On Visual Programming Languages

Logos of various visual programming languages

This post is intended as support material for another post of mine; see michael.gr - The Deployable Design Document.

The idea of creating software using visual tools has existed ever since the first aspiring programmer was bitterly disillusioned by discovering that programming almost exclusively entails writing lots of little text files containing nothing but boring and cryptic text.

On UML (oh, do not get me started)

The UML logo, by Object Management Group®, Inc. from uml.org; Public Domain.

This post is intended as support material for another post of mine; see michael.gr - The Deployable Design Document.

The Universal Modeling Language (UML) (Wikipedia) was intended to be a standard notation for expressing software designs, and to replace the multitude of ad-hoc notations that software architects have been using on various mediums such as whiteboard, paper, and general-purpose box-and-arrow diagram-drawing software. The idea was that by following a standard notation which prescribes a specific way of expressing each concept, every diagram would be readily and unambiguously understood by everyone.

It has miserably failed.

Common mistakes Dutchies make in the use of English

"Dutch Tongue" by michael.gr, based on the logo of The Rolling Stones.

The Dutch rank #1 in the world¹ in English-as-a-foreign language proficiency, making it possible for foreigners who speak English to live in The Netherlands, and especially in the Randstad area (W), without ever having to learn Dutch. However, due to peculiarities of the Dutch language, there are certain mistakes in the use of English that the Dutch are somewhat prone to make. When this happens, some call it "Dutchlish". Here is a collection of common mistakes, (or examples of Dutchlish, if you wish,) collected over the course of several years of living in The Netherlands.

A Programming Language

"Coding Software Running On A Computer Monitor" by Scopio from NounProject.com

Abstract

My thoughts and notes on how I would like a new programming language to look like.

The goals of the language are:

• Simple and elegant. (So that it is suitable for the academia.)
• Expressive. (So that it is suitable for experienced programmers.)
• Consistent. (So that it is attractive to developer teams.)
• Guiding. (So that it promotes best practices.) 
• Fast. (So that it is suitable for high performance computing.)
• Lean. (So that it is suitable for resource-constrained computing.)

This is work-in-progress; It is bound to be heavily amended as time passes, especially if I try some new language, like Kotlin or Rust.

Summary of language characteristics

Why the majority is always wrong | Paul Rulkens | TEDxMaastricht

I knew I was definitely going to watch this one, from just the title. It turns out that he comes across a bit annoying due to attitude; nonetheless, the talk is definitely worth watching.

Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle

Interestingly enough, in his code snippets he is using JavaScript, whereas one of my personal guiding principles is thou shalt not suffer an error to go undetected, which means that no scripting language should be used under any circumstances, for anything at all, by anyone, anywhere, ever. But I digress. Excellent presentation.

Bathyscaphe

The Bathyscaphe logo, a line drawing of bathyscaphe Trieste

by Mike Nakis, based on art found at bertrandpiccard.com

Abstract

This article introduces Bathyscaphe, an open-source java library that you can use to assert that your objects are immutable and/or thread-safe.

The problem

Programmers all over the world are embracing immutability more and more; however, mutation is still a thing, and in all likelihood will continue being a thing for as long as there will be programmers. In a world where both mutable and immutable objects exist side by side, there is often a need to ascertain that an object is of the immutable variety before proceeding to use it for certain purposes. For example, when an object is used as a key in a hash map, it better be immutable, or else the hash code of the key may change, causing the map to severely malfunction.

Furthermore, when an object is not immutable, there is often the need to ascertain that it is at least thread-safe before sharing it between threads, otherwise there will be race conditions, with catastrophic results.

Note that when any of the above goes wrong, it tends to be a bug which is very difficult to troubleshoot.

Fixing broken module names in IntellijIdea

Quite often, when I rename a maven module, IntellijIdea gets confused and keeps showing the old module name in the project view.

• Re-importing maven projects does not help.
• Clearing the IntellijIdea caches and restarting does not help.
• Even deleting the .idea directory does not help.

I discovered that this is happening because: 

• IntellijIdea keeps information about a project outside of the .idea directory
• IntellijIdea fails to delete that information when you invalidate caches and restart.

The solution I have found to this problem is:

1. Exit IntellijIdea.
2. Go to the application data directory of IntellijIdea (on my Windows machine, this currently is %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\JetBrains\IdeaIC2022.1)
3. Delete the `external_build_system` subdirectory
4. Start IntellijIdea.
5. Re-import all maven projects.

Update:

Shortly after I discovered this, a new release of IntelliJ IDEA came out, (IdeaIC2021.3) and there appears to be no "external_build_system" subdirectory in its directory. Miraculously, it makes use of the "external_build_system" subdirectory of the IdeaIC2021.1 directory!

Also, with this new version, when I apply the above steps, IntellijIdea for some reason starts to believe that I have chosen to "ignore" all of my pom.xml files.  So, I have to open up maven settings, go to "Ignored Files", and uncheck every single one of my pom.xml files.

Mouse Wheel Natural Scrolling in Windows

Some time ago and for about a year I used a Mac, which had natural scrolling by default. I decided to resist the urge to immediately configure it to work like Windows, and instead I made it a point to give natural scrolling a try for at least a while before making up my mind as to whether to keep it or lose it. While giving it a try, I was surprised to see that it was very easy for me to adjust to it, despite the fact that I have been using the unnatural Windows scrolling mode for nearly 30 years. (Ever since the mouse wheel became a thing.) I found that natural scrolling was indeed... natural. So, I kept using it, and I became addicted to it. Ever since then, I always have to configure natural scrolling on any Windows machine that I get my hands on before I can start using that machine.

Artwork based on original mouse-15887 by Arkthus from the Noun Project

Windows is so poor that it does not offer any user interface through which a novice user can change the mouse wheel scrolling mode. To do that you have to edit the registry, and the setting you are going to be modifying is a machine setting, so you will be affecting the mouse wheel mode for all users, not just for yourself. This is unbelievably lame, but hey, that's Windows, we are totally used to lame.

Getting AntiVirus software to trust a Windows Application

From vecteezy.com (Glass Shield Anti-Virus)

One of our customers tried installing our Windows Application on one of their computers and their antivirus software complained. They in turn complained to us, so we had to find a solution. I am documenting the solution here.