Lovable Sidekick

But srsly to me it does feel like the future, because when I was a kid “by the year 2000” was synonymous with a glorious future of space hotels, undersea cities, moon bases… I can’t believe we’re a quarter of the way through the 21st Century and none of that has happened. On the plus side we did get really spiffy new ways to buy stuff we don’t need with money we don’t have, and fingertip access to pretty much all of human knowledge, which most of us ignore in our endless quest for entertainment. But oh well.

Dad said we’re getting a sourcebox!

snot?

Securing the db is more of an ops thing.

LOL not necessarily, especially in software.

Yeah it’s still broken, but at least it’s back to old broken not new broken.

As it should be. Airbags should go off when you crash, not when you drive near the edge of a cliff.

Never give up! Never surrender!

I would have gone with hammer.

Wow, I never even heard of TOML. Very interesting - thanks!

edit: after looking at it a bit I think I’ll actually try using it. But I find it ironic that the website for something billed as “for humans” and “easy to read” is done in light gray text on a white background. The CSS class they chose is even called “light gray” LOL.

I woulda tried them on JSON. As long as they use an editor that keeps track of nested brackets I think it’s much more natural than XML.

Better make sure the wheel isn’t under copyright tho!

I feel this! When I need to do something in my computer my first impulse is usually to think about writing the code. Doesn’t matter how many free tools are already around. Why? Because software design and coding is fun! It’s not cost-effective in terms of time and effort, but way more fun than reading a manual for an existing thing and getting good at that thing. Example: right now I’m looking for a self-hosted wiki to organize my upcoming D&D campaign. As I look through the docs for dokowiki and wikijs I’m already thinking, how hard can it be to write one? A mind is terrible thing!

“Recursive Backronym”

I doubt that the pay is insane yet. There are a lot more PHP devs than COBOL devs. About half of the web still runs on PHP. It’s true that COBOL runs about half of the financial world, but PHP is less than 30 years old whereas COBOL programs are relics from decades earlier, and generally only get updated minimally if the systems around them change.

I agree. A lot of people who mock PHP know almost nothing about it but they know they’re supposed to hate it because all the cool kids do.

Or TSP (trisodium phosphate) - which you can’t even make websites with, but it’s great for cleaning oil spots off the driveway.

Last week I found the code for the first website I created, way back in the mid 90s. The server-side part was written in Perl.

Great question! If it’s only a few GB I wouldn’t bother with tape. There are other options like

• Google Photos - I’ve been using it for 10+ years without filling up the free 10 or 15 GB, whatever it is.
• Burning a bunch of DVDs, repeat every 5 years.
• Get a couple cheap hard drives then replace 1 of them every 3-5 years so one is always fairly new.

What “mere users” wanted used to be the prime directive for software development. Now it’s whatever scheme the marketing team comes up with.