industry. TES VI has taken more than a decade to even be a thing. We got an announcement a few years ago about TES VI, but really nothing since. At that time they said TES VI would be in production after Starfield release. Another odd thing they said was that the technology needed to create TES VI was not quite ready yet. I am unsure as to when they said this last bit. I think before they mentioned Starfield release. What is this tech?

I think to understand what this tech is you have to go back to the roots of TES. One of their early games was called Daggerfall. I think this was TES II. The next one was TES III Morrowind. Then TES IV Oblivion. Finally TES V Skyrim. What has been happening on each release? The world of Daggerfall was huge, it was also generated content. That was the only way to go to that scale at that time. Then Morrowind came along and was big, but no where near Daggerfall big. Oblivion came along and decent size, but I think it was still smaller than Morrowind. I think similar with Skyrim. The worlds were getting more detailed, but due to shear manpower it became expensive to fill these large worlds.

I think you have probably figured out where I was going with this. What is the missing tech TES series wanted for large worlds? I think AI is the next big step for generating large worlds like this. From generating textures, terrain, models, cities, forests, etc. Obviously there will be procedural gen mixed in with this.

People keep wondering why TES VI is taking so long. I think Bethesda wanted to go big again on its worlds. But at the scale they wanted to do it would take way too much manpower to create all the assets for the game under any kind of budget. TES V has made them a shit ton of money. So maybe they have the wiggle room to do something truly groundbreaking with TES VI.

Anyway, that is my guess. They were waiting for the AI tools to be available to go big on their open worlds.

Okay, this just fucked with my brain. We are supposedly seeing organisms (including humans) doing better in radiation fields.

https://youtube.com/watch/...

Not so sure about the ending, but I am also messed in the head about some of the thinking going on with consciousness. I suspected our thought processes are not completely body bound. I guess if the mind is interacting with a separate entity then it would need a physical mechanism. I dunno, seemed really speculative.

This guy usually does a rug pull and shows how everything in the beginning has doubts. He didn't do this on this one.

If I've offended you with my posts I am sorry.
I honestly didn't think you could read.

Also, its FUCK YOU ALL FRIDAY!

Mind Blown...

So I was in a meeting with another dev talking to a customer. He instructed the customer to open a command prompt in Windows. Then to use the SSH command. In my mind I was assuming he had told the client to install SSH beforehand. Later I started thinking about it and did a search. Apparently Windows 10/11 have a version of OpenSSH installed by default. I had used Windows 7 in the past and always installed git shell to get this. So in my Windows 10 I did the same thing. git shell also supports aliases and other nice *nix like scripting features. So it is always a win.

So hear I am realizing SSH is installed by default on newer windows systems. Like damn, I never thought I would see the day. I think I still prefer git shell, but having SSH by default is nice to know. I know they got the subsystem shit to get Linux. But not everyone wants or needs that.

I probably should learn what is in Windows these days. lol. I mean, besides malware.

Found a meme about @retoor

This is to me the most amazing tattoo I have ever seen. This dude got a mini lemon on his head and he made lemonade with it.

My current computer is starting to overheat playing games that used to run fine. Like thermal shutdown I think on the GPU. So I need to have the thermal compound redone. Then I will be out a computer while this is being worked on. I would have a local shop do it, but would rather a vendor that sells thousands of computers do this.

I am thinking I might buy a newer computer and then send the current one in for repair. Then let my kids use this one when fixed. I just got this one where I wanted it disk and setup wise. I also would be stuck with Win 11 on the newer computer. Everything I do on my home computer is windows centric. The people I support, the stuff I run, everything. That is the biggest negative in getting a newer computer. I would rather buy one with windows 10. But they won't even sell that anymore.

The newer computer is much nicer though. 4070 over a 3060. Newer processor with 32 threads. Thinking of going 17" screen instead of 15". So I like the idea of the compile times being faster.

I am loathing the idea of setting all my programs back up again. This sounds like a nightmare. I don't even like thinking about it.

Fix the old reliable thing and/or get the new shiny toy. What bothers me is that it has only been since 2021. I don't remember having to redo heat sink compound on older computers. I keep reading this is a thing. Wtf is happening to the compound? Is it made to fail?

I have had tacos 2 days in a row now. They are so good from the Mexican roach coach I get them from. I have eaten at various restaurants in the area and the dang tacos from the roach coach are better than any of them. $2 a taco man! I don't care if its cat. There used to be cats that hung around their bus. Haven't seen them in a while though...

Doesn't taste like coffee...

I will not comply.

Just remembered this in a TES forum. So you get to remember or enjoy for yourself:
https://hezer.naraku.org/sekalaista...

I still attend JSA (javascript anonymous) meetings...

I asked my wife to make bacon wontons. Yes, they turned out very good. Would request again.

Fucking exercise equipment vendors... I have contact at least 3 vendors to ask technical questions about their products and I NEVER get a reply. Do you not want to sell anything you gigantic ass fucks?!

It looks like these vendors are finally standardizing on a bluetooth communication protocol called FTMS. Apps and desktop software are using this protocol to allow all sorts of devices to just work with their software. So I asked a vendor today that connects to 2 competing software systems. Do you support FTMS protocol? Radio silence. Maybe they are in a different time zone on the other side of the planet. But what is the excuse of the other 2 companies?

BTW, FTMS is really cool. You can turn a tread mill on and off with it. I so want this connected to Skyrim.

This is your yearly dystopian reminder that Wordpress enjoys a 43.5% website market share. I think it was lower last year at around 41%. So it grew I guess.

https://demandsage.com/wordpress-st...

And they say web dev isn't a real programmer job...

Full disclosure: I think php is fine.

Working on creating an asyncio UDP server/client. Going to have it talk to another server/client. Why? Because I don't want there to be a round trip to my data. I want send and forget.

So I created a combo server/client in C++. I am testing out the client and I find that it connects and sends data with zero errors as a client even if there is no endpoint (server) active. Okay, well its connection-less so it kinda makes sense. So I am not even sure what connection means at this point. I figured it was sending data into the ether. Fine, I don't have to worry about dropped endpoints or some shit. The server does see messages once it creates itself (tested with Python server). Not old messages, just the ones currently being sent.

So I do the same thing in Python and use asyncio to create server/client with opposite ports to talk to my C++ server/client. However, if C++ server doesn't exist the Python client throws an error. Okay, wtf... So Python UDP client is gonna be extra steps because why? Because fuck you! That's why! lol

UDP Client Comparison:
C++: I don't give a shit, if you don't get the data then fuck off. I won't error no matter what.
Python: Oh shit, there is no server, so I won't even run. Because fuck you and wanting to send messages to the ether.

Now I need to do the same thing in C# and see what kind of "fuck you's" it will have.

What did I learn? I learned Python has a nice asyncio system similar to asio from boost.

Been staring at boost::asio to see if I need to thread the code. I am writing a plugin for skse. I am finding that Papyrus has its own threading now. It also has a programmable OnUpdate function that I can schedule every millisecond if I want. So I can have it process the asio context periodically. I think I can get away with non-threaded now. Just use async calls and service the event loop for this. My original plugin for OBSE used threading because there was just not support for it in the scripting at the time. With skse and papyrus I can actually thread things if I want. This really simplifies my plugin quite a bit. The throughput won't be high. I just want to service the networking portion at least every 10th of a second.

I am using a bunch of vcpkg based cmake projects in visual studio. I realized I don't understand how any of this works from the ground up. So I found this article:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/...

This was an interesting trip getting this to work on a newer version of an auto generated cmake project in vs. It took a bit to understand how to make the vcpkg preset work with the existing generated presets for debug/release x86/x64. Then I had the additional pain of figuring out how to include only the things I actually want from boost. I kept seeing conflicting methods because cmake versions keep changing how it is done.

I am glad to say after much swearing I finally figured out the modern way of using cmake with vcpkg and vs. It is very satisfying when everything downloads, configures, and compiles. I think vcpkg will be not that bad to work with. Still don't understand manifests yet.

Right now my libraries are not version selected. I should probably do that before it decides to install the next latest version of boost or something.

Want to give Google a giant "fuck you" to their AI results?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/...

I now have a custom google search that Firefox defaults to. It looks like I don't get AI results on first try. YMMV

So I am navigating the hellscape called vcpkg. It is a hellscape to me because I don't understand fuck all about how its supposed to work. It has things like manifests and keys which point to repo commits and other weird shit.

I am trying to learn how to get it to install boost.asio today. It keeps installing this old as fuck version 1.80 instead of latest 1.86. I try specifying the version in the vckpg.json file of my project. Then it starts throwing hands and saying it doesn't have port shit for other boost libraries. I try to provide versions for those and it throws more hands. I search and search to no avail. So I give up and let it install 1.80 and all its dependencies. Then its starting fucking erroring out compiling boost.coroutines. So I search on that. Nothing of substance. Just flabbergasted at this point. Does boost work at all with msvc?

I am looking through the errors and is says run "vcpkg update". This fails because I am in manifest mode. Why didn't it give me the command for manifest mode, is it stupid? Then I find the command for manifest mode: "vcpkg x-update-baseline". This updates it commit number is some random file I don't know about. Still don't know what the fuck that does. Then I run the config again on my vcpkg.json. This starts installing boost-asio 1.86. Okay, that is what I wanted in the first place.

So I let it run and do its thing. It installs everything and compiles everything. Its all ready to go. At this point I am like what the fuck is this shit. I don't really want to learn any of this shit. Yet there is someone somewhere that probably can't get enough of this. At work I will probably eventually need to learn this, along with cmake, and all its quirks. It just makes me tired to learn this just to get to a point to write one line of code. I am sure vcpkg will save me time and energy at some point. But 2-3 hours of guessing is annoying at best.

The last time I used boost on windows I just downloaded the source and built it. It was simple and then I just had to provide paths. vcpkg is nice in this respect. Especially when I upgrade the library.

I don't know what the point of this rant is. Getting tired of fighting tooling I guess. Already learning black magic trying to setup my build environment for making skse plugins. Docs are almost non-existent. I did find a discord with some cool people though. Respect to the trailblazers of this art.

So I decided I needed to tell you all a funny Christmas story.

I got a bunch of shirts for Christmas (not surprising). A couple of them were t-shirts and one was a red plaid shirt that buttons up. So to show my appreciation to my wife for the gifts I decided to wear a t-shirt and the plaid shirt (left unbuttoned so you can see funny t-shirt). I put them on and went to talk to my wife in her office at home:

me: Do you know what I would do if I had a wife like you?
her: I dunno, what?
me: Two Christmas shirts at the same time.

If you don't know the reference here is a link:
https://youtube.com/watch/...

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I would send you all Hawk Tuah coin, but I just spent my bonus shopping for ungrateful people. Okay, they aren't ungrateful, just unappreciative.

Anyway, gonna try and avoid devrant for probably a week.

And for you other assholes: Happy Festivus!

My boss uses chatgpt to code all the time. I watched his workflow and he will use chatgpt not for code, but to act like a search engine. He seems to be effective using it like this.

I struggle to include chatgpt in my workflow at all. I am using it to help learn C# to clarify things I cannot find in search. It doesn't always help.

So I have mixed feelings about using it in my work flow.

Demolishun is a hottie:

Just learned that the existing US administration is going to restrict AI to a just a handful of allowed companies. They are talking about limiting AI like they did physics during WW2.

If you don't hate your government then you don't know the evil shit they are doing.

Not sure what will happen come January.

I am experiencing deju vu:
https://reddit.com/r/csharp/...

dude: Why doesn't C# do this dynamic "like" thing?

community: How dare you like something from another language?! Don't you know C# is strongly type?! Dynamic is a curse on your children! <gets out torches and pitchforks>

random dude: Why don't you use <this method> to do this?

dude: Thanks "random dude", this does what I was looking for with a bit different syntax than I was expecting.

lol

Programmers are awesome!

What kind of soup do programmers eat?

Alphabit Soup

3 pm salami and cheese...

What I learned about C# this weekend:
1. I am shit at C#
2. There is a nice selection of libraries both from Microsoft and third party.
3. I like a lot of the design decisions to not make foot guns. Like you can't use an int as a bool. You must be explicit so you don't have hidden type conversions.
4. WPF isn't terrible, but it took me a bit to figure out how to make sure the front end can see changes by triggering events when a property changes. I knew this was a thing, but it took forever to figure out how. The new terminology for things is tripping me up.
5. I am shit at C#.

So what do I get out of 1.5 days of banging my head against the wall? An https server that simulates a hardware device and exchanges json messages back and forth. It does what my python code is doing now.

I found a nice library for https:
https://github.com/chronoxor/...
I learned quite a bit reading the code from this library.