I like dark mode because I spent a lot of money on an OLED monitor.

Kraftwerk - Home Computer - YouTube[^]

If you're familiar with how joins work but are having problems figuring out how to use them in a particular query, it might be good to back up and look at the structure of the database you're working with. For instance, do you even have a good key to join on? A poor DB structure with a lack of normalization can make joins difficult or even impossible. If that's the problem, one way around it is to throw the data into temp tables with the correct structure you need for the joins and query against that. Speaking of which, in a addition to learning about SQL it's also a very good idea to learn the fundamentals of database design if you haven't already. Knowing about things like normalization, keys, and indexing really helps when writing SQL.

Joan M wrote:

the ones I am seeing require to be able to execute Microsoft SQL Server

Yeah, that's probably where the requirements are coming from. I love SQL Server, but a full-blown enterprise-level relational database like that is serious overkill for a single-user system. You also might have to look into the licensing for SQL Server if that isn't included, and it ain't very cheap. Are there alternatives that don't require SQL Server?

On a side note, I've often wondered why getting a CS degree requires calculus when few programmers ever use it. CS is based on logic more than math. I minored in philosophy as an undergrad, and the symbolic logic classes I took taught me a lot more about logic than I ever learned in math or CS classes. That served me well, I use logic in every programming project, but I've never had to integrate anything (which is good, because I've forgotten how). I think there's long been a misunderstanding about what CS is based on. It's logic not math, Turing wasn't doing math when he invented the programmable computer, he was reading analytic philosophy (Bertrand Russell, in particular) and imagining an automated logical machine based on that. Digital computers are logical machines, they can do math because logic is the foundation of math.

LOL, I once compared programmers to construction workers on this forum and people weren't having it :) My point being that professional programmers have to make things work in a practical sense in the real world, as opposed to the sort of theoretical programming that computer scientists do. So this is interesting to me. Is there a secret society behind this bent on world domination? How do I get into the inner circle, is there a special handshake? Or do you have to blink in binary or something?

honey the codewitch wrote:

professors are teaching that classes are effectively a single action

That sounds like a method, not a class. Or a class with one method, which smells funny. Factoring OO is something that's taught in school, but not really understood until you get experience with it. Judgment calls have to be made. I've had to work with OO code that broke everything down into atomic classes. It was a nightmare to trace the code, and imagine what that does to the stack.

There's no reason to use VB.Net on any new projects anymore, but there's a whole lot of legacy VB.Net out there. And it's not really worth re-writing it in C# unless you're biting the bullet and moving away from WebForms. I expect it will be supported for a long while yet, because legacy code.

As a kid I had two main obsessions: books and computers. By the time I was 10 I knew I wanted to be a programmer and writer. I'm also really into oddball tech and I spend a lot of time reading about that kind of thing too.

honey the codewitch wrote:

rotary/Wankel engines and such

That's an obsession of mine as well, along with vintage watches (especially the oddball ones, I have a whole collection of Accutrons). I drove an RX-7 and RX-8, I'm still sad about the demise of rotary sports cars.

If you think that's annoying, wait until the notification widget starts serving you ads :mad: You really want to use OneDrive, don't you? DON'T YOU!?

Physical storage and organization are different things. As a former librarian I can tell you that there's a whole field of cataloging devoted to this sort of organization, and it has evolved over centuries. Technology has moved this sort of thing from physical card catalogs to databases and changed how the physical material can be delivered, but the process of organizing the material (cataloging) hasn't really changed much. Books etc. are cataloged into specific subjects in order to make it easy to find all available material on a specific subject, but they are also cross-referenced so that they can be discovered when looking for related subjects. It's similar to a primary-to-foreign-key relationship. But what really matters is the organization of the information, how it is physically stored is just a matter of convenience like you say. So, for example, you can classify an early rock album as rock, but cross-reference that to blues as well. That makes the database design pretty simple, the hard part is coming up with the categories you need and deciding what goes where. There's a lot of grunt work in cataloging.

Trying to explain to Dunning-Kruger management types why their brilliant idea would cause a disaster. Favorite quote from a CEO: "it's all objects, right? Can't you just change it anyway you want?"

Oh. If this is about things like the pain of re-learning how to do the same things every time, for instance, MS decides to scramble the .Net framework, I'm feeling that a lot lately. And also the tedium of finding the one true way that everyone can agree on, when it all compiles down to the same thing anyway.

I'm not sure I get the issue. Web APIs already have a standard naming convention based on HTTP verbs, and that makes sense given that they use HTTP. I'd prefer that not to change. If you're saying you want a consistent naming convention for accessing any kind of data/storage with any kind of API/library/framework, then we'll never agree on what that should be. For instance, as a DB guy everything is CRUD to me, and I see every kind of data access through that lens and would name things accordingly if it were up to me. Doesn't mean anyone would agree with me though.

I have several, going back to the original with blank keys. They were a great alternative to the ubiquitous rubber-dome keyboards back then, but the world is full of mechanical keyboards now. There's nothing particularly special about Das these days. These days I mostly use hot-swappable Keychrons, and customize them. At the end of the day, a mechanical keyboard is just a platform for switches and keycaps. It's the switches and keycaps that really matter.

They did that, it was called the McDLT. It didn't go over well. I kind of liked them though.

For a cheap(ish) and simple solution, have you considered just wearing Bluetooth noise cancelling earbuds with a pair of muffs on over that?

Chris Maunder wrote:

Our CodeProject codebase uses WebForms and it's uneconomical to port to .NET Core / Blazor pages so we stick with what works.

Ha! I've been feeling shame for a long while now for being stuck on a legacy WebForms system, now I don't feel so bad :) We're working on re-doing it on a modern infrastructure though, it's gotten too difficult to integrate with modern systems and the 20-year-old codebase needs to be razed to the ground and re-written anyway.

That's like saying that you don't like wine because you had Boone's Farm once and didn't like it. George Lucas did not write great science fiction. Star Wars was popular mostly due to the special effects and Harrison Ford, not so much the story (and certainly not the dialog). It was a juvenile movie aimed at kids.

I hate the lights. I've been building my own gaming rigs since the '90s and saw this stuff creep in over time. Seems to have something to do with social media and people sharing pics of their stuff, so it all has to light up and look cool. It's almost impossible these days to find good gaming PC parts that don't light up, the last time I bought a new PSU even it had lights in it! I don't need my "work" desk looking like a disco. It's absurd. Keyboards, mice, GPUs, CPU fans, mobos, etc. All decked out like props in a low-budget sci-fi movie. So I got a jet black, totally enclosed case. Still leaks a lot of light through the vents, but at least they aren't distracting me from the screen. You know, the one bit that actually needs to light up.