Verity Stob is the pseudonym of a software developer based in London. Since 1988, she has written her "Verity Stob" column for .EXE magazine, Dr. Dobb's Journal and, now, The Register.
Verity's summer songs for programmers: Sing your pals to sleep()
"What better way to dispel the rainy gloom of an English summer," mused Ms Stob, in an introduction presumably written some time in March, "than a mass office sing-along to a selection of IT-themed pastiches?"
Pretty well anything, we'd have thought. Nevertheless, here is the raw material.
Portable Development
(Tune: Willow, …
Bjarne Again: Hallelujah for C++
Now it has been scientifically demonstrated that we Delphi users are the happiest of all programmers, proper significance can at last be attached to the rare woes that occasionally break through our Stepford Coder personas.
My test case: Warren Postma, a Delphi-head, was recently forced out of his comfort zone to repair a C++ …
In space, no one can hear your laptop Blue Screen
Reg columnist Verity Stob says she's uncovered the following string of eye-opening electronic missives between the International Space Station's crew members. First, some context:
"A NASA contractor deeply involved in Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) operations, decided to migrate to Linux. Chuvala oversees …
Six things a text editor must do - or it's a one-way trip to the trash
When I heard, in a tutorial video, the multi-platform programmer's editor Sublime described as "the cool kids' code editor" (or possibly "the Cool Kid's code editor" - the speaker didn't enunciate his capitals and apostrophes very clearly) I was puzzled. As the goto (or, rather, the call-by-reference) consultant on Agile Harlem …
Who ate all the Pis?
10/11/2012
I want a Raspberry Pi. I must have a Raspberry Pi. My home PC is drab. My Mac Mini is dusty. My iPad, which in my case I have not got, is a fatuous slab of plastic. Let me see the glimmer of the surface-mounted LED, and smell the green, green circuit board of 'Made in China'.
But a Raspberry Pi is an example of that …
8086 and All That. Revisited
Editor's Note: Verity Stob's celebrated history of computing was first published in EXE magazine in 1997, but has been unobtainable on the internets for several years. Now, thanks to the painstaking reconstruction of small pieces of parchment, and a small monetary inducement, we can now bring it to you as a Seasonal Treat. With …
The Sons of Kahn and the assembly language of the internet
Editor's Note: Verity Stob's Chronicles of Delphi [King James ed.] began in 1996. The most recent translations can be found here: The Sons of Kahn and the Pascal spring and here: Sons of Kahn: The Apocrypha.
Zany adventures with Zarco and Marco
And the users of Delphi had become old with the passage of years, and had taken to …
Stob on Quatermass: Was this British TV's finest sci-fi hour?
In the pub, with my editor. "Those sci-fi classics of the fifties," he mused. "Not the Hammer remakes - the originals. Are they really classics? How do they compare with modern Doctor Who? Are they even watchable?"
[Dissolve to Stob's flat. A portable computing machine is displaying the Amazon website's DVD section. Pan to a TV …
Five go wild with the Administration Tools Pack
As you have surely heard, it’s Alan Turing’s centenary this year, and the Bletchley Park museum is celebrating by releasing a game of Monopoly themed on the life of that mathematical genius. I’ll pause for a sentence or two here, while you let your boggle levels equalise, because, given Turing’s life story, this is a quite a …
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love IPv6
IPv4 addresses are a rapidly dwindling commodity [...] ICANN distributed the last big chunks of available IPv4 addresses to the five continental Regional Internet Registries earlier this year. The RIRs in turn are running out of supplies to allocate to ISPs and other network operators - El Reg
Somewhere in the near future... …
Welcome, friend, to Metroland
When I saw that my editor had written 'Metro isn't the problem: catapulting into Metro land (and back again) is', I said: 'There's an idea - I could do try out the Betj pastiche macro in my HTML editor'. And scurried out the door before anybody thought to stop me.
Metroland
Bright with non-translucent tiling,
Pastel blobs and …
Stuck in a dull conference? You need Verity's survival guide
The technical conference season is once more upon us. The speakers at these affairs spend a lot of time sharing their software design patterns and anti-patterns with us; as a regular attendee it seemed to me that we punters were overdue for revenge. Here is some of their own medicine.
Pattern: BTDTGTTS
Motivation: At a talk …
Hold on, Booker prize judges - Stob's penned a steampunk hit
Somewhere on the hard drive of every programmer-wannabe-writer’s laptop there is the first chapter of an unfinished steam punk novel. Here’s mine.
Clockwork iPhones all round
It was late and I was tired, so on the way home I nipped into a Mesco Tetro to pick up a ping meal for dinner.
When it came to paying, the self-service …
Molesworth and the New Latin
'In his speech [...] the Education Secretary Michael Gove appeared to accept in its entirety the argument that ICT had become little more than training in office skills and something far more rigorous was required [...] While Alex Hope's slogan "coding is the new Latin" did not appeal to some, it must have appealed to the …
The Sons of Khan and the Pascal Spring
[We last heard from the Sons of Khan in 2010. The scriptures continue - Ed.]
The woes of Techdom
And it came to pass that the seasons rose and fell, and financial crisis waned while new financial crisis waxed, and the Kimjongilia flower did wither and fade on the vine.
But misfortune struck the code cutters of Java, who were …
Riders of the Bearded Sage
Ever since Richard Stallman hit the news ...
Whoa there, Verity! Not so fast. Let me check I have this straight. We are talking about the gun-toter who wrote that definitive episode of Frost that everybody is supposed to have seen. Murder in the Cathedral I think it is called. Right?
No. You are probably thinking of Eric …
Doctor Who and the Unsatisfactory Five Hole Tape Punch
This sentence is false...
As soon as I heard about the sponsored Doctor Who-themed parties, I just knew that they would want an article on the early years of Doctor Who IT to include in the special pack. However, since nobody has actually asked me for it yet, you get first dibs.
W.O.T.A.N. for Will Operating Thought ANalogue …
Verity's secret shame revealed
I defrosted my ideas box, and found several morsels which wouldn't make a whole meal in themselves, but nonetheless needed eating.
Palmed off
Here you are: a free chance get to laugh at-not-with me.
I am a Palm Pre owner, pretty much the last one in the box. I hold this status in a work environment of iPeople. I feel my …
Here lies /^v.+b$/i
After I've gone
In a melancholy mood, this week. Went back home to have a look at Dad's bench. He was a Classics scholar, actually; went up to Cambridge and everything. And so above his name and dates on the brass plaque screwed into the wood, instead of "He loved this place" or something equally fatuous, it says:
ORE STABIT …
Educating Verity the OU way
I think I mentioned that I was doing an Open University PGDip course in software development. (For those not familiar with the institution, the Open University has rightly been described as a sort of mental gym. You join with great enthusiasm; then, after three months, having attended just twice, you can drop out and ask for the …
Verity Stob and the super subjunction
Just downloaded the beta version of English V3.31, and I have to say I am very excited about it. This is definitely going to be a feather in the cap of Anglophones everywhere, and way better than the notorious V2.99 release of French (or the 'deux point neufty-neuf' as it has become known). There's a ton of new features to talk …
No stranger to the moleskin trouser
A website called MySpace is 'in a death spiral' according to Mr Robert Scoble, who attributes this unhappy state to its being implemented using Microsoft .NET technology, and because it is headquartered in Los Angeles, where apparently there aren't enough good programmers.
Slightly cross-eyed with concentration at his three- …
In defence of Comic Sans
Good Morning!!!
A Facebook pal recently posted to his status:
Whenever you see this font, raise your fists and shout "Comic saaaaans!"
This is a splendid idea, and I have already promised him on your behalf that we will all join in this game. But it made me wonder: what is it about Comic Sans that inspires such excitement? …
The Girl with the NSObject Class Reference tattoo
What better occupation, at this time of year, than to polish up one's IT skills with some background reading? What have the great programming publishers got lined up for our delectation in 2011?
Alas, as far as this reviewer is concerned, these rhetorical questions must remain unanswered. A certain Amazon parcel, containing …
I was timeboxed in a holistic scrum
Do you suffer from unsatisfactory projectile climaxes? Is your software construction methodology previous generation? Do you require the predictable outcome of pre-planning with the flexibility of iteration and the lightness of touch of partially de-hierarchicalised management approaches?
No need to say anything. I can tell from …
Diary of an Overflow Addict
Thursday
Medals 0 Rep 0
Need to write code to hash some passwords.
Hmm.
Troubled by the suspicion that this has been done before. Wonder if there are any functions in the Windows API to do this that a) aren't insanely complicated to call, or b) are .NET-only, or c) are reserved exclusively for Raymond Chen's use.
Googled a …
Sons of Kahn: The Apocrypha
The Sons of Kahn move on
And it came to pass, as hath previously been extensively documented, that the Sons of Kahn were sold by the Borlandites unto the hyperpolysyllabic Embarcoderhododendrongogogoch.
And one acquisition begat another. For, in turn, the Borlandites themselves were absorbed by the tribe of Methuselah-focus, …
Lord Peter views the logfile
"What is design? Dorothy Sayers (English writer and dramatist - quoted by Brooks) suggests that design has three phases" - InfoQ reviewing Fred 'Mythical Man' Brook's latest tome.
I had never realised that the famous crime writer Dorothy L Sayers was one of us - VS.
The morning sunshine, filtered, as it were, through London's …
A Rumba with a Roomba
Don't tell me. I've heard it already. You've got the iPadFever. Or Obsession for iPhone 4. Or iMac Mini Madness.
Apparently nearly everyone is contemplating dropping hundreds of not-as-big-as-they-were-once ones on an Apple product, and joining in the chorus of boring bores who bore on in boring detail about how lovely the …
I Married a Monster from ISO 9000
We had our quality audit the other week. Its cadences seemed curiously familiar.
The solemnisation of the quality system
The service is traditionally held in the offices of a software house, as a St Audit's day substitute for matins.
The congregation are gathered in the programmers' kitchenette, sipping coffee.
Opening …
First among SQLs
Legend has it that Edgar 'Ted' Codd got the idea for SQL while attending a 'Sky at Night' spin-off lecture. Patrick Moore, pointing at the blackboard, said: 'Select a star from the table'. 'That's it!', cried Codd, and ran out the door to follow up his inspiration forthwith, missing a good discussion of vulcanoids.
Though born …
Is it ta-ta for Flash?
I hear you're a bit of a Flash programmer. Why is Flash in the news so much, Verity?
Flash seems to have become the whipping boy for just about everybody in the IT crowd. Now it is under attack from Authentic Steve Jobs, who won't let it play on the iPad, just because the runtime is supposedly a tad flaky.
Computer Engineer …
Verity Stob's App Store
You have had your Sweet iJesus NexPreDroidBerry smart-like-hell-when-you-get-the-statement-phone for a month or so now. Perhaps the novelty has worn off a device that's much more difficult to use than its primitive predecessor, and which eats its battery charge faster than a New Year's resolution breaker munching an economy- …
A Deadlock Holiday
Moore's Law, I need hardly remind a top-notch industry professional like you, states that as the density of silicon circuitry doubles, the probability of you not being able to find some sensibly-priced extra memory to fit your old lappy approaches 1.0.
In recent times it has become generally admitted that, if this well-known …
Abigail's Windows 7 Party
What are you doing on Oct 22? Microsoft is putting a Tupperware-style twist on the upcoming Windows 7 rollout, launching a new initiative to encourage thousands of employees, partners and technology enthusiasts to throw parties in their homes and communities to demonstrate and help spread the word about its new OS - Slashdot …
Not now darling I'm twirping
Baroness Susan Greenfield, head of the Royal Institution and occasional star of Ben Goldacre's Bad Science column, has dramatically claimed, via the offices of the Daily Mail, that social websites harm children's brains.
I think the Baroness misses a trick. Children are not the problem in my experience. My difficulty is the …
Don't call me Ishmael
'No, you don't understand,' the White Knight said, looking a little vexed. 'That's what the name is called. The name really is "The Aged Aged Man."'
'Oh, do get on with it, you pedantic old weirdo,' snapped Alice crisply.
Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll (1871), revised Verity Stob (2009)
It started when we were all in …
An unthinking programmer's guide to the new C++
So what’s all this about a new C++ standard, Verity?
Why you asking me? I know nussing. I’m down to write ‘Porcine influenza — a programmer’s perspective’ this month.
Don’t fib.
Oh very well. The enthusiasts imprisoned in the ISO C++ bunker are reputedly on the point of lighting a white smoke bonfire to indicate they have a new …
Come on, Sir Tim!
It is twenty years since Tim Berners-Lee, then a humble techie at CERN, sent a memorandum to his manager entitled Information Management: a Proposal.
The Register is proud, on this important anniversary, to be republishing that historic document for the first time, so that we can all reflect properly on Sir Tim's achievement, …
Born Again Delphi
Mr Nick Hodges of CodeGear and Embarcadero and not Borland blogs amusingly about the obscure corners of Delphi syntax. Delphi Pascal apparently still implements a Jensen and Wirth era feature whereby [square brackets] can simulated by the sequences (. and .). In the olden days,
MyArray[5] := 0;
could look like this (assuming my …
Verity Stob's Big Fat Geek Yuletide Quiz of the Year Part 2
Note: Ms Stob claims to have sent in her only copy of Part 1 of her Quiz of the Year (The Questions) many weeks ago. However, nothing ever arrived here. But we do at least have the answers, so we thought we might as well make the best of a bad situation.
1. InstallShield Update Manager, which was yet again the winner of this …
Replicating DNA
"Fans of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy are likely to react strongly to the announcement that Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer has been given the green light to write a sixth book in the series" - El Reg
"It's Marilyn, isn't it? You're the new assistant? Come on in and sit yourself down."
The religious affairs …
Verity's further education
The story so far: I stumped up nearly £1000 for an OU computer course (M885 Analysis and design of enterprise systems: an object-oriented approach) and was surprised when the second piece of homework was based on a paper by Madanmohan and De' comprising, in part, plagiarised gibberish. I drew this to the attention of my OU tutor …
Educating Verity
It's my own fault. If you've told me once, you've told me a hundred times to ignore them. You know the sort of thing:
Bacheelor, MasteerMBA, and Doctoraate diplomas available in the field of your choice that's right, you can even become a Doctor and receive all the benefits that comes with it!
Last year, I fell victim to a …
How to be an instant Web me-2.0 developer
Are you a Web 1.0 duhveloper in a rut? Is rich web codery passing you by in Internet time? Do you nibble on the ASCII Alphabetti Spaghetti of server-side processing, while younger, feck- (careful) and talent-less colleagues slurp the UTF-Eightti Vermicelli of client-side coquetry?
You do? I knew it. But don't let it get you down …
A reading from the second book of Codh
And it had come to pass that the Sons of Kahn were, to make no bones about it, being flogged off.
For the Borland Leadership Team had looked upon the works of the Sons of Kahn, and had posed a question unto them.
And the question of the Borland Leadership Team was this: In what respect does your input enhance the four phase …
The missing five-minute Linux manual for morons
It is time to wake up and smell the elephant in the room. Vista is struggling to achieve escape velocity. Microsoft finds itself the butt of an international joke, but does not seem able to get a grip. The issue of choice of platform is once more up for grabs.
Of course there is an alternative; a popular computing platform …
Doctor Who and the moody Dane
Perhaps motivated by the desire to avoid type-casting, David Tennant is to take time off from television, to lead the RSC's forthcoming production of Hamlet. Your correspondent sneaked into early rehearsals.
Episode I. Elsinore. The guard-platform of the Castle. Enter HAMLET, HORATIO and MARCELLUS.
Hamlet The air bites …
Her Light Materials, Volume I
'So that's how I came to be mysteriously orphaned and, on my ninth birthday, just three years ago today, sent to work as a junior grader at the Ah-Poo! Toilet Tissue reclamation factory at Fort Wirth', explained Jo, our heroine, a feisty, scruffy and independently-minded young tomboy whose more mature, more feminine side we won' …
The art of software murder
Only the guilty need be afraid
Did you ever try Paint Shop Pro? It is the most splendid of programs, a faithful collie dog of a program. Whistle for it and it bounces up off your hard disk, and licks your face, and gambols around all eager and excited and ready to play.
Design industry pros may swear by Photoshop, but that …
