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Welcome to VOIP at home.

January 17, 2024 by bobbrowning

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.

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Remember Usenet?

December 11, 2023 by bobbrowning

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.

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What is up with Apple

December 3, 2023 by bobbrowning

The last Apple product I had was an Apple II back in the last century. So I don’t have a login to Apple (an Apple ID). But when I bought a PC from Currys, it came with 3 free months of Apple TV. I always wanted to see Slow Horses, so figured I would take them up on this. But I had to get an Apple ID first.

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Let’s try Python

October 16, 2023 by bobbrowning

For some reason I can’t understand, Python is the second most popular language out there1 At first glance the language doesn’t look promising. One complaint about COBOL was that you could screw up a program by an unwanted period. With Python it just takes a space. But I shouldn’t condemn the language because of a brief glance at the Python website. So I thought I would give it a shot. More recently I have been experimenting with Node, so that is my baseline

Here is my progress to date.

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IT Pioneers: Charles Bachman – Database Pioneer

September 19, 2023 by bobbrowning

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.

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I have to do what to fuel my car?

August 31, 2023 by bobbrowning

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.

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

August 28, 2023 by bobbrowning

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.

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IT Pioneers: Structured Design (circa 1974) – the cornerstone of modern coding practice

August 5, 2023 by bobbrowning

I learned to code in 1963. Things were different then.

There were some obvious things, like 24 hour turnarounds on tests, and storing code on paper tape. Oh – and the computer had about .000000001 of the processor speed on my watch, but at the time we thought it was pretty cool.

I am beginning to sound like one of the four yorkshiremen so I will move on. I want to talk about the pioneers of structured programming and structured design,

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

July 20, 2023 by bobbrowning

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

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Why do we need JSON when we have XML?

July 8, 2023 by bobbrowning

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.

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