Screaming people

Do you know how a lot of times when you goto the internets and you start reading websites how they always repeat over and over again how you need to read the documentation (then read it again) then check out mailing lists and if all else fails check #ourIRCroom? Yeah… that drives me crazy to. Though I do generally try to read as much of the documentation as I can stomach. I hate mailing lists I don’t actively participate in, hence I unsubscribed from all of them. On the other hand though I do enjoy IRC rooms. Why? Because I’ve learned how to solve more problems lurching silently in various chat rooms than by reading lame website docs.

So they got it half right. You should read enough of the website to intelligently listen in IRC so that you’ll understand when someone else has your problem and then has someone else explain it to them for you. How do you like them apples?

Enjoy the Penguins!

Why does glibc take so long to compile?

There is no way to make that faster? Really?

And by no way to make it faster I mean from the developer’s side, not mine. What is in that program??

Exherbo Install Process

So basically, if you can install Gentoo, with or without the handbook, you can install Exherbo. Granted at the moment I’m installing in a VM but that shouldn’t make much difference. It’s just easier for me to start over. Though I haven’t so far. On the same hand though I don’t recommend starting with the pre-made VM on the Exherbo website. The one for VirtualBox at least was so outdated I couldn’t get paludis to work properly to save my life. No matter what I did it just kept bombing because packages had invalid tags on the end of the names. Apparently paludis 0.3x.x.x doesn’t like having “beta1″ or “rc” on the end of your package ID.

While I still haven’t technically finished my fresh install it is running and while I have encountered some issues they have all been of the “package a failed a test” or “I can’t scroll back up so I have no idea what happened” kind. I laugh at my own laziness but these things tend to work themselves out. I have  noticed for whatever reason, and I believe I’ve even mentioned it before on this blog, that when those kinds of things happen if you switch up which built-in set your installing those annoying errors disappear. For example, I was updating “everything,” it bombed on some package so I switched to updating “system.” That worked up till some other package, and then it bombed, so I switched to “world.” All of this makes me think there must be a little something missing about which packages needs what. I don’t honestly know enough about the process to intelligently comment though so I will leave well enough alone. The latest victim in my “install everything else till that package works” fiasco is vim. Right now I’m in the process of working my around it. If all else fails I guess I could file a bug report.

On a final note. Exherbo currently doesn’t really advertise they want help. In fact they more less tell you they don’t. But on the same hand while they may not want lots of people signing up as official developers they do look like they’d love to have a community full of patch submitters. Perhaps that’s what you should strive to be instead. Personally that’s what I’d rather be. If I ever get this VM install worked out properly maybe I’ll even submit as an updated version. If they read this post they’ll probably turn it down.

Enjoy the Penguins!

New Gentoo Repository

I’ve created a new Gentoo repository. At this point, similar to my Exheres repository all it holds is my falcon language stuff. Which is this point is a direct copy over from the Gentoo version. But I can update mine at will and will always have the latest version in it. I assume there is a Gentoo developer out there who has adopted the Falcon ebuild. Which is great… because  I don’t want to. Either way I thought I would let the world know.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Falcon 0.9.4.4 released

A new version of the Falcon programming language has been released. They’re up to version 0.9.4.4. There is of course at least one new feature despite the fact this is considered a bug fix release. I don’t have a Gentoo repo but I do have an Exherbo repo. So please test it for me while I still don’t have a Linux PC .

Enjoy the Penguins!

Is there such thing as a “real” programmer?

Is there? I’m not always so sure there is. It’s mystical. I once read an article in a US Army newspaper about the mythical “real Army.” This Army that all of the veterans talked about at the Moose lodge. His conclusion at the end of the article was that there was no such thing. This supposed real Army was merely an ideal created by people in order to, for lack of a better reason, impress newbies and those to afraid to try it for themselves. Which then leads me back to my question… err my real question. Am I real programmer? I mean what makes me a “real programmer?”

If you base your opinion of my abilities off my blog or the sad amount of code I have on GitHub you’d probably say no, and if that’s all you have to go on I can’t say I blame you for thinking that way. But what about all the code I write at work that I can’t show you? Is it enough to make me a real programmer?

For example; I wrote a PL/SQL package to pull all the escheated payments (which is a misnomer from an accounting standpoint) from my company’s convoluted all-in-one software. Was it enough? It had all the good things that PL/SQL has, selects, updates, inserts, it has cursors, and loops, along with if-then statements. It has case statements nested into select queries. It has dynamic SQL and custom error messages (which in this context sounds trivial trust me it’s not though). Is that real programming though?

I’m currently in the process of writing a website to help with budget planning. It’s got everything a good .NET website has. C#, ASP, and lot’s of libraries and references. I wrote a custom class inside it’s own custom namespace to facilitate the passing of queries to an Oracle database. It’s got all the classics to of course. Variables, if-then-else statements. It’s got various bits of ASP code (which sucks by the way, holy cow). I’m currently working on using LINQ to make custom grids full of financial data. Is that enough?

Somedays I have the screw attitude. It doesn’t matter what other people think. But then somedays it’s not about what they think. It’s what I think. I suppose it’s a matter of self confidence in the end.

Enjoy the Penguins!

MacVim Trouble

I recently upgraded my Mac to Snow Leopard (recently as in the day it shipped from Apple) and while the upgrade was as smooth as possible, I did however have trouble with one (and only one) program. MacVim. I actually find that quite impressive, moving on though. I don’t know yet what exactly changed between 10.5 and 10.6 but whatever it was it turned MacVim retarded. It appears though, as you can see from the link, that Bjorn has the issue more or less worked out he just hasn’t officially released the fix to the public. He was nice enough to include a link to a newer binary on the bug though for the early adopters.

In other news the Falcon programming language is moving right along. First, no matter what platform you use there is now a page in the wiki for how to setup at least one editor on it. Drop a note if you want your editor added. I’d be happy to help you do it, so drop me a note. Falcon is now installable on all the platforms I currently use or care about. Which would include Windows, Mac OS X, Gentoo, and Exherbo. So uhh you should use it. You uhh have no excuse. (Family Guy humor).

Enjoy the Penguins!

dev-lang works… maybe

I updated the one exheres in my dev-lang repository. I still have not purchased the power supply for my Linux computer so I still have not tested my own repository, but if someone else wants to that would be nice! I more or less just copied the it straight from the ebuild in Gentoo (giving proper credit of course). I hope they all work. I’ve been looking around at how to get all of falcon vim config files pulled in together into one exheres.

Moving on to my app-vim exheres; I’ve been looking around and the only method of doing this I can find is to tarball the files then install that. While I’m sure that works wonderfully, that would require more work than I thought it would. While creating an exheres for every config doesn’t sound like a good idea either, it would be easier to keep current. I’d only have to update the script on Vim’s homepage, which I’ll be doing anyway. If I did have one for each file though, then I could simply do a single flacon-vim-config-all.exheres-0 file and let it pull them all in as required deps. That seems very sloppy to me though, and I’m not sure how paludis would handle the deps. Suggestions anyone?

Enjoy the Penguins!

Exherbo Repository

My would be repository, as far as I can tell, has everything it needs now in order for paludis to actually pick up and install things from it. Granted, at this point it only has three exheres in it, and granted, only two of them will work. But none the less it is there and you can use it.

the steveno repo

Again, suggestions, hints, and corrections are welcome.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Falcon and Exherbo updates

Thanks to this guy, you can now learn about setting up Vim for use with the falcon programming language on Falcon’s site. Which I must admit I broke the first day I had access too. I’m back to that “feeling like a tool” comment I made a couple of posts ago. I created a separate filetype plugin and detection script for vim. So now vim will properly detect and use falcon source code. The filetype.vim code I have is correct, and works, but using the separate files works better. You can naturally find them all on my github site in their respective directories. If you would rather download them from vim’s website, they are here.

I have not created exheres for these new files yet. No real reason why not at this point. I would like to create a single exheres to setup all the vim scripts needed to use falcon. But, looking at the examples on Exherbo’s git repository, I have not setup mine correctly. I assume there is a way around it, I just haven’t found it yet. Speaking of which the dev-lang exheres, while in much better shape now, still doesn’t do anything. Any suggestions on any of this would be much appreciated.

Enjoy the Penguins!