Wrapping my brain around using #org-mode as a spreadsheet. Is there a way to pass a range of cells as a vector to a custom function? Ideally, I'd like to embed this function into the file itself. #emacs
That shows you how to define a column formula with elisp. I think think usual "vsum" and friends are vector operations from the emacs calculator, so it seems very likely?
I gotta go to the bike shop, but my heuristic would be:
1. I know vsum works in org-mode spreadsheet formulas 2. I know the v stands for "vector" 3. Can I use that function's source to define my own vector operations?
I like to think the answer is YES. I am hopeful at least.
@Shae Erisson So, of appears that I can pass simple (single cell) references into raw elisp functions, but not ranges. I'll have to have a closer look at vsum as mentioned earlier to see if there's a solution there.
I would be interested if you manage to read org tables as lisp lists. I haven't tried it yet, but I plan to do it occasionally, so cfw would get an org-table import/export. Currently it can do CSV.
Hi @me If you insert a formula in a table cell #orgmode will put it after the table in a special line (so you can see and edit it after) and insert the result in place. Of course, it can be recalculated anytime you want to.
With a whole bunch of folks leaving MS Word and similar as of late, seems like the right time to post this again, but I put together a little resource to help explain *why* it's so important to ditch Word and similar.
I even have my e-mail signature set to remind people to be careful before opening things in Word; after all, it can be really easy to accidentally betray trust by opening a draft.
(If "consider before printing this e-mail" is a thing, avoiding carbon-chugging LLMs has to be at *least* as important.)
the article makes a very good point about MS Office using any documents, including those from other people, to train their LLMs. I mean if you accept MS terms, fine. But people who send you documents (which may have been created with Libreoffice) have not agreed to any of those terms. Makes me wonder if the terms of service are even legal...
@Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ 95% of the time, what I want to do can be achieved with a simple text editor and a markdown file (though these days I tend to use org-mode instead). Using a word processor at all is usually overkill in the first place.
I think the article is perhaps a bit verbose and long-winded to win over a lot of laypeople / disinterested office workers. Adding a "tl;dr: opening documents in Word/GDocs automatically uploads the contents for AI training without the author's consent. Consider alternatives like LibreOffice" might help.
Also, you used the term "LLM" before you use the term "large language model", and the target audience probably doesn't already know what LLM stands for. Same with GAN.
Thanks to everyone who's pointed out that the page is very difficult to read on some systems; I have not had that happen on any of the laptops and/or phones that I have access to, so I wasn't able to notice that earlier, and I apologize for the accessibility issues that creates.
I'm not, unfortunately, a professional webdev, and have found it a little challenging to make a plain HTML page that works everywhere.
Someone in DMs very kindly suggested a fix, and I'll look at applying that ASAP.
I *think* it should be fixed? On my laptop and phone, it looks identical to how it used to, but it now doesn't fix the zoom level in CSS, such that hopefully it should work well in more browsers and on more devices.
Thanks again to everyone who let me know about the problem, and for the kind person who suggested a fix in DMs.
I guess you could fairly easily write a macro that automatically created a lexical scope and added some prefixes to variable used within its body - Doug Hoyte's "Let over lambda" book has #CommonLisp examples of this kind of approach as way to cut down the syntactic overhead of using gensym in macros. Without much thought, I'd assume something similar could be done in #EmacsLisp
@The ol' tealeg 🐡 I'm thinking something a little more robust involving using a symbol's property list to store everything contained within that namespace.
I'm probably biting off more than I can chew at this point in my understanding of elisp, but I'm sure this idea will stick around in my brain until I have enough of an understanding to pull it (or something comparable) off.
...or I find some already existing thing that does what I want (which is more likely).
SBCL, for example, has the in-package macro set the value of the special variable *PACKAGE* which, I guess, would then ultimately get used in every definition and reference.
I haven't having looked at it, but I imagine that it mostly comes down to switching out in-buffer eval functions to those which are current-package aware. If you resolve and swap out all symbols with their "absolute" versions during definition, you should be able to call that code from different namespaces without problems.
where (:use nil) serves the same purpose as (:use :cl) in Common Lisp.
Afterwards, you can either do
(in-namespace :foo) ...
or
(with-namespace :foo ...)
You should also be able to file-locally set `buffer-namespace', but I haven't tried it.
Here's a working snippet:
(define-namespace :foo (:use nil) (:export bar setq nil))
(define-namespace :baz (:use :foo) (:export bar))
(with-namespace :foo (setq foo 2))
foo:bar ;; => 2
(with-namespace :baz (setq bar 5) (setq quux 10))
foo:bar ;; => 5 baz:bar ;; => 5 baz:quux ;; => 10
although you'll need to patch elisp--preceding-sexp for C-x C-e to see the individual values. Here's the code you need to evaluate (at least on my version, I suggest trying this in a fresh emacs in case something goes wrong): 0x0.st/84sj.txt
I have fleshed it out more (or rather, ported over CL's packages): git.sr.ht/~thuna/cl-package (this is still the same repo, but I've changed the name).
The demo is: - require cl-package / load cl-package.el - require cl-package-reader / load cl-package-reader.el - go to a new buffer (or the scratch buffer) - M-x cl-package-activate-reader RET - Insert the snippet - Do eval-buffer, or after applying the same patch as before (replace `(read...)' with `(funcall load-read-function...)' in `elisp--preceding-sexp') go through each form (you can skip cl-in-package) one by one with C-x C-e - Have fun
The snippet is:
(cl-defpackage test (:use :global) (:shadow baz) (:export baz))
Where the second nil means that no symbol with the literal name "test:baz" exists in emacs, and that the symbol we're referring to with test:baz is something else entirely, which you can also see with:
(eq (intern "test:baz") 'test:baz) => nil
There are probably a lot of problems, some of which are: - defpackage does not play nice with redefinitions (or rather, you can't do it at all), just pop cl-package-registry (but not completely, always leave the last item, if you want to fully reset it set it to (list obarray)) and redefine it again - I have the elisp runtime in the pseudo-package :global, but trying to use :global in your own package will force it to check all (tens of thousands of!) symbols for conflicts, so it'll take a couple seconds during the defpackage in the snippet. I will later define packages containing the various elisp packages for proper modularity, so it should get better - Once you evaluate cl-in-package, eval-buffer starts with cl-in-package, which it probably shouldn't be doing, but I don't know and who knows how many more!
@screwtape Oh come on you understand the situation perfectly ;) You can write hacks to make it look like there are namespaces, but at the end of the day, they are just hacks.
There has been multiple discussions about it on emacs-devel, and there is no way to get elisp out of the dark ages until the usual suspects are replaced. Which is not happening any time soon.
@screwlisp @Nicolas Martyanoff If you think I'd actually have anything interesting to say. I feel I can't really hold a candle to some of your previous guests. I'm just aimlessly noodling around with stuff.
You know I like to set an extremely low bar for quality personally. And after all, everyone eats at your sushi place every week...!
It's also interesting to everyone to get opinions on common lisp from the outside or somewhat recent arrivals. I think you and jeremy_list are both interesting as sort of Haskell/MOO/emacs/common lispers.
Counterpointing the "golang for serious business" long-time lisp-heads like @galdor
So, I've finally settled on a technique to keep shimmer inks from clogging my #FountainPens and it's working well, but it's not exactly condusive to writing in #teeline which is what I use 90% of the time these days.
It looks like I wasn't moving the pen enough. As I would keep writing, the shimmer would collect in the feed until it just straight-up clogged. I didn't realize I had to periodically roll the pen around even while I was actively using it. This should have been obvious by the fact that my writing kept getting more and more, well... shimmery before the ink stopped flowing.
I'll try this approach in the future.
Rookie mistake, but in my defense, I didn't even know that shimmer inks were even a thing until late last year.
It always amuses me whenever I think about the fact that I got one of my favourite #FountainPens for free with a bottle of ink. It's even more amusing that I've never inked that pen up with that ink.
@Kate McDonald It's a bit of a pain to work with because I only use it with a dip pen* and have to juggle that with a UV flashlight. That aside, it works really well. Completely invisible under normal lighting conditions and shows up really well under UV.
* Because I feel that cleaning it out of a regular pen would be a pain.
@jlamothe Ah it looks so fun! You've made me excited again about trying my sample. I got mine with the intention of using it for letters to my nephews . . . one of these years I will gift them a UV flashlight and then I can send them letters to read with it 😀
So, with this past #Inkvent calendar, I've found myself in possession of a bunch of shimmering inks. Problem is that they tend to clog my #FountainPens. Are there any inexpensive pens that handle shimmering inks well?
I've found that my Wing Sung 3008s don't clog up much anyway, and when they do they're easy to take apart to clean them, at least once you know how. Also cheap enough to be disposable once they break. 😀 The downside is that they're known for cracking and/or the screw in the cap rusting, hence the importance of being cheap.
I've cleaned out two this weekend - I can't usually get the last little bits of glitter out, but what's left doesn't seem to block it when reassembled.
huh, weird. Which ink? There are some in the inkvent that have larger and too much shimmer and is basically for dip pens as far as I'm concerned, I don't remember what they're marked with - not shimmer or chameleon but something like star bright or something.
@redbanjer 🪕🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱🇲🇽 Yeah, dip pens were my go-to solution. It's just annoying to have to keep mixing up the ink in the bottle in addition to continually dipping the pen.
I bought a few of those small plastic "Dinky Dips" ink containers- they come in three sizes. I can use my ink syringe to put some of my shimmer ink into a Dinky, add a drop or two of Gum Arabic (to help make it more dip nib friendly), and it's a better size--- you can use the dip nib to stir the ink each time you dip it in, since it's not that deep and the container mouth is wide (straight up and down shape). Inks stores well in it, the plastic cap screws tight. Just a thought!
It looks like I wasn't moving the pen enough. As I would keep writing, the shimmer would collect in the feed until it just straight-up clogged. I didn't realize I had to periodically roll the pen around even while I was actively using it. This should have been obvious by the fact that my writing kept getting more and more, well... shimmery before the ink stopped flowing.
I'll try this approach in the future.
Rookie mistake, but in my defense, I didn't even know that shimmer inks were even a thing until late last year.
I have successfully built my first #Emacs package. I want to clean it up a bit before I consider releasing it though. Also, while I can build a simple (single file) package, buildig a multi-file one is still eluding me.
When I try to install it, I get the following (less than helpful) error message: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
Is there a way I can get more detail on why this is failing?
If you use M-x toggle-debug-on-error, you should get a full stack trace showing what was called, with what value and from where. That should at least get you started.
So getting a stack trace doesn't seem to have provided any useful additional information, but I have a potential starting point. When I look at the auto-generated *-pkg.el file from the installed single file version, I notice that there are some additional parameters passed to define-package that were not mentioned in the elisp documentation.
To demonstrate that I'm not crazy, this is from section 42.3 of the elisp manual: Function: define-package name version &optional docstring requirements
This is from the documentation for define-package: (define-package NAME-STRING VERSION-STRING &optional DOCSTRING REQUIREMENTS &rest EXTRA-PROPERTIES)
So Katy has a #Jinhao10 and today the clicker seems to be jamming. When pressed, it seems to resist extending or retracting the nib. I'm giving it a cleaning right now to make sure there was no debris or anything in there stopping it from working, but I don't know if that'll fix it.
Has anyone experienced this before? Is there a fix?
Is the trap door opening/closing properly? It could be wedged somehow. You should be able to poke the nib unit through it manually with the top removed and see if it works as expected.
Also when it's apart you can press the rear of the nib unit up into the tail and press the button and see if it operates normally that way.
Then you at least know which end of the pen is misbehaving.
@Jim P. It looks like there was some debris caught in the mechanism. A good cleaning seems to have resolved the issue. I'm a little confused as to where it came from though.
Coming down off a panic attack relapse. I'm medicated and laying in bed in the dark. I don't know of this was the right strategy, but I needed to stop the fireworks in my brain, and shutting out as much external stimulus as possible seemed the right thing to do.
As a side note, I'm now pretty much convinced I'm somewhere on the spectrum. This felt a lot like the way I've heard an autistic meltdown to be. Sounds were particularly jarring. Katy was packing up her equipment to send back to her old job and the sound of the packing tape was actually painful.
I can think of a number of other incidents where I've become seemingly irrationally agitated at something that should have been a minor thing, and any form of external stimulus whatsoever only made it worse (which really sucks when people try to "help").
That's very much an AS response. Some noises, physical sensations, environments are just intolerable, as if they're actively attacking your brain the way allergens do your immune system.
Finding out that my responses to things were *real*, and not just me being temperamental, was a big help.
Katy likes these YouTube channels where they teach about canning and such. One of the people in one of these videos is wearing a shirt with what looks like an AR-15 that says "defense is not a crime".
What in the cinnamon toast fuck do you need an AR-15 to defend yourself from?
How about: The current version of the Stazi (rhymes with mice), PB and III%er paramilitary and the right wing meal team 6 deplorables who are itching to use one of the 20 million AR’s that are out there right now. If you don’t want one, don’t buy one. Hope this helps
Got my hair cut for the first time in probably a year because I have an interview tomorrow for a job I really want to get (and think I have a pretty good shot at).
It looks decent, but has revealed a good deal more grey than I'm accustomed to seeing.
This morning Katy noticed a rash all around my neck. I can only attribute it to the new (to me) shirt I wore yesterday. It's like my body has revolted against wearing a shirt and tie ever again.
Remind your kids not to handle any Easter eggs they find outside; if they do, the mother bunny won’t return to the nest and nobody will feed the baby Jesus when the eggs hatch.
We just filled out the card for my niece's wedding. We took some time to figure out the perfect wording, select the right ink and nib, practice my handwriting so that it was on point, and after all that, I finally came to the realisation that I'm not certain as to whether or not she's old enough to have been taught cursive.
1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but 2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but 3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So 4. Now the LLM code points to malware.
I was surprised for a few seconds, then realized of course LLMs are just making up package names. They’re imitating real code, not actually coding. They don’t think or understand.
TIL that Instacart now charges a "membership" to get higher priority on assignment of batches. This does not guarantee you anything, it just allows them to further exploit a workforce they're already working to the bone.
Do they not realize that many (if not most) of the people who are working this job are doing it because they don't really have any other options? And they expect them to pay for the privilege now?
Just when I thought they couldn't possibly get any more predatory, they pull this shit.
Also, I get the whole "don't bite the hand that feeds you" thing. I might take that more seriously if it was actually feeding me. Mostly it just slaps me in the face.
@Karsten Johansson I'd say so. When I say Real World, I mean somewhere where one can earn a living with it. Sadly, I know next to nothing about quantum computing though.
@larry77 Lisp is a symbolic language, which lends itself handily to the symbolic data inherent to quantum computing. You'll see a lot of macro use as a result.
And Lisp is interactive. So is Python, but you don't have nearly the amount of malleability for experimentation with Python. The fact that you can move things around without breaking the code counts when you're dealing with multiple individual qbits.
Yep, quite a few places, though they generally don’t talk about it much. Quantum computing, chip design, logistics, and drug discovery are a few that come to mind.
If I were to make a broad generalization, they tend to be fields where deep subject and algorithmic expertise is more valuable than relatively more-easily-replaced developers.
Which is, of course, not to say that e.g. Python/JavaScript/etc developers don’t also need subject matter expertise, but the necessary understanding is generally shallower and less entangled with the algorithmic complexity.
(Again, painting with a very broad brush here.)
There’s also an axis of software lifecycle, too. If you’re constantly changing requirements it’s less valuable to remember last year’s nuances. Different economics than if you need to ship something stable for years.
@curtosis I have to say, the kind of job that would be looking for Lisp developers sounds like the kind of environment I might actually want to work in. I've been pretty depressed about the state of the modern tech industry.
The last dev job I had kinda burnt me out because every month or so, I was on to an entirely different project and never had a chance to develop that deep level of domain knowledge on anything. It was very frustrating.
We gather example companies that we find here: github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lis… Mind you it's nothing official. There are job offers sometimes on reddit, but also on the two LinkedIn groups, sometimes on Twitter alone, and sometimes you get a direct message (happened).
There are many in the quantum space, such as HLR labs. reddit's /u/stylewarning works for it. They released the impressive Coalton and even contribute to SBCL.
HLR, Ravenpack and Keepit are probably still hiring.
Personally, as a solo developer, I use CL more and more in my stack, ditching Python the more I can. I wrote about it: lisp-journey.gitlab.io/blog/ru…
Instead of extending a Python software I write independent modules in CL. It works well for standalone scripts too (read a DB, process data, send everything to a FTP, to a web service, by email…) It's such a joy.
Recently, the awesome-lisp-companies list was posted on HN, more people got to know it (look, this list is fan-cooked and we add companies when we learn about one, often by chance, don’t assume it’s anything “official” or exhaustive), and Alex Nygren…
I used Common-Lisp on a few professional production projects; a data transformation system for moving data between two companys' different systems. An event processing engine that applies weird complex rules to GPS tracking locations. A web micro-service or two to support some mobile apps. All of those services, except maybe the first, are still running in production. Plus, of course, a few personal projects here and there.
For all the fancy climbers and beds and such that we've gotten for the cat, his two favourite places to hang out are a random paper bag and our boot tray.
One thing I really dislike, is the amount people think hosting data is hard.
People talk about needing dozens of cores or gigs of ram to host a database or a website. They get impressed by projects where someone runs a website from an Apple ][ or a pi0.
We, as free software advocates, need to remind people that the charger for a Macbook Pro is enough to run a website, not the Macbook Pro
One of the reason I like static websites is because of the low overhead on the server.
Also you don't have to back up the website because it's already on your computer. Just backup your computer.
And because of this static websites are very portable and can even be run on free hosts. Just be sure to use your own domain so when the free host goes squirelly you can move.
Blogs, audio, video, full websites all have static host solutions.
@silverwizard That said, I fully understand how the average person* could not be bothered to figure out how to do it. The technology industry has done a great job of reducing all their offerings into little magic black boxes that everyone's afraid to look inside of for fear that they'll break them.
* The average person will never read this post because the fedi is too complicated and scary.
One thing I want to focus on is internal - not just internal messaging. I hate all the times I see a youtuber show off their Battlestation. Or when someone builds a handheld device with a full on Raspberry Pi.
@DHeadshot's Alt but I see so many people getting into FOSS who feel they need large server to host things! Even people who know better about slim websites
Reasons somebody may have misspelled a word: glitchy phone screen, non-native english speaker, they expected their spellchecker to fix it and it failed, dyslexia, standardised spelling is a fake invention of the printing press industry to sell more moveable type
Reasons somebody my have substituted a homophone (eg their and there): Their dictation software fucked up, their spell checker fucked up, they're a non-native english speaker, they were thinking verbally, standardised spelling is a fake invention of the printing press industry to sell more moveable type.
Reasons somebody may have put in the wrong word: Their spellchecker did a substitution and they didn’t notice, their dictation software fucked up, they speak a different English dialect in which that word was correct, they were editing the sentence and made a mistake.
Syntax errors very rarely indicate unclear thinking. They're just typos. It's the logic errors that fuck everything up. Anybody judging the value of an argument based on syntax is missing the more important picture: the printing press companies have lead us down an evil path, but its not to layt too eskayp
Happens to me all the time, especially when I'm composing a post on a dinky phone screen with on-screen keys that are tiny pixels I must mash with my meaty sausage fingers.
I tend to compose non-linearly, maybe writing the conclusion last, then write the main points above it, and only then do the intro. That's often more than the max 500 chars, so then I go back to shorten sentences, change verb tenses, remove adjectives. If I'm not careful, that can result in weird syntax & spelling
So much of cybersecurity is "We must secure the Orphan Crushing Machine so that unauthorized people do not crush the orphans," and not "Why the fuck are you building an Orphan Crushing Machine in the first place?"
@mattblaze Maybe someone will build a small wifi-connected orphan crushing machine for the home! One which will be fully replaceable by squeezing the expensive proprietary orphans by hand anyway, but shh, you definitely want your own OCM. Orphanero(tm): Order yours today or we'll go out of business. Please.
@mattblaze easy now or someone will offshore the Orphan Crushing Machine and then we’ll have Orphan Crushing Supply-Chain security to worry about as well!
@0xtero @mattblaze There is now a 104% tariff on imported crushed orphans but that's ok because we will go back to crushing American orphans in America, like God intended.
@0xtero @mattblaze are you mad, it will take us ten years to build the tooling needed to crush orphans at the current scale of imported orphan crushers!
Australian Standards require orphan crushing machines to work counter-clockwise, the reverse direction to the world's other orphan crushing machines.
Turns out, the Standard was sponsored by a small manufacturer of orphan crushing machines in the Deputy Premier's electorate. That firm is about to become rich. They've made a very large gift to the politician's grandson, coincidentally 10% of the profit.
I'm not even in cybersecurity, and that still the best quote ever. I'm not sure I was supposed to laugh but I did (which doesn't bode well for my mental health).
my favourite thing about this is that sometimes the response to criticism of the Orphan Crushing Machine sounds like “a lot of good people can only be employed by the Orphan Crushing Machine! Why do you hate good jobs?” Or something like it.
Come on now, we're the geeks. We gives our boss what it seeks. The "why" is beyond our pay-grade. All we want is to get paid. Ours not to wonder why. Be meek, and don't even try. Ours just to thrill and chill. Code meditation, while sitting still. We ain't tryna Kill Bill. We just wanna pay our bills.
just like geospatial. "We need to be able to precisely locate crushable orphans and route mobile Crushing Machines to them as efficiently as possible. Oh wait, we can also get orphans to volunteer their locations *and* improve Crushing Machine routing maps!"
Yeah like Oh No! Evil hackers might have gotten access to this giant database of surveillance data labeled "marketmanipulation.xls." We need to only let "Market Manipulators, Inc" access that data, or someone might do something bad with it!
@TerrorBite "The shareholders demand more orphan blood and bonemeal NOW! And if the CEO doesn't capitulate we'll kick 'em out and replace with someone who will!"
And then they extort you by saying: "Hey, but wouldn't you rather have an Orphan Crushing Machine that *didn't* accidentally leak the data of their parents in an incident, rather than one that did?"
And yes, the only answer to this is: Stop the madness and also stop collecting that data. But capitalism means you're right when you deliver shareholder value I guess.
Got a rejection letter form one of the jobs I'd applied for. I have to say, I'm not terribly broken up about this one. I applied because I'm trying not to be overly picky, but I don't see myself as having been happy there long-term.
Dear state and local governments: STOP using Google Drive as your only means to disseminate public information.
Private systems are not public, they are subject to arbitrary access controls with no public oversight or appeals process, and therefore they do NOT meet your responsibility to provide information via public means.
Anxiety's been bad again lately. I am moderately worried about losing the apartment. Taking steps to try to keep that from happening, but sometimes just trying to engage with the problem brings on a panic attack.
I have medication to help with that now, but it makes it hard to think clearly. I will survive this one way or another, but my life is going to have to change. I don't handle change well.
Yeah I think the most important thing that people don't tend to get about anxiety/panic is how crippling it can be and how it makes dealing with some everyday things all but impossible at times.
And of course not dealing with those everyday things makes everything worse and things start to spiral.
Do you have someone who can help you? Someone you trust to *get it* and, at least, just be with you through this stuff?
@uoou Yeah, I actually agreed to go off ADHD meds because while functioning without them is far more difficult, dealing with this is essentially impossible.
This probably won't help me in my current job search, but is it worth learning COBOL? I've heard that there are still a bunch of critical systems out there that use it, and that it's hard to find COBOL devs these days.
Is this still the case? The only downside I can see is that I'd have to program in COBOL.
I did Cobol in my studies. It's quirky but a fairly straightforward language to learn. It's not sexy but solid, and at least you won't be dealing with all the boilerplate Java or csharp junk.
Cobol is only half the deal though. In all likelihood you'll be working in a mainframe environment so may come into contact with Rexx JCL, CICS, and all the other good stuff as well. 😄
@TinCoyote Yeah, I've got a bunch of other languages under my belt. It's just that the job market is flooded with other people who also know those languages. I do have some strength in a relatively niche language (Haskell); it's just that there doesn't seem to be a ton of demand for it (though there is some).
A reading knowledge of COBOL would be useful for understanding of parts needing replacement, especially where requirements and test cases are missing, while putting the most effort into expertise in potential target languages.
Writing COBOL requires fast typing skills. It's very verbose.
"Subtract Expenses from Gross-Revenue giving Profit"
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
Having worked adjacent to 4 different mainframes at this point in my career along with their "modernization" efforts. Reading COBOL, not terrible. Writing it, eh, probably not so bad but I've never done, only had to read and comprehend what it does. And there are non-MFs that provide implementation of COBOL so you can learn on your own time.
The devil is going to be understanding IBM systems "junk": CICS, DASD, DCLGEN, TSO, RACF etc
@billinkc What he said. Mainframe basics are more important than COBOL, I'd say.
I work for a company that's doing "Mainframe Modernization" and as a result we have to understand the old crappy non-modern stuff in order to implement new stuff! (Currently my group isn't reimplementing anything based in Cobol. We do Db2 monitoring stuff.)
(We have AI hype on the front page but really we're just programming. I guess some departments might be doing AI, but I think we're just scared we'll miss the bandwagon. So don't ignore us just for that.)
Rocket Software provides IT modernization and IT automation solutions that help businesses solve their most complex IT challenges, across infrastructure, data, and applications.
@nosrednayduj OMG super small world. One of the projects I was on dealt with model 204/m204. We ended up building a real time synchronization between m204 and SQL Server via messaging. It was going to be a very cool way to modernize the client's data storage while they incrementally switched the front ends.
If you have no mainframe experience, the first thing I would do is get some mainframe experience or study the mainframe environment. Include JES2. If you only have one or two other programming languages that you have mastered, then I would go for something else that is in current development use. If it's your fourth or fifth language, get COBOL. It's quicker and easier to pick up a language after you have a few under your belt and the concepts are clear in your mind. Oh, and a mainframe environment is not the only place it comes in handy. I did a little work for a steel company that had Critical applications in micro focus object-oriented COBOL, and they had a huge IT department, but I was the only one local with current cobol experience. You never know when that knowledge might become critical.
Also, it was an expectation that I submit to random drug testing. No, I do not want to lose my job because they found amphetamines in my system (legitimately prescribed for ADHD). I already have to jump through enough hoops to get them in the first place.
Went to pick up a prescription and the guy ahead of me in line was chewing the pharmacist out about the automated system, which admittedly sucks but is certainly a decision made by corporate, not her.
He repeatedly threatened to take his business elsewhere. Were I in her position, the response I'd have wanted to give was "please do".
In case you are wondering why my public PGP key is expired, it is because I would like to discourage people from sending me PGP-encrypted email. The number of times I have had people send me mail in the clear that they appear to have thought was encrypted is NOT SMALL.
When GDPR was looming, we set up PGP and S/MIME in the small IT company I work for, because we anticipated several of our clients would be interested in it (since they deal with sensitive data). While we did get it to work, it was so user unfriendly that we abandoned any plans to teach our clients how to use it and looked for other solutions instead.
right you are, the failure mode is terrible. The only other security related tool I'm aware of that could fail the user that hard is IPSec; it was long ago, but IIRC back in the day I saw connections that seemed secure but were only signed.
I don't blame you. PGP is a security UX shitshow. it was excusable in 1995 when we didn't know better or have good alternatives, but it hasn't really gotten much better in the 30 years since.
funny enough, I use pgp frequently. But literally never for email, and almost never use the asymmetrical part... just for symmetric one-off file tasks.
The alternative is arcane openssl commands, which... ugh. Nasty.
I once had to email sensitive docs as part of security clearance process. the destination email server couldnt use opportunistic TLS and the recipient didnt understand or have tools for PGP de-crypt
so even when it made sense to use PGP, the tools/UX mean it didnt really make sense.
thunderbird is ok at pgp, without being truly seemless. I wouldnt want to rely on it under stress or with low pgp confidence
The FreeBSD Mail admin team still insisted on using PGP the last time I had to ask them to do anything and they required PGP emails signed with the key in the FreeBSD handbook. My flow was:
As usual, you're right. Email was never supposed to be encrypted. It's a decades-old protocol, which is still good for sending out newsletters and other public info.
For sensitive personal communication, there are much more suitable and convenient options with in-built end-to-end encryption.
@9x0rg I've kept using PGP under the rationale that some security is better than no secirity, though @evacide's point is well made and has given me something to think about.
The number of people who have emailed my EFF account from their Proton account thinking that they were sending me an end-to-end encrypted email would surprise you.
Katrina Katrinka
in reply to Ben Winslow • • •