I absolutely loathe web development, yet I've been having to work on implementing a webshop from scratch, as I'm trying to start up a laser business. To make the experience slightly less painful, I implemented the backend in #freepascal ; as most out of the ready-made solutions are evil in various ways. (eg: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/04/08/1518213/shopify-ceo-says-staffers-need-to-prove-jobs-cant-be-done-by-ai-before-asking-for-more-headcount ) --

It's just about done, the only bit I need to finish yet is some sort of solution for shipping/tracking info.

I've been looking into ShipStation and actually started implementing their API('s); learned they just acquired the ShipEngine company, leading to some API confusion - which lead me to look more into the company.

It turns out that the same company that recently acquired them (Auctane) owns a myriad of shipping-type companies, including stamps.com, endicia, shippingeasy, shipworks, and many others,...

It seems to me that they put themselves in a position where there's basically few alternatives.

If you think about how much e-commerce integrates with at least one of these, you quickly realize that most of what pretty much anyone buys online goes through one of the companies owned by them, which means they know what everyone buys, their name, their home address, etc,...

This absolutely sounds like a #privacy scandal waiting to happen.

Needless to say, I'm not going to be using ShipStation.

I guess I'll just try to use ups/fedex/whatever directly then. Back to the drawing board. :(

It never fails to blow my mind that whenever you turn over even the most benign rock, you'll find some billionaire sucking our society dry. Nothing seems immune to #enshittification these days.

(Probably a surprise to no-one that actually deals with this stuff on a regular basis - but like i said, i've not been doing webdev in a long time, and actively avoid the www even as a user, I've been a bit out of the loop)

I thought it might be a good idea to reach to the basics trying to debug that #FreePascal bug which makes even simplest programs fail to run on i8086/msdos (my #TP7 game port still “”works””, until it reaches #DOS API calls). So thought it might be possible to target the #8086 and run #MartyPC by @gloriouscow

While I pretty much know that the code jumps somewhere randomly and then goes along executing emptiness, I still need to find out why…
and how to set breakpoints on INTs :p

You had ONE JOB.

WTF

Trying to port Mario & Luigi (1994) by Wiering Software from Turbo #Pascal to #FreePascal trunk (i8086), ofc on #DOS: https://wieringsoftware.nl/mario

Posted on https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,71748.html but got nowhere

I can build it on FPC, but can’t run. Removing call to ReadConfig shows gfx issues and input gets messed. I can’t find a way to debug the realmode properly

May I ask heroes from my feed for some helping hand? @foone @wyatt @root42 @nina_kali_nina

A new Lazarus appears!
#Pascal #FreePascal #Lazarus

https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/09/new_lazarus_4/

BGRABitmap is a graphics library for FreePascal and Lazarus that offers extensive capabilities for image manipulation, including transparency management, direct pixel access, and various effects for dynamic image generation.

https://bgrabitmap.github.io/

I've completed "Guard Gallivant" - Day 6 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/6

Nice one. Brute force works, but there's a lot of room for optimization. For some reason (mainly array access) the code generated by #freepascal is pretty slow in my raspi2 (10x slower than expected). I'm sure the LLVM backend would work better. Maybe I'll try someday.

Moved instance, so time for a new #introduction!

I'm Alex and I have a PDA problem.

In 2018, after 16 years of using various #Psion portables, I decided to try my hand at developing hardware and software for my beloved Series 3c to help me with journalling and creative writing.

6 years and repeated sidequests later, I've ended up doing a lot of research into the SIBO/EPOC16 platform, and done my best to document it when I can. I've also nudged former developers into open sourcing their old Psion apps.

My current main projects are:

• #PsiDrive, an #RP2040-based USB drive for SIBO SSDs.
• Rewriting the Psion SIBO (16-bit 8086) C SDK, including updating the docs (with #AsciiDoc) and rewriting the original DOS tools as FOSS apps. I'm currently using #FreePascal to create a drop-in replacement for #CTRAN, the Psion OO C preprocessor. (I want to eventually write a new compiler targeting EPOC16. Eventually.)
• Anything else that tickles my bouncy brain.

Outside of #retrocomputing, I'm your common-or-garden British nerd. I'm a Linux user - mostly Arch, but I dabble with others. I also like a bit of #HaikuOS and I'm planning on giving #FreeBSD a go very soon.

I used to be a senior computer monkey, specialising in on-prem SME infrastructure (I lament the loss of vSphere). Now I train others to become computer monkeys (for better or worse). As a result, sometimes you'll see me wrestling with old Cisco ASAs, Ubiquiti APs, or modded kit running #OpenWrt.

Generally, I like making things do stuff, especially if it's stuff that the thing wasn't originally designed to do.

#introduction

VA3KZR as of 2023-12-09

Started with #Commodore Vic-20 - at school, we learned graphical #LOGO on PETS and Apple IIe's... crashed the school Unisys ICON network far too often...

Headed to college, *thought* I would be heavily involved in, electronics design, and engineering - instead, it was #programming.

First was #VisualBasic 1.0; next, Borland #Delphi 1.0 / #ObjectPascal - still dabble with #FreePascal #Lazarus, a smidge of #Java, a lot of #CSharp and some #Python.