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[OT] New monitor recommendation
by Tom P May 19, 2025

May 19, 2025

Hi folks If anyone is still here can they recommend a good monitor in 2025? My current one is about 8 years old and I’m now noticing some eye strain. Unsure if it is ageing or the monitor but I am prepared to get a replacement as I am sure the technology is better these days. Budget up to $1000 approx. Mainly used for dev work and I am a single monitor guy. Hard to tell what’s ok in the stores or online as there are so many choices. Thanks Tom

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Are the archives of ozDotNet meant to be Google crawlable?
by mike smith March 5, 2025

March 5, 2025

Mike

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Approaching obsolescence
by Greg Keogh Oct. 9, 2024

Oct. 9, 2024

Hello everyone, it's not Friday, but I have an announcement and tale that might interest you. I’m easing into retirement. Companies I’ve been working for are being sold, retired or are no longer developing new software. Running out of legacy work would drive a regular dev to seek new work, but in my case, I declined to create a LinkedIn page, or send out feelers through contacts for new work, because… I’m burnt out. Why? I learned to code in 1975 and became an official programmer in 1981. I wrote FORTRAN, ALGOL, COBOL, assemblers and various JCLs and scripting languages on Honeywell, FACOM and IBM mainframes. Things were simpler back then of course because you moved inside the ecosystem of a particular manufacturer and had high-level support and voluminous and accurate documentation. If you wanted to solve a problem or do something edgy, then an answer was nearby. It was a different simpler world, but … everything worked. Now, well into the 21st century of IT, everything doesn’t work. My wife often hears me shout from the other end of the house “Everything f***ing doesn’t work”. I also only semi-jokingly say I’ll have these words carved into my gravestone: “Everything f***ing doesn’t work all the f***ing time”. Overall, what has burnt me out is *complexity *and *instability*. I’ll break those topics down a bit. Everything in modern IT is *complicated *and *fragile*. Every new toolkit, platform, pattern, library, package, upgrade, etc is unlikely to install and work first time. I seem to spend more time getting things working and updated than I do actually writing software. In a typical working month I might have to juggle Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, macOS, Google, Amazon, Azure, .NET, Python, PowerShell and C++, and they all have different styles and cultures. Software engineering has fractured into so many overlapping pieces that I’m tired of trying to maintain competence in them all. That leads naturally to the problem of *dependencies*. Just having so many moving parts with so many different versions available produces dependencies more complex than abstract algebra. How many times have you hit some kind of compile or runtime version conflict and spent hours trying to dig your way out of it? (A special salute to Mr Newtonsoft there!) Or you install A, but it needs B, which needs C, and so on. I often hit incomprehensible blocker *problems *for which web searches produce absurd and conflicting suggestions which don’t work anyway. All I can do is futz around and change things randomly until things work again. I don’t know what went wrong and I don’t know what went right. *The Web* -- Browsers, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, the HTTP protocol, JSON and REST can all burn for eternity in fusing hellfire. About ten years ago I told my customers I refused to write any more web UI apps. However, I was forced to do so a few times and I’m still scarred by the horror. It’s just over 30 years since the web became public and we’re still attempting to render serious business apps using dumb HTML. HTML5 is the joke of the century (so far). I still lament the loss of Silverlight. *Git *-- Someone is lucky I don’t own a gun. *Fads *-- An exercise for the reader: name all the platforms, kits, patterns and frameworks that you know were once the coolest thing and now might only be found in history articles. An advanced exercise is to speculate on which currently cool things will be gone soon. Finally, here is a list of typical things that give me the shits, just as they pop out of my head. - Attempting to compile projects that have been idle for a year or more will usually fail due to changed dependencies or deprecations and it can take hours to get them going again. - I develop and test something with great care, then deploy it and it crashes. This is part of the general “it works on my machine” disease. - I can stop successful work on Friday night, then resume on Monday morning and everything utterly fails. - My USB microscope and music recording both stopped working recently, and it took me a week to discover that it was a block by Windows 11 app security (I thought it was a hardware or incompatibility problem due to lack of clear error messages). - Security! Walls, barriers and hurdles of security everywhere to crash through. Yes, I know we need security everywhere to stop the black hats, but it’s also stopping developers. Lord knows how many times I’ve hit run or debug on my own PC and I get “Access denied” and hours of research will be required. I’m also fed-up with ceaseless 2FA requests via email or SMS. - Everything about mobile devices. The ludicrous variety of devices and brands makes app development a nightmare. Then you must struggle through the variety of labyrinthine publishing processes. - My final entry is simply the tiny “thousand cuts” that torture you during development: version mismatches, inconsistent behaviour, strange errors, editor quirks, missing files, etc. All the little personal problems that slip between the cracks of bigger issues I’ve previously mentioned. Your mileage may vary. In summary, being a software engineer is now so exhausting that after 40+ years of a generally enjoyable career immersed in programming and computer science I’ve reached a point I never thought would arrive… I’m burnt out. Even working on my hobby projects has become a burden because they suffer from many of the impediments previously mentioned. I still plan to attend some upcoming conventions and Meetups, and I’ll be watching the forum, but my posts will diminish because I’m probably out trying to prevent the garden and house from disintegrating back into the earth from whence they came. *Greg Keogh*

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Multi-indexed in-memory collection
by Greg Keogh Sept. 28, 2024

Sept. 28, 2024

Hello folks, we've found a performance bottleneck searching for items in a large in-memory collection. Most of the code was converted from 15+ year old C++ code into C# so a lot of weird looking stuff came across. There are lots of sequential searches for items in arrays and List<> which have complexity O(n) and get really slow for large collections. I previously converted one bottleneck List<> into a Dictionary<> and it was a miracle cure, but it was a simple case with one property value being a unique key. The next bottleneck collection needs to be searched efficiently on different property values, and I'm wondering if anyone knows of a collection which supports multiple indexes (possibly non-unique). An in-memory SQLite table with multiple indexes would do the job, but it's a bit heavyweight and like hammering a screw. Using multiple Dictionaries or Sets to index the same objects won't work due to non-unique values. Maybe there is some lightweight package around for this sort of thing? It's a classic computer science problem. *Greg Keogh*

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SVG Editing
by Dr Greg Low Sept. 17, 2024

Sept. 17, 2024

Hi All, Anyone got a recommendation on a basic editor for SVG files? Or do you do that in VS or with an extension in VSCode? Regards, Greg Dr Greg Low 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile SQL Down Under | Web: https://sqldownunder.com<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__sqldownunder.com_&d=Dw…> | About Greg: https://about.me/greg.low<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__about.me_greg.low&d=Dw…>

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XAML images in WPF?
by Greg Keogh Aug. 1, 2024

Aug. 1, 2024

Folks, in a video I saw a few weeks ago I learned that the Visual Studio team uses XAML for most of their images, not png or similar. I'm keen to do the same because I imagine that I would no longer need tedious sets of 16x16 32x32 48x48 ... etc images because each XAML file is composed from scalable geometry elements that would look good at any size. I downloaded the Image Library <https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35825> which contains thousands of XAML, png and svg sets of standard images. But I can't figure out how to *simply* use the XAML files in a WPF app. All the examples I can find seem to have pasted the contents of the XAML images into resource files and then reference them by x:Key. I don't want to manually paste XAML around like that, I just want to add a file like *FolderClosedBlue.xaml* (for example) to my project and use it as the icon for a menu or button as simply as possible. How can I replace this sort of thing?... <MenuItem Header="_Foo Command" Command="..."> <MenuItem.Icon> < use the XAML image file somehow instead of a resource png? > </MenuItem.Icon> </MenuItem> Is there some coding trick I'm not aware of to *simply* use an image defined in a XAML file in my app? Cheers, *Greg K*

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Re: AI [GitHub Copilot]
by Greg Keogh July 31, 2024

July 31, 2024

Hi Tom et al, Coincidentally, my CoPilot trial ends today and I've decided to let it continue at $US10/month. So my AI qualifications now begin with one month of GitHub Copilot. Is this particular AI useful for developers? Urrrr...sort of...I've got mixed feelings, but I'm going to let it run for some more months and see how it goes. People in demos everywhere, even many of the top boffins have it running in their videos, so if it's good enough for Mads and Anders then I like what they like. Sometimes Copilot throws out suggestions that are jaw-droppingly psychically predictive and I stare in disbelief before hitting tab. Other times it produces something completely irrelevant that was snipped from a different project I was previously working on. The former seems to outnumber the latter, so that's why I'm continuing the subscription. As Tom hints, I also probably get a 1-2% boost in productivity thanks to Copilot (well, I will when my reflexes adapt to stop having keyboard races with it). I feel the name "AI" is a bit generous, as it's clearly just trawling through vast amounts of code and samples, analysing it and spitting fragments back out at you based on patterns and context. There are fabulous algorithms at work finding patterns, but is this "AI"? When I first saw the movie *2001: A Space Odyssey* in 1969 I was fascinated by HAL (I was clearly destined to work in IT!), and now 55 years later I'd like to be able to sit down with HAL and explain some complex business requirement to him, converse like professionals and weigh-up the pros and cons of different platforms and languages based upon his world of experience and get him to code like a 1000x developer and generate a complete working skeleton of the required product. When will I see that? I'm a bit disappointed so far. Oh well, back to coding with my Copilot buddy. *Greg K* On Sun, 28 Jul 2024 at 23:19, Tom Gao via ozdotnet <ozdotnet(a)ozdotnet.com> wrote: > Hey Guys, it's been awhile since I've asked the question about the > usefulness of AI in our development world - for a seasoned senior developer > for a complex digital transformation project. Since then I've met the > microsoft board member on OpenAI and have completed an AI course at > Stanford and seen the latest and greatest at the most advanced world > leading AI lab. To be honest I think this AI thing is going to be 10 years > away to be truly useful as it is hyped to be. But this is just a personal > opinion. > > I wanted to get some feedback from you guys last time michael said maybe > about 1-2% in improvement in usefulness to a seasoned dev. I've had ongoing > robust conversations. Because I feel the benefits are completely overstated > in general (open to being corrected). The most senior tech lead in my > team believe it's a negative benefit. As in it can't understand complex > business analyst requirements, nor debug codes, nor find / correct defects. > The effort to prompt engineer and also to correct what's generated is also > understated. Plenty of tools already do what chatgpt/co-pilot can do. In > this case we've experimented with github copilot which claims to > provide 55% efficiency in coding. > > What's everyone's thoughts since Feb this year? - how useful is it in real > world dev tasks, building complex transformation projects from BA > requirements? > > Thanks in advance, > Tom > > On Sat, Feb 24, 2024 at 9:21 PM Michael Ridland via ozdotnet < > ozdotnet(a)ozdotnet.com> wrote: > >> >> If you’re a seasoned practitioner in the language it’s probably sitting >> around 1-2%, because it can help with some code conversions. Copilot code >> completions are amateur. For .net resharper/rider etc is actually a much >> better option than copilot, practical use of that is probably around 15% >> productivity increase. >> >> Copilot does help if you don’t know the language or technology, which >> maybe commbank staff are not skilled up enough? ;) >> >> >> >> On Sat, 24 Feb 2024 at 6:27 pm, DotNet Dude via ozdotnet < >> ozdotnet(a)ozdotnet.com> wrote: >> >>> I’m not a subscriber to read the entire article but 30% is a load of BS >>> at this stage >>> >>> On Sat, 24 Feb 2024 at 15:18, Tom Gao via ozdotnet < >>> ozdotnet(a)ozdotnet.com> wrote: >>> >>>> Here's the article. >>>> >>>> >>>> https://www.afr.com/technology/commbank-claims-ai-is-already-making-it-work… >>>> >>>> So what does everyone think about the claim that 30% efficiency? ie to >>>> me as head of IT instead of hiring 10 developers to build applications now >>>> only 7 is required. To me that just doesn't seem realistic. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Fri, Feb 23, 2024 at 3:04 PM Tom Rutter via ozdotnet < >>>> ozdotnet(a)ozdotnet.com> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Fri, 23 Feb 2024 at 12:32, Dr Greg Low via ozdotnet < >>>>> ozdotnet(a)ozdotnet.com> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Worse, in the baseball umpiring exam I mentioned, someone said to me >>>>>> “isn’t that what you’d get if you just asked a whole lot of fans about the >>>>>> rules rather than asking umpires?” >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> There’s probably something important about that. How does it know >>>>>> which of the material it was trained on is valid? >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Yep that’s the thing, it doesn’t actually know what is “valid”. From >>>>> what I understand it just gets “pushed” in certain directions during >>>>> training and not in all cases obviously. >>>>> >>>>> My experience with things like ChatGPT so far basically brings it down >>>>> to a better Google really. Early days >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Regards, >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Greg >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Dr Greg Low >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile >>>>>> >>>>>> SQL Down Under | Web: https://sqldownunder.com >>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__sqldownunder.com_&d=Dw…> | >>>>>> About Greg: https://about.me/greg.low >>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__about.me_greg.low&d=Dw…> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> *From:* mike smith via ozdotnet <ozdotnet(a)ozdotnet.com> >>>>>> >>>>>> *Sent:* Friday, February 23, 2024 12:19 PM >>>>>> *To:* ozDotNet <ozdotnet(a)ozdotnet.com> >>>>>> *Cc:* mike smith <meski.oz(a)gmail.com> >>>>>> *Subject:* Re: AI >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> "old system views" >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> That makes me wonder if it has any way of differentiating between >>>>>> something it found from a decade ago to more recent data. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Mike >>>>>> >>>>>> On Fri, 23 Feb 2024, 11:43 Dr Greg Low via ozdotnet, < >>>>>> ozdotnet(a)ozdotnet.com> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi Tom, >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> For me, it depends what you want it to do. It certainly can appear to >>>>>> help someone who’s new to an area. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> For most code writing, I’ve been pretty underwhelmed. As an example, >>>>>> if I ask it to write SQL, I get a very poor outcome. It will use old >>>>>> deprecated views instead of the current system views (that have been around >>>>>> for a decade), and often does things in a convoluted way. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> What I have been impressed with, is how it can help you understand >>>>>> acronyms, etc. Quite amazing. I’ve also been pretty impressed with using it >>>>>> go generate some test data, including in multiple languages. And the test >>>>>> data is fairly believable. If I ask it for family names, and I also ask for >>>>>> Chinese, it does pick common Chinese family names in the test output. >>>>>> That’s pretty impressive. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> It can do a reasonable job of things like “here’s some DAX code, can >>>>>> you simplify it?” It often can. Or “here’s a regular expression, can you >>>>>> explain what it does?” and it does that just fine. I’ve seen people happily >>>>>> using it to explain code that they don’t understand, or to (sort of) >>>>>> document some code. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> But it also is so confident on things, yet so wrong. I gave it a 25 >>>>>> question baseball umpire test the other day. It was 100% confident >>>>>> sounding, but 40% correct. The weird thing is that some of the questions >>>>>> that it got right, are things that new human umpires often get wrong. Yet >>>>>> for simpler questions, it would say that something legal is illegal. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> It’s certainly interesting, but it’s very much a work in progress. It >>>>>> will be part of our futures. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Regards, >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Greg >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Dr Greg Low >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile >>>>>> >>>>>> SQL Down Under | Web: https://sqldownunder.com >>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__sqldownunder.com_&d=Dw…> | >>>>>> About Greg: https://about.me/greg.low >>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__about.me_greg.low&d=Dw…> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> *From:* Tom Gao via ozdotnet <ozdotnet(a)ozdotnet.com> >>>>>> *Sent:* Friday, February 23, 2024 11:58 AM >>>>>> *To:* ozDotNet <ozdotnet(a)ozdotnet.com> >>>>>> *Cc:* Tom Gao <tom(a)tomgao.com> >>>>>> *Subject:* AI >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi guys, I haven't posted in a few years and haven't been on the >>>>>> tools for a long time now as well. I'm on a panel on a digital conference >>>>>> coming up in march. We had a pre meeting today and the topic of AI came up. >>>>>> Two of the panelist said cited CBA and Westpac using AI and were able to >>>>>> save 30% on development effort. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Personally I just finished an AI course my view is quite the >>>>>> opposite. My personal opinion of the generative AI space and AI in general >>>>>> having spent time with the academics is that the benefits are significantly >>>>>> over inflated. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I want to get some other opinions if you are seeing any significant >>>>>> benefit and that I may be just out of touch or not aware. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Thanks, >>>>>> >>>>>> Tom >>>>>> >>>>>> -- >>>>>> ozdotnet mailing list >>>>>> To manage your subscription, access archives: >>>>>> https://codify.mailman3.com/ >>>>>> >>>>>> -- >>>>>> ozdotnet mailing list >>>>>> To manage your subscription, access archives: >>>>>> https://codify.mailman3.com/ >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> ozdotnet mailing list >>>>> To manage your subscription, access archives: >>>>> https://codify.mailman3.com/ >>>> >>>> -- >>>> ozdotnet mailing list >>>> To manage your subscription, access archives: >>>> https://codify.mailman3.com/ >>> >>> -- >>> ozdotnet mailing list >>> To manage your subscription, access archives: >>> https://codify.mailman3.com/ >> >> -- >> ozdotnet mailing list >> To manage your subscription, access archives: >> https://codify.mailman3.com/ > > -- > ozdotnet mailing list > To manage your subscription, access archives: https://codify.mailman3.com/

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AI
by Tom Gao July 30, 2024

July 30, 2024

Hi guys, I haven't posted in a few years and haven't been on the tools for a long time now as well. I'm on a panel on a digital conference coming up in march. We had a pre meeting today and the topic of AI came up. Two of the panelist said cited CBA and Westpac using AI and were able to save 30% on development effort. Personally I just finished an AI course my view is quite the opposite. My personal opinion of the generative AI space and AI in general having spent time with the academics is that the benefits are significantly over inflated. I want to get some other opinions if you are seeing any significant benefit and that I may be just out of touch or not aware. Thanks, Tom

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[OT] Windows Server install problems
by Greg Keogh July 18, 2024

July 18, 2024

Folks, it's been a non-TGIF day. My old server under the desk running Server 2019 (or 2016 I forget) died this morning and I'm trying to create a replacement I have a brand new *one of these* <https://www.ple.com.au/Products/665032/ple-midnight-gtx-1650-prebuilt-ready…>, so I installed Server 2019 and it all went smoothly until it booted and all chipset devices are dead, including the network adapter and the screen is stuck at SGA. The only drivers I can find are for Windows 7 to 11 and nothing else. I tried installing 2016 as an experiment but it produces the same results. Am I wasting my time? Is that box incapable of running recent Windows Server editions? *Thanks, Greg*

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Customisable web app styling
by Greg Keogh June 17, 2024

June 17, 2024

Folks, I'm trying to find the "best" way of allowing different customers to style their own hosted version of our web app (actually a Blazor net8.0 app). For years we hosted a single global copy of the app in our Azure subscription where multiple customers would use it. It has a single line for the app's styles: <link rel="stylesheet" href="app.css" /> When customers deploy the app in their own subscriptions it would be great to leave the default app.css file untouched but allow them to easily override any style elements they like. What's the best way of doing that? Do I simply append a line like: <link rel="stylesheet" href="{some customer uri}/custom.css" /> Do styles in that link override any identical ones in the previous one? I'm not sure of the cascade order or conventions. There might be better techniques I'm not aware of. Thanks, *Greg K*

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