I spent last week at my first Fortran Standards Committee meeting. It was a pretty interesting experience. Everyone there was brilliant, and interested in trying to do a good job improving the language. And yet, it was still somehow very disfunctional. The committee is comprised mainly of representatives from compiler vendors/writers, with a few representatives … Continue reading With A Little Help From My Friends
Stick to Your Principles
I've been using Fortran for a long time, but I've only recently started interacting with people trying make changes to the language. It's been a bit of an eye opening experience. I had intuitions about what it would be like and how things happen in language design, but now I've got first hand experience, and … Continue reading Stick to Your Principles
Kicking And Screaming
How valuable is code that runs fast, but can't be extended or modified? How can you be productive in a code base that's grown into a big ball of mud because that was how you made things fast? How much speed would you be willing to give up in the name of developer happiness and … Continue reading Kicking And Screaming
Like Miracle Grow For Your Garden
In the last post I did about the Vegetables testing framework I developed, I talked about how much of a success it had been. Now I've cranked it up to 11. I've now got what is effectively QuickCheck level functionality implemented in a Fortran testing framework. For anyone not familiar with QuickCheck, it is effectively … Continue reading Like Miracle Grow For Your Garden
New Toys
This effectively a direct copy of my last Arch Install post, but with modifications for my new laptop. It's a System76 Darter Pro, and so it a has a few differences from the Lenovo Yoga 13 I had before. The following are the steps I took in order to get Arch installed and running with … Continue reading New Toys
The Power of a Testing Framework
I am now ready to call Vegetables a huge success. In my last post I discussed its design and construction. I am now using it in a project at work. The power and convenience it has brought us is huge. The design of Vegetables is such that its use highly encourages writing your tests in a … Continue reading The Power of a Testing Framework
Eat Your Vegetables
About a year ago, I was starting a new project at work using Fortran. For anybody who didn't know, the tools and libraries available to Fortran programmers are few and far between, and not particularly extensible or adaptable. But, being the testing and automation proponent I am, I went looking for a testing framework. The … Continue reading Eat Your Vegetables
A Less Obnoxious Assistant
My last rendition of my Home Assistant Configuration (which you can read about here) was left in a rather obnoxious state. My wife isn't particularly good about checking her notifications regularly, so while I was at work, I would get a notification every 10 minutes for a while, until my wife finally realized she should … Continue reading A Less Obnoxious Assistant
Triggered
My Home Assistant now controls my HVAC the way I want it to. I'm now super happy about how it works, but man is the code ugly. To start with, I bought a very basic, Z-Wave thermostat. It has no smarts of its own, but can be controlled via Z-Wave. This means my home automation … Continue reading Triggered
Maintainable Secrets
In my last post, I got Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) working for my Home Assistant home automation server. It worked at the time, but that was for a very basic configuration of Home Assistant. As I started to set up more components that needed keys or passwords, things started to get hairy. Luckily, … Continue reading Maintainable Secrets
