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We have a customer for whom we've done a [great steaming] pile of custom work. A couple of times a year they find a problem with the custom stuff. It always turns into a wretched slog through a Lovecraftian swamp of bubbling ichor (e.g. legacy code) I didn't write but am now required to maintain. Three months ago they reported an issue with one of their features in the new generation of product that didn't happen with the old one. I compared the code between the two and it was identical. I've spent considerable hours debugging through the code for the feature.
It turns out the new code is looking in the wrong place in the registry to see if their custom features are enabled  . The old code only worked accidently.
Cue the fireworks a day early, and let the naked happy dance ![Jig | [Dance]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/jig.gif) commence!
Software Zen: delete this;
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One of our embedded systems has been around for 15+ years, we had one or two customers in that time have random device crashes. We tried setting things up and using the customers configuration, to no avail, for many months. Data from the clients revealed the crashes occur at many different addresses. Finally, in desperation, I decided to look at stack usage. There were two routines related to little used features out of hundreds (think 70-80K lines of code in assembler) that allocated 4 bytes more stack space than it deallocated. It took thousands of these routine calls before encroaching on runtime variables. Twas a happy day when I found it ![Beer | [beer]](https://codeproject.freetls.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/beer.gif) , and as important, a big learning experience.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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jeron1 wrote: Twas a happy day when I found it ![Beer | [beer]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/beer.gif) , and as important, a big learning experience
Same here. I've had other memorable bugs that were excruciating to recreate and diagnose. One was a GDI handle leak that took over a week of run time to show up and crash the application. Another was a piece of embedded code where the TCP/IP code we bought back in 1995 did not re-initialize properly after a network hardware error. Both of these took weeks of debugging to find and reproduce and only a couple of hours to correct.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary Wheeler wrote: Both of these took weeks of debugging to find and reproduce and only a couple of hours to correct.
Funny how that is. 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Now imagine weeks of debugging and seconds for the actual fix (after the problem was identified and well understood).
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True, it's tough when you are going through it, for me sleepless nights are the usual result!
dandy72 wrote: after the problem was identified and well understood
To me there's a certain satisfaction to that, as rough as the road was to get to that point (and maybe learning a thing or two about better implementation, as I did).
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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My takeaway is "don't write things in assembly" 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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I wouldn't necessarily argue!  In this particular product there's a lot of time sensitive code, and over the years it's grown, A LOT.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Maybe I'm being cynical, but this just seems wrong to me.
I've been using the HTML editor library CKeditor since the early days, when it was still known as FCKeditor.
I've stuck with v4 because it does everything we need it to, and it's free so long as you don't use any "premium" add-ons. As far as I can see, v5 has some nice features, but is no longer free unless your entire project is open source. And with no pricing information available, with everything hidden behind a "request a quote" button, you can bet it's not cheap!
Yesterday, every editor instance started displaying a big red warning message, obscuring the content being edited:
Quote: This CKEditor 4.x.x version is not secure.
Consider upgrading to the latest one, 4.24.0-lts.
But is 4.24.0-lts free? No - you have to buy an "extended support model" for your installation. 
Sure, there's a new config option[^] you can flip to turn off this check - for now. But that feature wasn't present when we integrated the editor; it has been retrospectively applied to all old versions, and defaulted to "yes, please obscure the editor with a sales pitch on every load".
I don't have a problem with you charging for a new version of your library. Nor with charging for "extended support" on an old version of your library. But actively sabotaging old free versions of your library to try to drive sales of your new version or the "extended support" version? No thank you. 
We'll be sticking with the last free version of v4 with the version check disabled, at least until it either stops working or they start sabotaging it even more. Once that happens, we'll be looking to the competition for its replacement.
For those with long memories, this is reminiscent of the Red Gate / .NET Reflector dΓ©bΓ’cle, where they took a freeware tool and abused its auto-update feature to try to force everyone to upgrade to their new commercial version. Their argument was that continuing to use the free version was like "wanting today's gas at yesterday's prices". They really struggled to understand that it was more like Homer's elephant rides - expecting people to pay today's prices for the gas they already bought yesterday:
Homer: Um, Milhouse saw the elephant twice and rode him once, right?
Louann: Yes, but we paid you four dollars.
Homer: Well, that was under our old price structure. Under our new price structure, your bill comes to a total of $700.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Surely there has to be a suite of VS Code extensions you can use, like Live Server and other things.
There's nothing strictly WYSIWYG though in VS Code to my knowledge. It's all tags.
Oh, this is a web page component?
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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honey the codewitch wrote: Oh, this is a web page component?
Yes. 
CKEditor - Wikipedia[^]
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Edit: Indivara suggested the DeepL service, which worked beautifully.
I have a PDF datasheet for a piece of equipment that I really need to understand.
The trouble is it's in Chinese.
I go to look at the HTML for this, and it's embedded in a frame in the page behind a captcha so I can't use google translate on it.
I got the PDF downloaded, tried to open it in chrome, but if there's an option to translate I'm not seeing it.
Anyone know the secret sauce to make this happen?
Thanks!
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
modified 5hrs 5mins ago.
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Download Google translate to your phone. Use the camera function to capture the Mandarin.
I don't speak Idiot - please talk slowly and clearly
"I have sexdaily. I mean dyslexia. Fcuk!"
Driven to the arms of Heineken by the wife
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I'll try that after I try another suggestion. It's not my favorite choice because it seems a bit laborious to go through a datasheet that way, but it's an idea, so I appreciate it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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DeepL? It can translate PDFs
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I'll google that. Thanks.
Edit: It worked beautifully, thank you again!
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Wordle 1,110 5/6
β¬π¨β¬β¬β¬
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π©π©π©π©π©
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Wordle 1,110 3/6*
β¬β¬β¬π¨β¬
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These guesses are on fire lately.
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Wordle 1,110 3/6*
β¬β¬β¬β¬β¬
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Lucky on the first guess - nothing at all tells you quite a bit!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Wordle 1,110 4/6*
β¬β¬β¬π¨β¬
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Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have. -Anon
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. -Frederick Nietzsche
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β¬β¬β¬β¬β¬
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π©π©π©π©π©
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Wordle 1.110 4/6
β¬π¨β¬β¬β¬
β¬β¬β¬β¬β¬
π©π©π©β¬β¬
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Took me way, way too long to move from 3 to 4 
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
The shortest horror story: On Error Resume Next
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Wordle 1,110 4/6
β¬π¨β¬β¬β¬
π¨β¬β¬β¬π¨
π©π©π©β¬β¬
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Within you lies the power for good - Use it!
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Wordle 1,110 4/6
β¬β¬β¬β¬β¬
β¬β¬π©β¬β¬
π¨β¬π©β¬β¬
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Ok, I have had my coffee, so you can all come out now!
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IoT widgets are cool, but it would be interesting what you could do if you could make the MCU kits completely flat. Very thin, with a completely flat LCD on top, such that you could mount it to the surface of a laptop and run something this fastened on its lid:
esp mon running on a makerfabs esp display 7" - YouTube[^]
But much much thinner than that.
It's 2024. We missed out on the Jetson's style flying briefcase car. Instead, we got the cyberpunk dystopia the sci fi authors promised us. In recompense, I want flat computers.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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