This coming Monday is the last date on which an election can be called for this year, specifically for the December 11 date spruiked recently by Anthony Albanese, which few if any still expect. The parlour game thus seems likely to move on now to the alternative scenarios of March and May. A complication in the former case is a South Australian state election set in the normal course of events for the third Saturday in March, i.e. March 19. If I understand the situation correctly, the South Australian government will have the discretion to delay the election by up to three weeks if a federal election is called before February 19 for a date in March.
Here’s what we do know:
• Max Maddison of The Australian reports grumbling within the New South Wales Liberal Party over its failure to have finalised candidates in the important seats of Dobell, Warringah and Gilmore. The report cites Liberal sources, no doubt with an interest in the matter, accusing Alex Hawke of using his clout on state executive to delay proceedings to the advantage of candidates of his centre right faction. “Other senior Liberal sources” contend the problem is “a lack of quality candidates and impending local government elections”. Prospective nominees for Dobell include former test cricketer Nathan Bracken, along with Michael Feneley, a cardiologist who has twice run unsuccessfully in Kingsford Smith, and Jemima Gleeson, owner of a chain of coffee shops.
• Further on Gilmore, the ever-readable Niki Savva reported in her Age/Herald column a fortnight ago that “speculation is rife” that Andrew Constance will not in fact proceed with his bid for preselection, just as he withdrew from contention Eden-Monaro ahead of last year’s by-election. If so, that would seemingly leave the path clear for Shoalhaven Heads lawyer Paul Ell, who is reckoned a formidable opponent to Constance in any case.
• Labor has not been breaking its back to get candidates in place in New South Wales either, with still no sign of progress in the crucial western Sydney fringe seat of Lindsay. However, candidates have recently been confirmed in two Liberal marginals: Zhi Soon, an education policy adviser and former diplomat, in Banks, and Sally Sitou, a University of Sydney doctoral candidate and one-time ministerial staffer, in Reid.
• In Victoria, Labor’s candidate in La Trobe will be Abhimanyu Kumar, owner of a local home building company.
• In an article by Jason Campbell of the Herald Sun, JWS Research says rising poll numbers for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party are being driven by “skilled labourers and lower-end middle-management”, supplementing an existing support base that had largely been limited to people over 65. Maleness and low education remain common threads.
• An article on the voter identification laws by Graeme Orr of the University of Queensland in The Conversation makes a point I had not previously heard noted: that those who lodge a declaration vote in lieu of providing identification will have no way of knowing if their vote was ultimately admitted to the count. This stands in contrast to some American states, where those who cast the equivalent of postal or absent votes can track their progress online.
New South Wales by-election latest:
• It is now clear that the by-elections will not be held simultaneously with the December 4 local government elections as initially anticipated. The Guardian reports that the state’s electoral commissioner, John Schmidt, told a parliamentary committee hearing yesterday that “it wouldn’t be possible or sensible to try and aim earlier than the middle of February”, in part because the government’s “piecemeal funding” of his agency had left it with inadequate cybersecurity standards.
• Labor has announced it will field a candidate in Bega, making it the only one of the five looming by-elections in which the Coalition and Labor are both confirmed starters. James O’Doherty of the Daily Telegraph (who I hope got paid extra for pointing out that “Labor has chosen to contest the seat despite Leader Chris Minns last month criticising the looming by-election as expensive and unnecessary”) reports nominees for Liberal preselection will include Eurobodalla Shire mayor Liz Innes and, possibly, Bega Valley Shire councillor Mitchell Nadin.
• Anton Rose of Inner West Courier reports Liberal hopes in Jodi McKay’s seat of Strathfield are not high, particularly if Burwood mayor John Faker emerges as the Labor candidate, and that the party would “not be mounting a vigorous campaign”. One prospective Liberal nominee is said to be Natalie Baini, a sports administrator who was said earlier in the year to planning a preselection against Fiona Martin in the federal seat of Reid.
Poll news:
• A Redbridge Group poll conducted for Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200 non-profit group records Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s primary vote as having slumped from 49.4% in his blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Kooyong to 38%. With the Greens on 15%, well short of the heights achieved with Julian Burnside as candidate in 2019, such a result would put Frydenberg under pressure from Labor on 31%. Around half of the balance is attributed to the United Australia Party, which seems doubtful in an electorate such as Kooyong. The objective of the poll was to test the waters for a Zali Steggall-like independent challenge, and responses to some rather leading questions indicated that such a candidate would indeed be competitive or better. The survey was conducted from October 16 to 18 by automated phone polling from a sample of 1017.
• Liberal-aligned think tank the Blueprint Institute has results from a YouGov poll on attitudes towards carbon emissions policy, conducted in nine regional electorates from September 28 to October 12 with samples of around 415 each. In spite of everything, these show large majorities in favour of both halving emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050 even in such electorates as Hunter and Capricornia. Even among coal workers (sub-sample size unclear), the results are 63% and 64% respectively.
• The Australia Institute has published its annual Climate of the Nation survey, based on a poll of 2626 respondents conducted by YouGov in August.
• It took me a while to update BludgerTrack with last week’s Resolve Strategic and Roy Morgan results, but now that it’s done, I can exclusively reveal that they made very little difference. Labor is currently credited with a two-party lead of 53.8-46.2.
Also:
• Antony Green has published his analysis of the finalised Victorian state redistribution.
You can’t say very small accomplishments c@t!
After all, SHY got to walk alongside the lady who walked along side Greta!!
Supper’s Ready by Genesis: the story behind the song
https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-story-behind-the-song-genesis-suppers-ready
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szJq1lwnkNw&t
Fulvio Sammut @ #749 Saturday, November 6th, 2021 – 8:12 pm
I bet it’s all over Greens’ social media already! 😆
She might even have danced with the man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales!
Poroti
Won’t someone rid me of this meddlesome pastor? Come on – you all know you want to do it!
“Odd” time signatures are feature of prog. rock; “Apocalypse In 9/8 (Co-Starring the delicious talents of Gabble Ratchet)” in Supper’s Ready being a classic example.
Sky’s FIFO (First In, First Out) switches between 3/4 and 4/4 time, dropping a beat every three bars.
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 … At least at the start. Trying to keep time without getting distracted by Tristan Fry’s machine gun-like precision on the snare drum and/or Herbie Flower’s seductive bass line is a real challenge. Love it.
Sky – Fifo, Adagio, Scherzo, Watching The Aeroplanes (1980)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3eCRR1EvFM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMSB1prro_k
Jeebus Shellbell!
Re changing time signatures.
These are the first 53 bars of the Sacrificial Dance from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring
2/4 3/16 2/16 3/16 3/16 2/8
2/16 3/16 3/16 2/8 3/16
3/16 5/16 2/8 3/16 2/8
5/16 5/16 2/8 3/16 2/8 3/16
2/16 3/16 2/8 3/8
3/16 2/16 3/16 2/8 2/16
3/16 3/16 2/8
3/8 2/8 2/8 2/8 2/8 2/8
3/8 2/8 2/8 2/8 3/8 2/8 2/8
2/8 3/8 3/8 2/8 2/8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXnsiZeh__g
Driver in hospital after allegedly breaching COVID checkpoints, sparking police pursuit in Northern Territory
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-06/man-hospital-breaching-covid-checkpoints-police-nt/100600676
Whoops- poor html formatting of mine in the above post. Only the first paragraph is by Shellbell. The rest is my commentary.
I have just done a quick sim of the posts to catch up after a busy day.
Some lovely conversation, and some brilliant photographs.
Thanks all!
Jaeger
Sky is a forgotten classic.. I love their energy. And they were having so much fun!
There’s a video of them playing “Cannonball” whilst hanging around a vintage aircraft. Saw it once, many years ago as a “filler” before the ABC News.. I’d so love to find that.
Yeah, but we’re still considered a COVID-19 “hotspot”. (18 new cases today. Bugger.)
Canberra glows as we celebrate approaching 95% fully vaccinated
https://www.covid19.act.gov.au/news-articles/canberra-glows-as-we-celebrate-approaching-95-fully-vaccinated
Rossmcg….
Like you, I have long not read the rantings and ravings of our local Paul Murray in the West newspaper.
That he gets a gig nearly every Saturday – usually an anti-Labor bash or Liberal suck up – makes me wonder just how he still gets such a gig….
He was a failed radio talk-back host on 6PR yet his weekly West rants have been on-going for years. That he was a former editor of the West and now comes out as so one-eyed (anti-Labor/pro-Liberal) only serves to underscore the lack of editorial balance in the West in times past…
I wonder why he continues to get this forum when his use-by date has long gone. Yet, “Mooner” is still seen as some kind of demi-god in the world of WA journalism…For the life of me, I cannot see why as his articles are essentially polemic….
Jaeger
We are not yet making as much use of rapid tests as we could be. One sensible rule should be taking a rapid test before meeting anyone over 60. Another thing we should be doing is rapid testing anyone that flies. We should also be encouraging people to test whenever they leave their city.
And we should be doing more to put the screws on the 20 and 30 somethings who are still avoiding getting vaccinated…
Oh.. I saved this up from last night…
Real Programmers (Don’t use Pascal)…
https://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html
Those ABC TV fillers rocked! Vangelis “Alpha”, Mike Oldfield “Portsmouth” etc.
I love Cannonball, but don’t remember that music video.
Tricotsays:
Saturday, November 6, 2021 at 9:48 pm
“Like you, I have long not read the rantings and ravings of our local Paul Murray in the West newspaper.”
Just goes to show what influence these yokels have on country people.
That may sound like an offence, but then…..Barnaby….Christensen….Pitt…. need I go on?
You reminded me of the ABC Showband..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf4E3DlNJtE
LOL: “If you can’t do it in Fortran, do it in assembly language. If you can’t do it in assembly language, it isn’t worth doing.”
I’m not a programmer. If pressed, I could probably bodge something up in Perl, awk etc.
https://www.pollbludger.net/2021/11/05/save-the-date/comment-page-16/#comment-3741005
I note TIME had a piece talking of the Americans getting SMR into R[o]mania, besides subs into Australia?
Re: Rush, has anyone watched “New Gold Mountain”?
https://www.sbs.com.au/gold/new-gold-mountain/
Lizzie, if it’s not too late
The Melbourne suburbs with low vaccination rates currently have
– very high rental vacancy rates eg East Malvern is 13.5% vacancy
– suburb population derived from 2016 census data
– the well heeled have decamped to the country
Although Port Phillip has a very high infection rate. Stonnington has a much lower infection rate
MB
Look at the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne where the facilities these Bible groups operate from are located (and they are very, very large premises with influence in those communities including by presentation to young families with children – and that includes thru Netball competitions confirmed by the names of the teams which compete so carrying Bible Group names. They ingratiate and they are very skilled at it. Then come Bastiaan and Sukkar because this is where their numbers come from)
Simply, in those Liberal held seats, they may have returned a “Yes” opinion overall but 30% returned a “No” opinion
And that was the same in all seats – even in ALP held seats there are those who vote Liberal
Taking into account that registering an opinion was not a requirement, you can no doubt present that the figures say anything (including that ALP voters – so progressive – registered a “No” opinion)
It stands to reason that Conservatives (and the religions which are conservative) would have registered a “No” opinion
When you approach a Polling Booth on Election Day, to be confronted by people with young children opposing abortion, whose How to Vote cards are they handing out?
Douglas & Milko, Victorian prisons like to employ Israeli backpackers who aren’t great drinkers & have completed military service in the israeli Defence Forces
Cud and all,
Thanks, cool!
And thanks so much for the conversation on PDP-11s. I never programmed one of these, but I did need to use one (Telescope control system) as recently as 2004. If all the software overlaying the legacy telescope system crashed, we used a crib sheet to give commands to the PDP-11 to live the telescope a safe position. I swear it had commands like: GOTO PARK; GOTO sky coordinates.
A good friend of mine was one of the telescope engineers when in 2004, we got together to look at how the telescope should be upgraded. his talk was (to me) very funny. He explained that there were 5 different operating systems running the telescope, and none of the talked to each other except for kluges.
We had:
The PDP-11, driving the telescope hardware.
The VAX which stored the data
The Microsoft system we all needed to login to, to get authenticated.
The Unix Sun station we used to reduce the data.
And I forget the 5th one.
I missed the big one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR6pYICqZT0
Kludges make the world go around. 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge
Tetris being treated the way it should be treated!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_KY_EwZEVA
Jaegersays:
Saturday, November 6, 2021 at 10:16 pm
Re: Rush, has anyone watched “New Gold Mountain”?
________________
Loved it, but i love everything to do with the history of the Victorian gold rush period. Especially around Ballarat where the series was set.
https://www.pollbludger.net/2021/11/05/save-the-date/comment-page-16/#comment-3741037
Towards end of primary school we would submit punchcards to IBM to run on some gov dep’s mainframe on the weekend, and if you got it right the printouts would come back in the post.
For the first decade or so, I was definitely more an applied computing than a core computing person, more Basic(ode), SSP/ RPG, HTML, Unix utilities etc rather than assembler, essentially applications.
Never understood the attraction of DOS/ Windows vs Macs/ Aqua vs X.
Though I still have a CP/M and MSX-DOS systems unit with terminal and dot matrix printer around (uni, Multiplan, Wordstar, gaming), even a SGI O2 (which will go Linux one day, and similarly aged HP Deskjet with both parallel centronics and USB ports, sadly not an Onyx, postgraduate, just watch Patriot Games), and a few Macs (PPC/ G4/ G5, MacTel/ i5 … Blackberry, early iPad, though other stuff from Motorola, Handspring/ Palm, Nokia or Canon/ Sony, same for watches that aren’t automatic or solar, went eBay etc some time ago).
D&M
I had an electronic engineer friend and mentor (sadly, passed away a few years ago). One of his tasks was to upgrade the signalling computer that ran much of the Hunter rail network.
Guess what? They had a PDP series computer running the signalling system and his task was to load the software onto a PDP emulator card running on a PC (yes, they really do make those) plus a bunch of I/O cards. As you’d imagine, nail biting, middle of the night stuff.
Jaegar
Hmm. I can do Fortran (the maths and physics language), but I actually prefer C.
But those of us who like procedural languages, (C, Fortran, Basic and yes Pascal etc), and feel it is important it is taught, are I fear, like the classicists who want Latin taught in high schools.
I think we are right – the basic logic of a language like Latin, or Fortran or C, actually helps the brain to develop the skills and vocabulary needed for problem solving skills.
But the times are against us. I did learn assembly language in my degree, and really enjoyed it.
But when at lunch with one of my HPC computing guru friends, I was complaining that I was being pressured to stop teaching C, and switch to Python. I felt strongly that you would be a better Python programmer if you have a basis grasp of C – which is a “strict”language, which makes you think very clearly about how you are declaring (defining) each variable. Just like having a good grasp of anay language, including English
As the daughter of an English and History teacher, and the granddaughter of the same (both Grandmother and Grandfather), the “strict”use of language”appeals to me.
But, anyway, my HPC friend said “my heart says keep teaching them C, but my head say no. Just go to Python.”
His reasoning was”just look at assembly language, we would loved to have kept teaching this, because it gives you such a good understanding of how computers work at the most basic level, but we had to realise that time had moved on.
This is ridiculous. I’m sending every state and Federal government agency and research center a Raspberry Pi.
Creators admit Unix, C hoax
COMPUTERWORLD 1 April
In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate April Fools prank kept alive for over 20 years. Speaking at the recent UnixWorld Software Development Forum, Thompson revealed the following:
“In 1969, AT&T had just terminated their work with the GE/Honeywell/AT&T Multics project. Brian and I had just started working with an early release of Pascal from Professor Niklaus Wirth ‘s ETH labs in Switzerland and we were impressed with its elegant simplicity and power. Denis had just finished reading Bored of the Rings , a hilarious National Lampoon parody of the great Tolkien Lord of the Rings trilogy. As a lark, we decided to do parodies of the Multics environment and Pascal. Dennis and I were responsible for the operating environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new system to be as complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users’ frustration levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more risque allusions. Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped version of Pascal, called ‘A’. When we found others were actually trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional cryptic features and evolved into B, BCPL and finally C. We stopped when we got a clean compile on the following syntax:
for(;P(“\n”),R–;P(“|”))for(e=C;e–;P(“_”+(*u++/8)%2))P(“| “+(*u/4)%2);
To think that modern programmers would try to use a language that allowed such a statement was beyond our comprehension! We actually thought of selling this to the Soviets to set their computer science progress back 20 or more years. Imagine our surprise when AT&T and other US corporations actually began trying to use Unix and C! It has taken them 20 years to develop enough expertise to generate even marginally useful applications using this 1960’s technological parody, but we are impressed with the tenacity (if not common sense) of the general Unix and C programmer. In any event, Brian, Dennis and I have been working exclusively in Pascal on the Apple Macintosh for the past few years and feel really guilty about the chaos, confusion and truly bad programming that has resulted from our silly prank so long ago.”
Major Unix and C vendors and customers, including AT&T, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, GTE, NCR, and DEC have refused comment at this time. Borland International, a leading vendor of Pascal and C tools, including the popular Turbo Pascal, Turbo C and Turbo C++, stated they had suspected this for a number of years and would continue to enhance their Pascal products and halt further efforts to develop C. An IBM spokesman broke into uncontrolled laughter and had to postpone a hastily convened news conference concerning the fate of the RS-6000, merely stating ‘VM will be available Real Soon Now’. In a cryptic statement, Professor Wirth of the ETH institute and father of the Pascal, Modula 2 and Oberon structured languages, merely stated that P. T. Barnum was correct.
In a related late-breaking story, usually reliable sources are stating that a similar confession may be forthcoming from William Gates concerning the MS-DOS and Windows operating environments. And IBM spokesmen have begun denying that the Virtual Machine (VM) product is an internal prank gone awry.
contributed by Bernard L. Hayes
https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/c.htm
D&M,
I finally asked Mr Bowe for your email address! I’ll contact you soon! 😀
Taylormade / Jaeger:
Never seen Rush, but the Late Show revoiced it in the early 90’s into a wonderfully weird thing called “The Olden Days”. Here’s the teaser for it; I think the whole thing’s on Youtube somewhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWHBY3FIKsQ
There are far too many programmers, ex-programmers, part-time programmers on the blog tonight!
I hated punch cards. So unforgiving. We used to send ours off to Monash Uni to run on their mainframe.
Being a smart arse I’d always attempt to squeeze in something more than our teacher had required in order to impress my peers. It ended in tears more often than not. Despite being one of the better students in my class in relation to programming, I only scraped through a pass. That for me was the best lesson I took from that experience – stop showing off, just make it work you idiot.
I still fall occasionally for the trap of building in more functionality then the client had requested.
7 West is Stokes
A Liberal Party “heavy” who, with Murdoch, instructed the Liberal Party to remove Turnbull who was just too progressive for them
What you get with his media interests is what you get
Ditto Murdoch and Costello
What you do do is to not subscribe
Because they require subscribers to sell advertising space
Ditto TV ratings
There are numerous credible and independent sources of information- starting with SBS including their PBS feed
The ABC, today, is unfortunately, “iffy”, compromised by government complaints and funding threats
RE : Re: Rush, has anyone watched “New Gold Mountain”?
Yep- the first episode was a bit ‘wordy’ setting things up, but seeing the Goldrush from the Chinese perspective was really refreshing.
Only criticism is that it was so ambitious taking on Anglo- Chinese, English-Irish, Indigenous- Anglo, Male-Female relations etc….four episode was not enough.
The Chinese female Clan leader is a great villian…
Thanks all for the lovely computer and language stories.
I have lovely cousin, who does a lot of research into developmental problems in children, including autism.
Why do I mention this?
Great facility with maths, music and language run in our family. So, when my oldest grandson was looked at as possibly having autism, one of the diagnostic factors was his “Y – sitting”.
Apparently autistic kids have trouble crossing their legs, and so tend to squat and “Y sit”
So, I explained to my cousin that I had never been able to cross my legs in primary school when sitting, without great discomfort, so I assumed the “Y-sitting” position, to the ire of the nuns.
I expected her to say “It is not definitive”, but, not she just explained how the autism runs in the family.
So, thanks again for all the great computing stories!
I once had the hex contents of a 4K EPROM dictated down the phone to me from LA. It took from 4pm to 5.30pm, Sydney time. The line dropped out three times.
The EPROM contained interface code for a then new Ampex 1-inch VTR (VPR-80), hooked up to a CMX videotape edit controller. The VTR was part of an edit suite that had been booked to carry out last minute edits to a documentary on the Rolling Stones, demanded by some legal department somewhere, which was due to go to air at 9pm that night on the Nine Network.
The people at CMX rang back after we had burnt the EPROM to tells us we had to code in a special hex variable direct to a lookup table in the EPROM code, based on realtime machine response: a “select and test” process until the system worked smoothly (something to do with the PAL v. NTSC television frame rate differences). We got it on the 4th attempt, but only had three EPROMS. So we took the ones that didn’t work first time into the massage parlour next door (who we knew because they rented a couple of parking spaces from our company) and managed to erase them (a little slower than usual due to ultraviolet wavelength discrepancies) in one of their tanning booths by putting them an inch from the UV lamps.
We started editing in earnest at 7.20pm, by which time the producer from Nine was so drunk from stress-drinking that he could hardly sit up, much less stand.
The edited tape arrived at the Nine Artarmon studios on the passenger seat of my boss’s Porsche at 8.55pm , and went to air as scheduled.
Ah… The 80s!
Does that make me a Real Programmer?
Observer
The surprising thing about the SSM result was the high yes vote in Melbourne’s bible belt but without booth level results its hard to tell which booths were strongest and if there was a high informal vote in some areas that inflated the numbers and what impact did the electoral map have on if a seat was for or against.
D&M
The real travesty was allowing someone to create an “object oriented” version of C, called C++.
I’ve had to deal with real world C++. I have real nightmares.
As I often say.. whip me! beat me! force me to use C++!
BB
Now that I’m going to pay! 🙂
I’ve dealt with EPROMS and UV but not tanning booths! lol 🙂
I have a team that uses Linux(Unix) as core part of their daily work. Sometimes I decide I need to get more hands on. Then I type some commands, find a directory, edit a command for typos and then try to edit a file in VI and think yet again, how can 60 year old software still be so shit to use. And pop back to do some stuff on the mainframe on which takes 10% of the time to achieve basically the same tasks.
The article about it all being a April Fools joke seems highly believable.
The girls had hearts of gold, as the saying goes. And I think some free parking space time was also transacted.
The only other hero effort I can remember was when Channel 7 in Sydney phoned and asked if I could change a function in a timecode generator we had sold to them (about a dozen units actually).
By that time I’d sold that business (it closed a year after that), and didn’t have the source code anymore.
But I did have a commented, printed listing that I’d kept for sentimental reasons.
I found from perusing the listing tbat it turned out there were 4 free bytes left in the entire 64k of memory (it was a 6502-based system). They had no-ops in them. I realized that by an amazing piece of good fortune I could code an instruction to reset a flag in 3 out of those 4 bytes (which would accomplish what Channel 7 wanted), and execute an RTS (Return from subroutine) with the 4th of 4 bytes. All I needed to do was change three other bytes elsewhere to call those 4 bytes as a subroutine (instead of a branch on zero to somewhere else) and voila!
When I told the guys at Channel 7 I could do the job for them, I also said I didn’t have a clue what the job was worth. They rang back ten minutes later and told me they couldn’t pay me any more than $5,000 out of the maintenance petty cash tin. Would that be alright?
Guess what my answer was!
Real hex coding by hand, using up the last four free bytes in an entire system, in order to almost completely change the personality of the gizmo for a one-off project: I reckon that’s gotta be worth at least a “Mentioned in dispatches” in the Real Programmer Stakes.
Cud,
I worked on a project deploying this in the field: https://smartgridtoolbox.gitlab.io/SmartGridToolbox/
I recommend some eager young types learn C++, there is an embedded systems/IoT revolution coming and, unsurprisingly, not enough good C++ programmers around.
And yeah, I don’t touch it.