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Developers' fireside chat - 28th March

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If you have any interest in programming on or for RISC OS, and would like 
to chat to other developers, then the next 'friendly fireside chat' - held 
online, with actual fires entirely optional - will take place on Saturday, 
28th March.

These meetings, which take place roughly every four to six weeks, provide 
an ideal opportunity for developers of every level to get together and 
discuss anything related to the topic of RISC OS programming. That could 
include problems they have encountered and with which they need help, or 
it could be to find out how to do something they've never done before, to 
seek advice on the tools to use, and so on. And from the other side, the 
more seasoned developers who frequent these meetings (and who sometimes 
might need a little assistance themselves) can earn themselves brownie 
points for bringing their knowledge to the table, and sharing it.

As examples of the sorts of things that can be discussed, the following 
are a few of the subjects that came up at the last meeting:

* Problems with LOCAL in BBC BASIC (which brought about some discussion of 
NemoBASIC).

* The nature of the ARM assembly in the Impression sources, and the 
difficulty of updating it to 32-bit.

* Filename translation, and the different way it's handled by (for 
example) LanMan98 and Sunfish.

Somewhat less technical, there was also some lighthearted banter on the 
subject of how programmers today might be ashamed of their own code from 
twenty or more years ago, having seen their techniques and style improve 
as they've become more experienced. The discussion also veered onto the 
subject of displaying multiple layers on a web page - which may be moving 
away from RISC OS specifically, but HTML and CSS are still relevant to 
RISC OS developers who also maintain websites.

The general discussion can also lead to anyone present showing off things 
they're working on, and last time participants were shown an early proof 
of concept; software written to  automatically adapting code on the fly to 
use FPE or VFP (two different floating point solutions), depending which 
is available.


The meetings take place using the Zoom video conferencing software, which 
can be found at https://zoom.us/ and is available for most platforms.

They are wholly informal and don't follow a set agenda - those present 
steer the conversation as the evening progresses. They are open to anyone, 
regardless of their programming prowess – you could be someone with no 
programming experience looking for advice on where to begin and what tools 
to use, an expert with many years of development behind you, or anything 
between the two extremes; all are welcome.

To join the meeting, you will need a platform on which Zoom can be run, 
along with the meeting credentials. If you’ve joined a previous fireside 
chat, those credentials remain unchanged, but if not you can get them via 
one of these routes:

* You can contact Andrew McCarthy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/
ArmBytes" or Mastodon at https://mastodon.online/@armbytes – or indeed 
from your RISC OS computer using ChatCube.

* Or you can contact me at the RISCOSitory bunker by sending an email 
reply to this message. Please note, though, that any emails sent to me on 
the day of the meeting itself will not receive a reply until very close to 
the meeting’s start time!

If you can't wait until the next meeting to discuss RISC OS development 
issues with others, or want to continue a discussion started at the 
meeting, there is also now a Discord discussion forum:

https://discord.com/channels/1389293639938740354/1389293640609824874


_______________________________________________________________
a.m.conroy@argonet.co.uk, Moderator of comp.sys.acorn.announce.
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Developers' fireside chat - 28th March Vince M Hudd <news@riscository.com> - 2026-03-26 08:15 +0000

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