Bonus: The honored dead

Speaking of stalled software, there is one thing sadder: stuff that just doesn’t work any more.

Sometimes I can fight my way around a broken program, install an older library, or even do my best heart surgery and adjust the code inside.

I have a grand total of zero talent when it comes to coding though, and when I run into software that needs more than a new dependency or a small nudge … I fail miserably.

So I did my level best, but a few of these things eluded me.

• BrainCurses … well, it looked fun; it’s a knockoff of the old Mastermind board game from decades ago. But it spews forth errors when I try to build it, and I am at a loss for what’s wrong there.
• Likewise, A Helpful TTY, a/k/a ah-tty, is lost to me. It looks like a great tool for people who are new to the terminal (and for experienced people who don’t know everything 😉 ). Unfortunately, that too is eluding me. Neither is in Arch or Debian, so I get no guidance from there. Sigh.
• I don’t hold out much hope for sked. My meager attempt to build sked was greeted with error messages so insulting that I stood in the corner and cried for 10 minutes.
• quftp was also curmudgeonly. That I expected though, since the last update was in 2003. A 10-year gap is a challenge to overcome.
• getwifi was another that might just have been out of the loop for too long. No matter the configuration, error messages that I can’t quite fix on my own.

Of course, it’s not the end of the world. I am sure some talented coder will come along and coach resurrect these. In a manner of speaking.

And in the mean time, I have hundreds of others to pursue. So if you will excuse me. … 🙂