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as far down as the turtles go
Friday, June 21 2019
While waiting for decisions to be made by people more familiar with the C# language, I've started working on my own dummy C# services for the new website module I've been sketching out, beginning with a basic Hello World services example I found online. The example was good because it began with a command-line instruction (dotnet new webapi -o {name-of-your-project}) and had me do a minimum of menu twiddling. When it comes to writing code, I want everything about the program to be in text files. When essential things are locked away in hidden databases (such as the registry or as diffuse bits in a file saved in a proprietary format, I feel like things are undiscoverable, out of my control, or both. This is why I don't like working on dotnet projects in VisualStudio. Much of the setup involves twiddling things in menus, which are non-linear interfaces for data structures about which we are encouraged not to worry our pretty little heads. I much prefer the LAMP-stack world, where everything is in text files, there are no compilers, and it's open source as far down as the turtles go. Today, though, in among all the infuriating brittleness of a strongly-typed language (but that's just me being soft from so many years of ASP, PHP, and Javascript), I found a case where a framework was actually doing something useful. All I had to do was place files in the Controllers and Models directories, and they instantly became available throughout the application, the only necessary reference being a using {namespace}, no paths required. How was it doing this magic? It would be an easy magic to implement, but it's not available in otherwise soup-to-nuts frameworks like Angular.
When I started driving off in the Prius to begin my weekend, I could feel a problem with one of the wheels, which was creating a lot of gravel noise. I stopped and went to look, and sure enough, the front driver's side wheel was completely flat. I'd only driven about 20 feet, so I backed into the space I'd just left, almost hitting some woman attached helicopter-style to her skinny little white son (the parking lot being full of parents and children on late Friday afternoons). I quickly busted out all the tools (including the special tool for removing the one proprietary nut securing every wheel), jacked up the car, and then, with the lug nuts removed, worked on breaking the layer of rust that had welded the rim to the rest of the car. My colleague Joe came out while I was doing these things, expressed the socially-appropriate empathy, and then told me about how his son had somehow gotten a deck screw lodged in the sidewall of one of the tires of his BMW. "How did that happen?" I asked. Joe had no idea. At some point I noticed the car rolling slightly forward, at which point it fell off its jack. Apparently one has to secure the emergency brake before jacking up a Prius.
Eventually I broke the layer of rust and replaced the wheel with the donut. Normally I drive south out of Red Hook on my way home, but today I drove into the middle of the village to get a bottle of Lillet and a half gallon of Gary's Good Vodka from Sipperley's Grog Shop. We'd be having a dinner party tomorrow night, and Gretchen had ordered Lillet and canned hearts of palm. For that second item, I had to visit the Hannford on 9W. I don't know if I'd been to the supermarket in over a year.
This evening, I drank booze and smoked pot (the first of that in weeks) and watched the last episode of this season of Black Mirror, the one featuring Miley Cyrus as a pop star being marginalized and replaced by unscrupulous managers and technology. The watching of that episode was interrupted by Gretchen and me watching the first episode of the second season of Barry. But I was a little too far gone to grok most of what I was seeing, other than the pervasive theme of Nine Inch Nails' "Head Like a Hole" (mostly through a syrupy pop-music filter) in the Black Mirror episode. Amazingly, though, by transitioning to kratom tea, I managed to regain control of my evening by the time I went to bed.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?190621 feedback
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