catacomb

joined 2 years ago
[–] catacomb 5 points 8 months ago

If you don't already, use version control (git or otherwise) and try to write useful messages for yourself. 99% of the time, you won't need them, but you'll be thankful that 1% of the time. I've seen database engineers hack something together without version control and, honestly, they'd have looked far more professional if we could see recent changes when something goes wrong. It's also great to be able to revert back to a known good state.

Also, consider writing unit tests to prove your code does what you think it does. This is sometimes more useful for code you'll use over and over, but you might find it helpful in complicated sections where your understanding isn't great. Does the function output what it should or not? Start from some trivial cases and go from there.

Lastly, what's the nature of the code? As a developer, I have to live with my decisions for years (unless I switch jobs.) I need it to be maintainable and reusable. I also need to demonstrate this consideration to colleagues. That makes classes and modules extremely useful. If you're frequently writing throwaway code for one-off analyses, those concepts might not be useful for you at all. I'd then focus more on correctness (tests) and efficiency. You might find your analyses can be performed far quicker if you have good knowledge about data structures and algorithms and apply them well. I've personally reworked code written by coworkers to be 10x more efficient with clever usage of data structures. It might be a better use of your time than learning abstractions we use for large, long-term applications.

[–] catacomb 1 points 8 months ago

Good to know the name, I've seen it invoked a few times.

In fact, I had this recently at work where I questioned a decision only for them to retort with one similar characteristic which a prior suggestion of mine shared. This was also a modal fallacy as they only used that one characteristic to come to a conclusion about both.

You also see it all of the time in politics unfortunately, a lot of "yeah but you also..." where we should be hearing good justifications.

[–] catacomb 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I've used it for the exact same purpose, great minds think alike. It's perfect for that scenario given there's no internet.

I just don't use it much otherwise because apps like Signal are far easier to move my friends and family on to and they're more than good enough. The metadata privacy Tor would provide would give me a lot of peace of mind but I know it'll never happen.

[–] catacomb 6 points 9 months ago

I really liked how coupling is described as "knowing." I find we talk about "does x need to know about y?" more than we do "is x overly coupled to y?" because the former is a relatable indicator of the latter.

[–] catacomb 2 points 9 months ago

I was going to say that Cloudflare uses nginx but I found that's no longer true.

[–] catacomb 12 points 9 months ago

F5 is American, they just had a Moscow office.

However the creator of nginx, Igor Sysoev, is Russian.

[–] catacomb 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Interesting though as it shows what "hard Brexit" was. Not in the customs union, economic area or council; just yeeted all the way out.

The best part is the voting slip never defined any of it and, if taken literally, the UK would still be in the EEA.

[–] catacomb 5 points 10 months ago

I use a UK keyboard, | is pretty easy to access and $ is Shift+4.

I'm guessing you mean more exotic keyboards. I've used a Swedish keyboard while helping a friend and I had to ask where every key was. You probably just learn the combinations eventually.

[–] catacomb 5 points 10 months ago

I feel like this is overlooked far too often. I rarely see anyone use data structures outside of (array) list and hash table and any attempt to use something descriptive of the problem is often shot down because of "familiarity," which is sort of self-fulfilling.

I get away with flagging lists which should be sets, though.

[–] catacomb 1 points 10 months ago

https://www.cloudynights.com/ is probably the best astronomy community about, the subreddit never compared.

[–] catacomb 7 points 10 months ago

This isn't acceptable. If it's important to the government, then all the more reason to hold them to account. This whole scandal makes a mockery of software engineering as if there is no way to ensure quality.

I work on software arguably less critical than this, in that it's never been used to prosecute anyone, yet any discrepancy in numbers is found by QA, understood and duly fixed. Why can't we demand the same from software which the outputs of can and are used as evidence in court? Why is it acceptable for them to say "it was too costly?"

[–] catacomb 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I think you're asking if it's possible for your government to be a man-in-the-middle? Depending on which government you live under, the answer is likely no but more importantly the answer will always be; it's not worth their effort to find out what you're watching.

YouTube's public key is signed by a certificate authority whose public key (root) is likely installed on your device from the factory. When you connect to YouTube, they send you a certificate chain which your browser will verify against that known root. In effect, it's information both you and YouTube already share and can't be tampered with over the wire.

Technically, those signatures can be forged by a well resourced adversary (i.e. a government) with access to the certificate authority through subversion, coercion, etc. At the same time, it's probably easier to subvert or coerce you or YouTube to reveal what you watch.

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