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                     JOURNAL FOR SUNDAY 10TH MARCH, 2024
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SUBJECT: Mutterings from the keyboard…
   DATE: Sun 10 Mar 20:17:34 GMT 2024

Once again I find myself apologising for the lack of updates. The fact is I’ve
been doing very little coding recently — and it’s getting annoying. Work first
relegated me to doing low code development. Then I was given cloud work. Now
most of my time is spent editing XML and JSON. It’s been interesting, but it’s
not coding and I’m a programmer dammit :(

It gets worse. I’m now using VSCode, on Linux, with the Google Cloud extension
and local Docker instances :| I really hate IDEs with a passion. That’s why my
editor for everything is Vim[1], with very few extensions. I like Vim and have
used it for over three decades. No matter what anyone says, VSCode with the
Vim extension just isn’t the same…

I must not complain too loudly. I’m still good at my job, learning a lot of
new cloud skills and it pays the bills. I just wish I wasn’t so underutilised
as a developer :(

This is all to say I’m very frustrated at the moment. When the evening comes
and I would usually code for myself, I really don’t feel like it.

Something else that occurred too — the release of Go 1.22 last month. At first
it seemed to be a small release with a few improvements. Oh! how wrong was I?
Having read an excellent article on go101.org[2] I now realise that Go 1.22
has a multitude of gotchas with the new FOR loop semantics. How this change
got into Go is beyond me, personally I don’t like it.

It was changes such as this that eventually made me give up on Java many years
ago. It is one reason why I wanted my own programming language. As a result
I’ve been thinking long and hard about future development. No conclusions yet.

I have also had a weird bug occur on my development system. I use the dwm[3]
window manager. If I have Google Chrome open on the same desktop as an XTerm
session, Chrome messes up the XTerm buffers causing text to jump about and
corrupting the session scroll back buffer.

Debugging this and sorting it out has been a pain. I didn’t notice the issue
immediately and XTerm, Bash, readline, Chrome and the NVidia driver have all
recently had updates. I eventually discovered Microsoft Edge, which I use for
work, didn’t have the issue but VSCode — which embeds Chromium — did!

Looking at my Edge install I realised I had switched it to using Vulkan ages
ago. This was possibly due to issues video conferencing in Teams. Switching
Chrome and VSCode over to Vulkan has fixed the issues for now. The question
now becomes is the issue with Chrome or the NVidia drivers? *sigh*

Note, both Edge and Chrome I use with multiple profiles. However, I use Edge
for greater separation between my work related stuff and my personal stuff.

--
Diddymus

  [1] I also appreciate the ed editor, especially on remote systems ;)

  [2] for Loop Semantic Changes in Go 1.22: Be Aware of the Impact:

  https://go101.org/blog/2024-03-01-for-loop-semantic-changes-in-go-1.22.html

  [3] dwm window manager: https://dwm.suckless.org


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