DEV Community: Radio Azureus

VIM the beginning...

Radio Azureus — Sun, 05 May 2019 12:55:37 +0000

I started with vi on noisy phone lines for the BBS systems of our university.

I was a student then, who had the task to punch holes in the system for the URC(*) director so he could fix them.

That was in the 1990's a century ago ;)

My vim use back then was as follows:

vim filename.extension
:i
enter & correct data while:
Regularly getting in & out of interactive mode the moment the line goes bad (**)
do a :u in combo with ^L when bad stuff came on the screen
:w in between (I had to do this very often since ATH0 was often send to the Telebit 9600bps modems when the lines went beserk)
:wq at the end when all looked good on the screen.

The power of insert mode saved my sanity on the copper wires from the POTS phone system, where I had to edit files over. THe analog POTS centrals of our phonecompany were run on wires, which were way too old, which means with rain, a lot of moisure creeps in the cable, forcing a lot of noise over the lines.

For a while this was the only way I used vi. I did not bother with learning others since this was all I needed.

After a while I wanted to see what I could do more with vi. However the man files for vi were not on the machines I used vi from. Then someone told me that vim by Bram Molenaar had buildin help just like emacs, an editor I could not run due to the ram constraints my workstation had.

I downloaded vim on my m68k Amiga and loved the startup screen. It looked very similar to this one https://imgur.com/QqMPp4Q

The next screen is what made my decision final https://imgur.com/POyJPHr

THe fact that I could use vim with build-in help was an eyeopener. From then on I realized, I can take my time and learn new stuff right in the editor.

AMAZING

That is how this discovery felt. Esp in a time when multi monitor setups at home were non-existent, since I wanted to be in the editor while I learn new stuff I need, for the tasks at hand.

Note: I will use the terms vim and vi interchangeably. When I talk about the bare version, I reference POSIX vi which you should find on all posix compliant OS'es

(*)
THe modems in that period had MNP5 & other protocols which were supposed to help against unstable phone lines. They were not prepared against the LQ lines we had in our country.

(**)
URC = Universitair Reken Centrum -> University Computer Lab

This document is a w.i.p it's not finished yet. I publish it now since it's been in the pipeline for a while already

Direct link to the last synced version:
https://github.com/AmigaGPU/fat-agnus/blob/master/2019-04-04-building-a-programming-env-in-2k19-3.md

Building a programming ENV: in 2K19 II

Radio Azureus — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 13:59:21 +0000

()Revision tracking added to **git*. This is how text editing should be controlled

As I said the last time having a smooth programming ENV: is important when you want to program on whatever machine (on your network) you are on.

The reason is obvious. I want to be able to code in between work / simulation / play & stream sessions. Even tiny snips of 15mins to 30 mins are benificial to me.

One annoying problem of different cloud techs is that they want CC-info (think breaches), so I dont want that data spread everywhere) yet I have to learn 2 play with them somehow, at least those which give you a chance to.

IBMCloud seems to play nice since they tell you what you can do on their network.

It may in the end be like the student licence from ACAD but that one has the following benefits:

fully functional systems
you may download everything, save all files
literally the whole software suit at your disposal for three years, so you can study everything
the only catch is printing, that will show that you used a student licence, which is quite fine, since you can work with the program suite

AWS

With open-source cloud techs like #AWS you are not allowed to fully test their stuff. Those guys want CC info.

Amazon has the following benefits:

fairly good CC info protection
you probably buy stuff there already so you have a card entered there also
large network, lots of redundancy (good tech support?)

The downside for users like me

impossible to test, for some reason it fails for me to activate #AWS
No testrun of all means no way of learning how to use the cloudtech there.
opensource software effectively locked away behind a commercial veil.
Annoyance rises everytime I want to test it out ;)

I can run a free fully functional bash in a browser
https://console.cloud.google.com/cloudshell at google

I did not know that it was in fact a free #docker container at my disposal.

Finally I can run some cloud tech in some capacity

A full blown docker container!

As you can imagine I am seriously making time to play with this, since I don't need to run the server side for it (I dont have a free headless linux server anymore)

Notes:
(*)I love how it's now a breeze to keep the revisions of my markdown files in check.

All I need to do is enter $ git commit -a

Then I uncomment the line(s) with the revised file(s).

After a while I type:

$ git status

to see how many commits my branch is ahead. Then I can commence with $ git push to sync it all up with git.
Sweet and oh so neat ;)

This doc is now considered completed. I shall move to the next one now.

#301daysofcode #100DaysOfCode #Linux #advancedprogramming hashtags on twitter

A fully synced update of this post resides here https://github.com/AmigaGPU/fat-agnus/blob/master/2019-04-04-building-a-programming-env-in-2k19-ii.md

This is part-II of the series in which I will publish this thread

Building a programming ENV: in 2K19

Radio Azureus — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 04:31:18 +0000

Now tracking this file with git revision power...

I've had to do this quite a few times, the past couple of months. Rebuild my programming ENV: on the #DAW where I spend most of my computing time on.

Since the machine also dubs as a streaming workstation, it is most of the times in a #win64 OS, even though per default it boots in #Linux (MX-Linux for a while now)

Now in the beginning I would scoff at building the ENV: in win64, the reality is that this machine is the one with the most RAM: we all know coding needs ram. The upgrade of this #DAW will also be 32GB later 64GB on a 2700X CPU sporting the same hardware for the rest.

Since I really needed to code more, I just hacked the button (literal from de knoop doorhakken in NL) and started in win7 to build the ENV

Amazing how the age of that OS was shown; not even single docker possible.
I went to win8.1 for various reasons and tried again. Still a failure. I read the docs but wanted to see if I was smarter and could fake win10, as a joke.

I then left #docker alone and went for the other key elements 1st:

git: that gave me the powerfull bash, newer than the old install of mingw
vim: luckily included with git
MarkDownEdit for obvious reasons
golang: easily installed and nice to learn
nodejs: just need 2 learn that too
python v2.7.x I need SimpleHTTPServer
RubyStack neatly integrated package
scoop: to get neat tool install from the bash line
vscode: just too good an IDE to play in
unreal engine: yeah I love gaming IDE's also

All these installed without a problem. Actually no, the RubyStack always hicked up at the end when it needed to do the samples. But it worked and I have PostgreSQL and PhpMyAdmin as a few examples in a nice package with ruby and other important tools.

I have a nice tweet series about this in the #301daysofcode #100DaysOfCode #Linux #advancedprogramming hashtags on twitter.

This is a middle part of it: https://twitter.com/Radio_Azureus/status/1109157486710439937

This is part-I of the series in which I will publish this thread