Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Welcome to VOIP at home.

Posted in Technology, tagged on January 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I remember talking to a comms consultant in the 1980’s about packet switched networks like the Internet, which was new-ish technology at the time. He had this dreamy look in his eye. “one day there will be packet-switched voice”.

Well he was right – we have it and it is called VOIP (Voice Over IP (Internet Protocol)). All the telephone providers in the UK are switching over to this now, which means your telephone has to plug into your router, wherever that is. In my case this is not in the hallway, where a telephone belongs, but next to the television on account of my broadband provider being a cable company.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Remember Usenet?

Posted in History, Technology, tagged on December 11, 2023| Leave a Comment »

I was looking at the page telling you about Moving to Python from other languages and it referenced “comp.lang.python” without any explanation of what it was. That took me back. It is referring to a Usenet News Group. They were the first social media dating back to the 1980s. This was before Facebook, before Reddit, before online forums, before the World Wide Web. I thought they were long gone. But no – they are still alive and well.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

IT Pioneers: Charles Bachman – Database Pioneer

Posted in Database Management Systems, History, tagged , , , , on September 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »

If you are asked to name the most important pioneer in database development, the name Edgar Codd is probably the first name that comes to mind. He pioneered the concept of relational database. But another person deserves credit as well. Nearly a decade earlier Charles Bachman did fundamental work, developing the first database management system.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

I have to do what to fuel my car?

Posted in Technology, tagged , on August 31, 2023| 1 Comment »

There is an EV charging station just opened near our house in Ealing. I am bemused by the way they are going about doing this. I mean I can buy a railway ticket, or pay for petrol for my car just by tapping a machine with my credit card. But to pay for a charge to your EV you have to go through a grotesque procedure that involved giving the supplier a lot of personal information for no obvious reason. Click on the thumbnail on the right to see the full set of instructions.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Betamax, ISO Networking, CP/M: When the “best” technology is not the best.

Posted in History, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , on August 28, 2023| Leave a Comment »

You are in a pub and you hear someone say “that is Betamax vs VHS all over again”. What is that about? It is an interesting story which might effect your next career move, so listen up.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

I don’t need a schema for NOSQL, right?

Posted in Database Management Systems, Still-coding, Technology, tagged , , on July 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »

A schema means different things for an SQL and a NOSQL database management system. If you are using SQL, you have to tell the system about the format of the data before you can use – that is the schema. When it comes to NOSQL databases everything is different. You don’t need a schema, you simply present data and the system stores it in whatever format you send it.

Each document in a collection1 can be a different layout and different types of data. The flexibility of NOSQL databases suggests that data design is less important. For example I read: “… since NoSQL doesn’t necessitate the need for a schema, you avoid the expense and time of that initial design stage.”

I don’t think so

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Why do we need JSON when we have XML?

Posted in History, Technology, tagged , on July 8, 2023| Leave a Comment »

For decades, software developers had to struggle with getting computers to talk to each other. Businesses developed systems to do different things at different times on different hardware, and integrating the data was rarely on peoples priority lists. Customers would tell the bank about changing their address and still get mail about their mortgage sent to an old address because the mortgage system had it’s own address file.

Then came XML. A standardised way of exchanging information, with formal standards for different types of application. For example: FIXML – Financial Information Exchange and BEERXML – Brewing information. There is a list here. There are about a thousand of them.

XML is human-readable and similar to well-know HTML so easy to use if a little long-winded.

Well, I am glad that is done and dusted. A major problem for IT systems has been solved. Then came another standard.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

TypeScript. I quite like it.. plus a bonus rant about languages

Posted in History, Technology, tagged , , , on July 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Over the years people have developed an unbelievable number of coding languages. They all do pretty much the same job in pretty much the same way. Personally I have coded in Mercury Autocode, COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/1, LISP, Assembler, PERL, basic, C, C++ and JavaScript plus probably some others I have forgotten. Check the list of popular coding languages and you won’t find any of these except C variants and JavaScript1. That is because I have been out of the business for a while and coding languages are items of fashion. Every couple of years a new language becomes the latest hot language. Right now that is Python for reasons that totally escape me.

To make this clear. The world only needs a couple of coding languages, one for regular applications and another (maybe) to write operating systems in. None of the languages for general coding discussed here are a significant improvement on PL/1 which was invented in the 1960s2 , except for support for object orientation, which at the time had not been invented. Had a PL/2 been developed with Objects supported we could all just get on with coding.

But we are where we are.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Bard is good – but…

Posted in Technology, tagged , , , , on June 29, 2023| Leave a Comment »

When I need some information I used to just type into Google and sort out what I want from the results. But a few months ago, got on the Bing Chat pre-release program It is a whole new way of finding information. Google’s version is now out called Bard. Both give excellent results, but my impression is that Bard is better but with a major drawback.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

IT Pioneers: Hats off to Gary Kildall (who?)

Posted in History, IT Pioneers, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , on June 25, 2023| 1 Comment »

I started coding in then 1960’s on a Ferranti Mercury. It was as big as a house and had less computer power than my watch. But at the time we thought it was pretty cool. Over the years, Moor’s Law turned out to be pretty accurate. The most powerful computers doubled in power about every two years. Commercial systems got smaller. From as big as a house, to the size of a room, to the size of a desk, then a largeish box in a rack.

But in the mid 1970’s something happened off the Moore’s Law track. They managed to fit all the components of a low-power computer on a single chip. They were mass produced and relatively cheap. The engineers that built it had in mind using them for process control, calculators or computer terminals.

Enter Gary Kildall

Gary Kildall

But a genius called Gary Kildall saw another potential use for these devices.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »