A nerd nostalgia thread of possible #RetroComputing interest:
From 1993-1994, I was a “technical assistant” in the RF Engineering department of #Comcast#Cellular. Back then, Comcast was a scrappy regional cable #TV operator making its first foray into #mobile telephony, not the multinational #telecommunications and media behemoth we know today. (1/6)
I had previously whipped up an #Excel#VisualBasic for Applications (#VBA) Erlang B function to calculate #cellular tower quality of service (#QoS), so my other big project was modeling #Comcast Cellular’s network call capacity for an overdue upgrade from the (analog!) #1980s-era Advanced #Mobile Phone System (AMPS).
My first corporate #programming lesson: toy code will be expanded regardless of scalability. (4/6)
IIRC, any given AMPS antenna could only handle about 400 #mobile phone calls at once, and there were usually three antennae spanning the 360º around a #cellular tower. Busy areas often dropped phone calls as users were handed off between antennae.
Hmm, the #Wikipedia inverse Erlang-B #VisualBasic function bears a striking resemblance to my 1994 code… (5/6)
»Parser library using nom for VB6 (projects, forms, designers, etc).
VB6Parse aims to be a complete, end-to-end parser library for VB6. Including.«
It was a very, very, very long time ago when I had to extend and correct VisualBasic code, now I can also do it via Rust. Admittedly, the project is very young and I don't want to have to use it, but I understand why it exists.
My old Microsoft Product keygen written in #VB6 works!
I just tested it with FrontPage 98, and the generated key (not the pictured key, it uses an 11-digit key) worked. 🥳
( https://gurney.dev/posts/mod7/ by @daniel has more about the algorithm at play: my program would not have been possible without their documentation of the Mod7 Algorithm used by 90s Microsoft.)
The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. This ranking is organized according to their popularity as of Sep 2023:
(1) Python
(2) C
(3) C++
(4) Java
(5) C#
(6) JavaScript
(7) Visual Basic
(8) PHP
(9) Assembly Language
(10) SQL
(11) Fortran
(12) Go
(13) MATLAB
(14) Scratch
(15) Delphi/Object Pascal
(16) Swift
(17) Rust
(18) R
(19) Ruby
(20) Kotlin
Any #DotNet#CSharp#VisualBasic developer in the room? I want to start learning it, and I'm having a bad time on what to choose for starters. Taking into account that I'm on Linux, can I really do that? And do I have to use Mono, .NET, anything else? And, C#, Visual Basic, both, neither? I'm a bit confused. Thanks! :)
Leider wusste ich in den 90ern nicht, dass #basic bei DOS dabei war - ich hatte nur die „Shell“-Programmierung mit GOTO und IF ERRORLEVEL gefunden und bin damit schnell an Grenzen gestoßen
@remy9999 Mein Ethik-Lehrer, der auch Latein und Alt-Griechisch konnte, hatte damals ein Übersetzungsprogramm Deutsch-Latein geschrieben. Und ein Stundenplan-Programm, das alle Klassen, Lehrer und Räume in Stundenpläne gießt. In #VisualBasic…
Few people on the planet this is useful for, but here’s a #RoslynAnalyzer for when you have VB legacy code and want compiler warnings if it had Option Strict Off:
Hi, I'm Andy. I started my technology journey with a ZX Spectrum 48K. I learned #BASIC. Later I moved up to the Spectrum 128K +2. A few years before starting college, I taught myself #VisualBasic 5 in the bath (I didn't have a PC, just a book). My first computer was a Cyrix 686. At college I learned #HTML (not CSS that wasn't really a thing). Since then I have taught myself #PHP and #Javascript and I have a million courses on Udemy to learn other stuff.