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Sopwith Software Tales

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  • Go to the profile of Andy Dent
    Andy Dent
    Nov 21, 2024

    A spooky win in the braces war

    One of the weirdest coincidences ever proving I was right.

    There are many debates in programming style, outright religious wars over style of how to layout your code.

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    Andy Dent
    Nov 20, 2024

    A Reassuring Murmur

    How a debugging “comment” became a user feature

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    Go to the profile of Andy Dent
    Andy Dent
    Nov 19, 2024

    9-track backup tape

    Boxing up Best Practices

    Sysadmin Snippets — a tale of tapes and tangled good intentions.

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    Go to the profile of Andy Dent
    Andy Dent
    Nov 13, 2024

    Picture of DB25 serial cable, black with connectors at each end with 25 pins in two rows

    Sysadmin Snippets — Cable Tales 1

    Tangles and a kind of debugging

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    Andy Dent
    Nov 13, 2024

    Sysadmin snippets — Intro

    Experiences from when I was not just a developer

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    Go to the profile of Andy Dent
    Andy Dent
    Nov 13, 2024

    Scientists and Sticky Notes

    My useful analogy for XML data, and how it breaks.

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    Go to the profile of Andy Dent
    Andy Dent
    Nov 8, 2024

    Grids showing memory layouts as intended by lecturer versus the reality of the HP compiler inserting an alignment byte.

    Homework helper vs lecturer

    Back around 1988 I was mostly working as a VAX mainframe sysadmin, at Griffin Coal Mining.

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    Go to the profile of Andy Dent
    Andy Dent
    Nov 7, 2024

    Photo of a Burroughs B20 workstation, an old computer on a desk with green display on left and main unit in front with clipboard built in and holding paper notes. Some computer manuals are to the right of the keyboard.

    It didn’t add up!

    A savvy workman knows that sometimes you DO blame the tool

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    Go to the profile of Andy Dent
    Andy Dent
    Nov 6, 2024

    Picture of a Durango early desktop computer with built-in printer, keyboard and monitor off to one side.

    My first professional bug

    A tale of lost innocence

    Path to a job

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    Go to the profile of Andy Dent
    Andy Dent
    Nov 6, 2024

    Recent bugs deserve a re-read

    Sopwith Software Tales are mostly going to be blasts from the past, but for those of you who are mostly here for heroic tales of bugs, I thought it would be worth linking a few more-recent ones.

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