mkovach

I learned Korean, re-learned French. Learned to build cigars and since I'm a later bloomer, learned about parenting (had my first child at 40).

There is an easy way to display re-display a lines with a time stamp. While I enjoy seeing people awk, the command is a bit terse.

Instead I recommend something like:

tail -f /some/file | perl -nle 'print scalar(localtime),":",$_'

and it a bit easier to type IMHO.

I typically like to use cwm and instead of modifying it to bring up dmenu or the like, I use TkDesk.

Well, I still use tkcon and tkdesk quite a bit, so I wouldn't comment on the popularity. I am a bit biased and generally don't use fancy graphical stuff. But I do follow the Tcl/Tk lists and newsgroups and there are quite a few people doing Tk stuff based on the discussion there.

* Okay, I just mentioned fancy graphical stuff and newsgroups. I feel old. I need a nap.

In addition to the Core Team, D. Richard Hipp ( sqlite3, fossil-scm ) is a pretty avid user, contributes to tcl and writes apps that use TCL (wapp is one, sqlite3 has easy hooks to TCL).

TCL isn't widely popular but has a strong core team and just enough interest to drive development.

I love TCL, but using it since 7.6. Although now it is mainly for personal scripts and developing proof of concept scripts for work.

If fact in 1999 I used TCL (and Expect) on an ISP I worked for to run various tests checking for Year 2K issues and we used the same framework for patching and system building. Talked to somebody I worked with at that place recently, he had found a bit of the old application, and we noticed we have a pretty good Ansible base written in it.

I also use it to write fairly easy DSL languages for various things, package them as tclkits, and have binaries that can be run on various machines.

I use rc quite often for a default shell when circumstances allow me. Heck, I hacked up rc-httpd, a web server written with rc, for a few projects and it work out nicely.

The only version of Emacs I ever used regularly was (Lucid|X)emacs. According to folks on the Lucid side working with RMS was difficult[1] to say the least. In the end, Xemacs lost traction (and development) and I moved on from Emacs, it just didn't suit how I wanted to work well.

Emacs has the developers to correct the problems but they need to let go over a 40 year old vision and evolve a bit.

[1] https://www.jwz.org/doc/lemacs.html - Of course, this is biased towards to Lucid side of the story. But I remember following this.

I wrote a ton in WordPerfect. During college, they had WordPerfect on the UNIX and OpenVMS systems. Then, at a job, we did all our documentation using Wordstar, WordPerfect was only for the legal team.

Because of that, I still tend to install joe and use jstar quite a bit on any box I use with any regularity.

I am not sure of the benefit of writing a critic on an ignored proposal from the late 1990s. DJB didn't modify anything going since the initial proposal had been updated little.

If course it has flaws, it was never a fully developed idea.

I built three cigar box guitars for my son, my father, and myself make from repurposed wood from my son's', my father's and my baby cribs.

Coolest computer related thing? I used to run http://uptime.openacs.org (which I port from Oracle -> Postgres) and http://myturl.com (a tinyurl clone written in AOLserver). But as things tend to do, both projects are shutdown.

I still find the cigar box guitars the cooler thing.

There is a guy on Youtube, moshix, that does a number of videos on IBM mainframes and does quite a bit with Hercules and various OS distributions that run on it. He helped my remember some stuff from my early career. I was able to get some of my old FORTRAN code running on a MVS 3.8 setup.

I also setup a vm370 system with a few different things running on an older Raspberry PI. It was fun to think I could run the old application I maintained on a system that is about the size of the pack of cigarettes my old boss use to keep on his desk.

I know there are places that still offer support for MPE/ix so I am sure people are relying on it. HP EOL'd in 2006 and stopped all support in 2010. System was around for about 40 years and I spent about 4 years in the mid-90's working on a few of them at a manufacturing company. I was working on a pair of HP-3000 that were bought in the last 70's. I got invited to the last powering off in 2002.

Nice unique little systems. If I remember right, by the mid 80's the CPU was emulated on a PA-RISC chip. Also, at some point the HP-3000 ran MPE XL and the HP-9000 ran HP/UX using the same hardware. SPL (system programming language .. cr native name there) was .. interesting. I still have some of the OS manuals lying around attic.

Aww, AOLserver and OpenACS. Some of the best sites I worked on were OpenACS sites. In fact if fact when they shutdown Uptime, I ported his AOLserver/Oracle code to AOLserver/Postres and ran Uptime, from my home, on a Sparc pizza box for years.

AOLserver and TCL are still on my mind for new projects. Just haven't pulled the trigger .. yet ..

I ran into a situation about the same as you. I just explain things to places I was interviewing with that the situation didn't match the interview process and despite my best efforts, I just have to move one. Now, I was lucky that I had been laid off and this was the ``rebound job'', so I didn't have a history of changing jobs. Only one potential employer had an issue with them, but I did find a very good job and moved on.

Michel de Montaigne, his Essays are awesome and touch a wide range of subjects. The 100+ chapters in three books require an investment that will payoff.

Location: South Shore of Lake Erie, Cleveland, Ohio

Remote: Yes

Willing to Relocate: No

Technologies: Been doing this for 20 years, so lots. I've done FORTRAN, C/C++, Perl, TCL, Python, Go, various SQL servers, all flavors of UNIX, mainly backend devop'ish stuff.

Resume/CV: Email me

mek [at] mek [dot] cc

Howdy, been doing this for a long time. I have worked on old hardware that occasionally pops up here in ``remember when'' post. I've spent most of my time working on the backend of whatever interface stood was between the users and the data. I have given baseball talks and open source conferences, and open sources talks at baseball conferences.

Presently working at a larger corporation where things have stall technologies wise for various reason. Thought it might be time to see if I can find a better fit where I can help people learn some old tricks while learning new ones myself.

The market is at an all-time high because there is simply no other place to put money and see any reasonable interest.