The one rule for software maintenance

Code which cannot be maintained might as well just not work or even exist.

– Thierry Eude, Ph. D., Ing. jr., Université Laval

Last open documents

Event based programming is fun. It’s simple, clean, and easy; things fall into place when they should.

But when you have a software that lists your recently opened documents, when do you store them? Some do it as you open them (the right way), others when you close the software (the wrong way).

In the events of a power outage (such as I had last night), some of my programs remembered what I opened from the last time they closed properly. I’m thinking UltraEdit (which I otherwise love). OnClose() or equivalent, isn’t always the best place to store stuff for the next session, because :

While you know the software has opened, you never really know when and how it will close.

Remember the Ctrl-S shortcut, Keep it Holy

I’ve been using an old (really old now that I think about it) SQLite GUI simply called SQLite Administrator for years. It’s light, retro-compatible with SQLite2, and does the basics of what one wants out of an SQLite GUI:

• List tables
• Table (and triggers, indexes, views) edition/creation GUI
• On the fly queries
• Export to CSV

If you’ve used Windows enough in the last 15 years, you know Ctrl-S means save. Across dozens of programs. If for some reason there is no save function, Ctrl-S is rarely used.

SQLite Administrator broke holy law (besides being pissy about large integers and dates) by mapping Ctrl-S (undocumented) as clear screen (and of the no undo variety).

Now trying SQLiteStudio.

AVG, I barely knew yee…

I’m well aware there are two schools of thought when it comes to anti-viral software. One says “better safe than sorry”, the other says “don’t touch another man’s toothbrush and you’ll be fine.” I belong to the former: accidents happen, we’ve all had them, there’s no sense in not getting at least minimal protection. I, like many others of my clan, use the anti-virus software du jour known as AVG. It works well enough, finds out a bunch of tracking cookies, the occasional worm, updates frequently, etc.