Skip to main content

Kevin Ragsdale: In DLL Hell

Kevin Ragsdale's FoxPro Blog: DLL Hell Rears It's Ugly Head

Kevin reports on a problem that I've also been hit with (but was never able to track down properly - it just "went away").

The upgrade to VFP SP2 killed one of his apps - why? Invalid DLLs all over the place.

But Kevin notes some key items:

How To Avoid DLL Hell (not always sanctioned but it works and in this day, that's more important than most else)
I changed my installer to just dump the VFP 9 SP2 runtimes into the folder where the app is installed.

But as Kevin notes:

"Install VFP 9 Service Pack 2. Today. Stop reading this, and go try it out. Try it on a test machine. Try it on Virtual PC. Just try it! Quit whining about what it might do to your apps, and go see for yourself. You'll never know until you try."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Elevating Project Specifications with Three Insightful ChatGPT Prompts

For developers and testers, ChatGPT, the freely accessible tool from OpenAI, is game-changing. If you want to learn a new programming language, ask for samples or have it convert your existing code. This can be done in Visual Studio Code (using GitHub CoPilot) or directly in the ChatGPT app or web site.  If you’re a tester, ChatGPT can write a test spec or actual test code (if you use Jest or Cypress) based on existing code, copied and pasted into the input area. But ChatGPT can be of huge value for analysts (whether system or business) who need to validate their needs. There’s often a disconnect between developers and analysts. Analysts complain that developers don’t build what they asked for or ask too many questions. Developers complain that analysts haven’t thought of obvious things. In these situations, ChatGPT can be a great intermediary. At its worst, it forces you to think about and then discount obvious issues. At best, it clarifies the needs into documented requirements. ...

Respect

Respect is something humans give to each other through personal connection. It’s the bond that forms when we recognize something—or someone—as significant, relatable, or worthy of care. This connection doesn’t have to be limited to people. There was an  article  recently that described the differing attitudes towards AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini (formerly Bard). Some people treat them like a standard search while others form a sort of personal relationship — being courteous, saying “please” and “thank you”. Occasionally, people share extra details unrelated to their question, like, ‘I’m going to a wedding. What flower goes well with a tuxedo?’ Does an AI “care” how you respond to it? Of course not — it reflects the patterns it’s trained on. Yet our interaction shapes how these tools evolve, and that influence is something we should take seriously. Most of us have all expressed frustration when an AI “hallucinates”. Real or not, the larger issue is that we have hi...

Friend vs Therapist vs LLM: Shades of Grey

The conversations with AI series brings up a single point and then compares it between different LLM engines. These types of conversations were one of the many contributing factors to my writing of " Towards Consciousness " that explores the benefits and issues of creating a conscious AI. In this scenario, I was interested in seeing how an LLM might differ from a friend or therapist on issues that may have nuanced responses or contexts. In doing so, I came up with an interesting discussion on shades of grey. My Premise: Is it a bit strange to be using an LLM as a sober second thought? Every time I walk down this path of “why use an LLM to do certain things”, I come back to the alternatives that people like to say. “Why not bring it up with a friend?” A friend typically has your back or will say whatever to support their own agenda. “A therapist?” That’s someone who is “trained” to be impartial. But a computer? A computer is impartial based on two logical outcomes. If you say ...