Code Wrangling at its Best
One of GAMBAS’s biggest advantages is its fully integrated development environment (IDE), which resembles VB6 and offers an easy-to-use graphical interface. This makes creating forms, handling events, and connecting to databases significantly faster than using more complex frameworks.
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Introduction As an electronics enthusiast with over 50 years of experience, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing the dramatic evolution of computing systems. From the early days of 4 and 8-bit machines with minimal RAM to today’s powerful 64-bit computers with terabytes of storage, the progress has been nothing short of extraordinary. The same transformative
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OOP is Not What You Think It Is
Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) has become one of the most popular paradigms in modern software development, yet it’s often misunderstood. When most people hear “OOP,” they think of classes, inheritance, and the rigid hierarchy of objects—features that languages like C++ and Java have made standard. But this wasn’t the original vision.
The roots of OOP lie in the groundbreaking work of Alan Kay, who introduced the world to the concept in the 1970s through the creation of Smalltalk. For Kay, OOP wasn’t about objects in the way we think of them today—it was about message passing, a way for software components to communicate seamlessly without getting bogged down by the internal structure. In this vision, objects were secondary to the messages they exchanged, which encouraged flexibility, modularity, and dynamic behavior.
Smalltalk: A Different Kind of OOP
Smalltalk wasn’t just a programming language—it was a philosophy. Unlike C++ and other modern OOP languages that focus on complex class hierarchies, Smalltalk treated objects as living entities capable of sending and receiving messages. This idea of message passing was central, allowing objects to respond in ways that weren’t strictly predefined. The focus was on behavior over structure, encouraging experimentation and evolution within a system.
Smalltalk’s version of OOP was lightweight, adaptable, and far less rigid than what we see today. Alan Kay’s emphasis was on how objects collaborate rather than how they inherit from one another. This made systems designed in Smalltalk inherently more flexible, allowing for changes without the fear of breaking the underlying architecture—a stark contrast to the tightly coupled systems often seen in C++-based projects.
What Went Wrong: The Rise of Modern OOP
As languages like C++ gained popularity, the industry’s perception of OOP began to shift. Object-Oriented Programming became synonymous with class-based design, encapsulation, and inheritance. Message passing was sidelined in favor of method invocation, where functions are called directly on objects, leading to more rigid and complex systems.
The shift from Smalltalk’s dynamic message-passing model to the static class structures of C++ marked a fundamental change in how we build software. It wasn’t long before terms like polymorphism, encapsulation, and inheritance became the buzzwords of OOP, but the simplicity and elegance of Kay’s original ideas were lost in the process. Modern OOP became more about managing structure than about fostering communication between entities.
Inductors are essential components in electronics, used for storing energy in magnetic fields and managing current flow. This article explores the various types of inductors, their values, ratings, and applications in power supplies, RF circuits, and high-voltage systems. Learn how to select the right inductor for your project and understand key calculations like Q factor, voltage, and energy storage.
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Capacitors are essential components in electronics, offering a wide range of applications from energy storage to signal filtering. This article covers everything you need to know about capacitors, including types, ratings, case types, mounting options, and their use in high-frequency and high-voltage circuits. Learn how to choose the right capacitor for your specific needs, including decoupling and filter capacitors, AC line supplies, and series or parallel configurations.
Over time, Ubuntu retains all installed kernel versions, which can consume a significant amount of space on your system. This article introduces a custom Bash script that allows users to easily remove old kernels interactively, freeing up space and updating GRUB automatically. We also discuss why Ubuntu would benefit from an integrated kernel removal mechanism that keeps only the most recent versions while allowing users to preserve older ones if needed.
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Unicode is a universal encoding standard designed to support every language and symbol in use today. This article provides an in-depth look into how Unicode works in application development, exploring the challenges of string comparison, normalization, and the multiple ways that the same visual character can be represented. Learn how to handle Unicode strings in Python, JavaScript, and C, and discover how normalization can resolve issues when comparing visually identical characters.
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Code pages were once the backbone of character encoding in computers, providing a way to map binary values to text in different languages. However, they had significant limitations, particularly when dealing with multiple languages at once. This article explores the history of code pages, how they were used, and why they have been largely replaced by the modern Unicode standard, which offers a universal character set for all languages.
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Introduction Command parsers are essential in embedded systems for receiving and interpreting commands from a host device, such as a computer or another microcontroller. In this article, we will explore how to implement command parsers on an Arduino over a serial connection, focusing on memory management, text buffer creation and use, string formatting, and handling
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A Beginners Guide Introduction Communication protocols are vital for enabling embedded devices to interact effectively. Three prominent protocols, Modbus, Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments (SCPI), and General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB), stand out due to their widespread adoption in various industrial and testing environments. Recently, I had the opportunity to work on an embedded project
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