The Insider News

Re: Biden wants to break Apple and Google’s control over mobile app distribution

1-Feb-23 8:16

Ars Technica[^]:
Gov't report recommends laws targeting mobile "gatekeepers" Apple and Google.

Coming up next: Millions of people have malware on their phones. Will no one do something?

Nelek1-Feb-23 11:17

Re: Biden wants to break Apple and Google’s control over mobile app distribution

1-Feb-23 11:17

With Android you can already avoid Google... if you can manage it and / or you trust the alternative stores.

M.D.V.

If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.

den2k881-Feb-23 21:03

den2k88

1-Feb-23 21:03

Only Apple has this issue, since with Android you can either install APKs directly or give permissions to apps to install APKs, like F-Droid.

Also, if we're talking about malware, both Google and Apple themselves already spy on everything we do.

GCS/GE d--(d) s-/+ a C+++ U+++ P-- L+@ E-- W+++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X

Microsoft will notify you when a new widget is available

Kent Sharkey1-Feb-23 8:01

Re: Microsoft will notify you when a new widget is available

1-Feb-23 8:01

OnMSFT[^]:
Microsoft is now testing a new feature that will help you do more with widgets.

How can you ignore them if you don't know they exist?

Nelek1-Feb-23 11:16

Bounded Flexible Arrays in C

1-Feb-23 11:16

Seriously? As if it were not enough annoying yet...

Some people bringing the big ideas at redmon should try to take their heads out of their a... before trying to think.

M.D.V.

Kent Sharkey1-Feb-23 8:01

Re: Bounded Flexible Arrays in C

1-Feb-23 8:01

Kernel.org[^]:
How to modernize C arrays for greater memory safety: a case-study in refactoring the Linux kernel and a look to the future

int array[640] ought to be enough for everyone

Nelek1-Feb-23 11:20

A moment of silence for all the drives that died in the making of this Backblaze report

1-Feb-23 11:20

128KB RAM too... Unsure | :~

M.D.V.

Kent Sharkey1-Feb-23 8:01

Re: A moment of silence for all the drives that died in the making of this Backblaze report

1-Feb-23 8:01

The Register[^]:
Cloud backup outfit finds that older HDDs fail more – who knew?

Don't let your hard drives get old!

"This increase as a drive model ages follows the bathtub curve, whereby a typical drive can be expected to exhibit a rash of early failures, followed by a period when there are relatively few, followed by an uptick once more as all the drives approach the end of their lives and wear out." <-- curious. A "break-in period"?

Nelek1-Feb-23 11:21

VS Toolbox: MAUI App Accelerator to jump-start .NET MAUI scaffolding

1-Feb-23 11:21

I still have an USB1.0 (is there a 0.x?) 64 GB HDD from early 2000s. And it works... slow as hell, but it works.

M.D.V.

Kent Sharkey1-Feb-23 7:46

1-Feb-23 7:46

Visual Studio magazine[^]:
The tool takes over the Visual Studio "File > New Project" setup process upon hitting the Create button, after which MAUI App Accelerator steps in with a wizard that lets developers point and click for options concerning .NET version (7 or 6), coding style (MVVM Toolkit, Code Behind, C# Markup), navigation style (Flyout, Tabs, Empty Shell, None), Pages/Views (multiple options) and other features such as MAUI Community Toolkit, AppCenter and several others.

For those that miss the days of yore, when wizards roamed the land

Introducing ChatGPT Plus

Kent Sharkey1-Feb-23 7:31

1-Feb-23 7:31

OpenAI[^]:
We’re launching a pilot subscription plan for ChatGPT, a conversational AI that can chat with you, answer follow-up questions, and challenge incorrect assumptions.

It will still take over the world, but now it will also charge you $20/month while doing it

C# is dying

Kent Sharkey1-Feb-23 7:08

1-Feb-23 7:08

Andrew Zuo[^]:
In the last few years I have become very worried about the fate of C#

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded"

This one won't be appearing in the mailing, as it's on Medium and a lot of people have trouble accessing that site (or disagree with its limitations on reading). However, I didn't want it to not have a chance to be discussed. If you're not able to access it on Medium, try the ripped version[^].

So, why didn't I just post it to the daily newsletter using the ripped version? I dunno. It just didn't feel right.

TTFN - Kent

Forogar 1-Feb-23 7:17

Forogar

1-Feb-23 7:17

"C# is dying" as fast as COBOL is dying, IMHO. In other words, it will still be around at least 50 years from now - assuming we still are.

- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.

PIEBALDconsult1-Feb-23 7:20

PIEBALDconsult

1-Feb-23 7:20

(Not clicking that.)

Just yesterday I was conversing with a VB.net practitioner (he seemed normal otherwise :shrug: ).
And I again recalled that the demise of C# in favor of VB.net has been mentioned at least as long ago as 2003.

I do still long for the language which is to follow C#, and the framework it uses.
Not holding my breath.

D continues to be the language I would learn if I had a reason to.

Kent Sharkey1-Feb-23 7:45

1-Feb-23 7:45

tl;dr: Cause of death according to the author is "feature creep". Sigh | :sigh:

TTFN - Kent

PIEBALDconsult1-Feb-23 7:56

PIEBALDconsult

1-Feb-23 7:56

Which I can understand. I use C# 3.

Many bad decisions have been made. We need a new language which learns from the mistakes.

Nelek1-Feb-23 11:08

1-Feb-23 11:08

PIEBALDconsult wrote:
We need a new language which learns from the mistakes.

As if we (human race) would learn from our mistakes... D'Oh! | :doh:

M.D.V.

obermd1-Feb-23 7:44

obermd

1-Feb-23 7:44

So his real complaints are that he feels compelled to use the latest and greatest syntactic sugar and isn't getting paid as much to write the same sloppy code as before.

Need to find my cricket violin.

Tasadit1-Feb-23 21:50

Tasadit

1-Feb-23 21:50

I must admit though, I do dislike changes that save some smartypants in Redmond from typing a couple of keystrokes and completely change the look and feel of the language.

obermd2-Feb-23 4:22

obermd

2-Feb-23 4:22

"var" is in my list of stupid changes. It makes the code harder to understand.

trønderen2-Feb-23 5:58

trønderen

2-Feb-23 5:58

If "var" replaces the same type information that is written in plaintext on the same line, to the right of the equals sign, then I do not see how it makes the code harder to understand. This is typical for an object being initialized by a "new". Saying the same thing twice on the same line is a form of redundancy that I dislike.

If you at programming/compile time cannot know the datatype returned e.g. from a LINQ query, so you must ask at runtime about the details of what you got, I do not see any alternative that is obviously easier to understand than "var".

Of course "var" is sometimes abused. I've seem examples where the programmer - most likely with a background from script languages - seems to say Oh Goody! Now I can pretend that C# is a typeless language! I am in favor of strict typing.

So I cannot agree that "var" is "stupid" - only that there are stupid uses of "var".

Nelek2-Feb-23 10:03

2-Feb-23 10:03

trønderen wrote:
So I cannot agree that "var" is "stupid" - only that there are stupid uses of "var".

Not only for "var", many features could get into your definition

M.D.V.

Jeremy Falcon1-Feb-23 8:05

Jeremy Falcon

1-Feb-23 8:05

I didn't click the link, but while I do agree all languages evolve and/or get replaced (just look at the history of them) and so C# will be included in that eventually too... C/C++ is still around. COBOL is still around. ASM is still around. Sure, it's special use cases and perhaps not the cool new thing, but the world doesn't switch overnight. Even though it will switch eventually.

As a side note, all languages as we know them today are dying. The next wave of tech will thin the lines of desktop and web development even more. Languages will have to handle issues not originally thought of when the desktop and web were considered widely different. We're trying to make OSes subscription based and like a service for instance. Even JavaScript will meet its fate eventually as WASM gets more and more advanced, able to handle DOM manipulations better, etc.

Point is, if you can't embrace change, you're in the wrong industry. AI will change things a lot too. The coders of the future may literally just talk high level to the computer and the computer code itself in the actual language. We already have a rudimentary version of that with ChatGPT.

Jeremy Falcon

Nick Polyak1-Feb-23 8:08

Nick Polyak

1-Feb-23 8:08

The rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated.

C#

But seriously speaking - C# is a great language and with every new feature set it becomes better and better. The major features they add are very well thought out and very much in tune with what many people want to be added to the language. The latest case in point are abstract static methods added to the interfaces - one cannot overestimate the importance of it for improving reuse.

What was hurting C# before - was the fact that it was tied to Windows OS. But there is no longer such restriction.

Nick Polyak

modified 1-Feb-23 14:40pm.