Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
-
Received "emergency update" code from internal enterprise security team. Wasn't given time to do code review; was assured code was reviewed and solid.
Pushed code to over 6k lower-level servers before finding this gem buried deep within:
...
cd /foo; rm -rf *; cd /
...
(This ran as root, and yes, the cwd was / from earlier in the code).
/foo, of course, did not exist on some servers.
Now, it is those servers which do not exist.
FML15 -
While reading through the Elasticsearch (Java search engine) source code a while ago I found this gem:
return i == -1? -1: i;
I think someone should stop drinking while coding.
Some other nice lines:
int i = 0;
return j + 1000 * i;
Are these guys high?11 -
Found this gem on GitHub:
// At this point, I'd like to take a moment to speak to you about the Adobe PSD format.
// PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it such would be an
// insult to other bad formats, such as PCX or JPEG. No, PSD is an abysmal format. Having
// worked on this code for several weeks now, my hate for PSD has grown to a raging fire
// that burns with the fierce passion of a million suns.
// If there are two different ways of doing something, PSD will do both, in different
// places. It will then make up three more ways no sane human would think of, and do those
// too. PSD makes inconsistency an art form. Why, for instance, did it suddenly decide
// that *these* particular chunks should be aligned to four bytes, and that this alignement
// should *not* be included in the size? Other chunks in other places are either unaligned,
// or aligned with the alignment included in the size. Here, though, it is not included.
// Either one of these three behaviours would be fine. A sane format would pick one. PSD,
// of course, uses all three, and more.
// Trying to get data out of a PSD file is like trying to find something in the attic of
// your eccentric old uncle who died in a freak freshwater shark attack on his 58th
// birthday. That last detail may not be important for the purposes of the simile, but
// at this point I am spending a lot of time imagining amusing fates for the people
// responsible for this Rube Goldberg of a file format.
// Earlier, I tried to get a hold of the latest specs for the PSD file format. To do this,
// I had to apply to them for permission to apply to them to have them consider sending
// me this sacred tome. This would have involved faxing them a copy of some document or
// other, probably signed in blood. I can only imagine that they make this process so
// difficult because they are intensely ashamed of having created this abomination. I
// was naturally not gullible enough to go through with this procedure, but if I had done
// so, I would have printed out every single page of the spec, and set them all on fire.
// Were it within my power, I would gather every single copy of those specs, and launch
// them on a spaceship directly into the sun.
//
// PSD is not my favourite file format.
Ref : https://github.com/zepouet/...16 -
curl cheat.sh — get an instant answer to any question on (almost) any programming language from the command line
tldr
do curl cht.sh/go/execute+external+program to see how to execute external program in go
And this question: why I actually should I start the browser, and the browser has to downloads tons of JS, CSS and HTML, render them thereafter, only to show me some small output,
some small text, number or even some plot. Why can't I do a trivial query from the command line
and instantly get what I want?
I decided to create some service that will work as I think such a service should work.
And that is how wttr.in was created.
Nowadays you probably know, how to check the weather from the command line, but if not:
curl wttr.in
or
curl wttr.in/Paris
(curl wetter in Paris if you want to know the weather in Paris)
After that several other services were created (the point was to check how good the console
can solve the task, so I tried to create services providing information
of various nature: text, numbers, plots, pseudo graphic etc.):
curl rate.sx/btc # to check exchange rate of any (crypto)currency
curl qrenco.de/google.com # to QRenco.de any text
And now last but not least, the gem in this collection: cheat.sh.
The original idea behind the service was just to deliver a various UNIX/Linux command line cheat sheets via curl. There are several beautiful community driven cheat sheet repositories such as tldr, but the problem is that to use them you have to install them first, and it is quite often that you have no time for it, you just want to quickly check some cheat sheet.
With cheat.sh you don't need to install anything, just do:
curl cheat.sh/tar (or whatever)
you will get a cheat sheet for this command (if such cheat sheet exists inf one of the most popular community-driven cheat sheet repositories; but it surely does).
But then I thought: why actually show only existing cheat sheets? Why not generate cheat sheets or better to say on the fly? And that is how the next major update of cheat.sh was created.
Now you can simply do:
curl cht.sh/python/copy+files
curl cht.sh/go/execute+external+program
curl cht.sh/js/async+file+read
or even
curl cht.sh/python/копировать+файл
curl cht.sh/ruby/Datei+löschen
curl cht.sh/lua/复制文件
and get your question answered
(cht.sh is an alias for cheat.sh).
And it does not matter what language have you used to ask the question. To be short, all pairs (human language => programming language) are supported.
One very important major advantage of console oriented interfaces is that they are easily
programmable and can be easily integrated with various systems.
For example, Vim and Emacs plugins were created by means of that you can
query the service directly from the editor so that you can just write your
questions in the buffer and convert them in code with a keystroke.
The service is of course far from the perfection,
there are plenty of things to be fixed and to be implemented,
but now you can see its contours and see the contours of this approach,
console oriented services.
The service (as well as the other mentioned above services) is opensource, its code is available here:
https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh
What do you think about this service?
What do you think about this approach?
Have you already heard about these services before?
Have you used them?
If yes, what do you like about them and what are you missing?
26 -
So this other senior dev got seriously ill a couple of weeks ago and the project he was working on was assigned to me. His code was so aesthetic, loved his work, the structured code helped me a lot in meeting the deadlines. He returned a few days back and now the company has given him two weeks notice because "his pace is slow". I am frustrated, PM is frustrated. The guy is such a gem that he is still helping with all the new requirements client is throwing at us.8
-
Someone is wondering how to get this piece of code working as expected on StackOverflow:
for (var i = 1; i <= 2; i++) { setTimeout(function() { alert(i) }, 100); }
Found this gem in answers. :D
14 -
Needed to download all my music from Google music, their download manager is crap (on ubuntu)
Decided to use their API, found a gem that works perfectly. Started downloading it.
Told my GF how I wanted to code something cool but gound someone else did, her response:
So why doesn't google make something ?
Me:They did, but it sucks in linux, and they have their API's which work fine.
And how are normal people supposed to make it work then?
Me: well it works, jut have to install this and run the CLI with.... wait.. am I not normal?
I guess we are not normal in the eyes of some people.18 -
Hey @Root! I know you won't have time to finish Ticket A before holiday vacation, so work on Ticket B instead.
I finished Ticket A in time. except for converting/fixing some horrible spaghetti monstrosity. More or less: "we overwrote this gem's middleware and now it calls back into our codebase under specific circumstances, and then calls the gem again, which calls the middleware again." Wtf? It's an atrocity against rationality.
The second day after vacation:
Hey @Root, drop Ticket B and work on Ticket C instead. Can you knock this out quick, like before friday? ... Uh, sure. It looks easy.
Ticket C was not easy. Ticket C was a frontend CSS job to add a print button, and for unknown reasons, none of the styles apply during printing. The only code involved is adding a button with a single line of javascript: `window.print()`, so why give it to the chick who hasn't been given a frontend ticket in over a year? Why not give it to the frontend guy who does this all day every day? Because "do it anyway," that's why.
And in somewhere between 13 (now 5) minutes and two hours from now, I'm going to have a 1:1 with my boss to discuss the week. Having finished almost all of Ticket A won't matter because it's not a "recent priority" -- despite it being a priority before, and a lot of work. I've made no progress on Ticket B due to interruptions (and a total and complete lack of caring because I'm burned out and quite literally can no longer care), and no progress on ticket C because... it's all horribly broken and therefore not quick. I assigned it to Mr. Frontend, which I'll probably get chewed out for.
So, my 1:1 with bossmang today is going to be awful. And the worst part of all: I'm out of rum! Which means sobriety in the face of adversity! :<
but like, wtf. Just give me a ticket and let me work on it until it's done. Stop changing the damn priorities every other freaking day!16 -
Just found this precious gem in the legacy code I am maintaining! How do you check if a string is empty :-D ?
5 -
Just found this gem on Twitters API...
When your app gets too excited they return status code 420 to tell you to chill! 😂😂😂
Fyi : For the non web-devs out there 420 is an invalid http code.
5 -
This is a funny one:
I found this gem in SO.
Why is it funny? Well, PDVSA is the state-owned company for oil production of my country (Petróleos De Venezuela).
This little intern decided that it was a good idea to publish in SO an answer with actual code, showing database and tables names to everyone.
Priceless.
8 -
!!rant
!!ANGER
Micromanager: "Hey, Root!
Since you're back, and still not feeling well, we have an easy ticket for you: Rewrite the slack integration gem! Oh, you don't have to re-implement all of it, just make sure it all works the same way it does now. That bitch you worked with once over a year ago who kept throwing you under the bus to management and stealing credit for your work? Yeah, she wrote the original code like four years ago. It's perfect, so don't touch it. but she can fill you in on all the details you need and get you up to speed on how to test it.
But yep! It should be simple. and I just knew you would love this ticket, so I saved it just for you. Nice and quick, too, to get you an easy win.
You know, since you have to repair your reputation with product. and management. and the execs. and the rest of the team. and me. Yeah, product doesn't trust you so they don't want to give you any tickets. They just can't trust you to get them out and have them work. So you have a lot of hard work to do."
Spoiler: The bus-thrower wasn't much help. (Surprise.)
Spoiler: The ticket was already in my backlog -- one of a grand total of two tickets.
Spoiler: I don't find the ticket fun. Maybe if I was to write the entire implementation with a nice DSL? but no, "don't touch the perfect code." Fuck you.
Spoiler: It isn't going to be nice or quick. But, she (micromanager) is looking to lose me, so that really is an easy win. for her.
And. just. argh. fuck you. i've been exhausted and dying for well over a year, but you've kept ignoring that (and still are, despite me providing goddamn legal forms from fucking doctors stating it in plain fucking english, which you also fucking ignore), and you just keep piling on the work and demanding the ridiculous of me despite it. Yeah I can pull it off sometimes. No, I really shouldn't, and I'm surprised I can. (also, "Time off? What, and lower your productivity even more? ____ doesn't even take vacations. And how are you doing on that ticket?") And no, none of my tickets have ever had any fucking problems. Not even when there are upstream service outages. Not. a. single. fucking. one. Ever. And the only things I've ever missed were things that bloody product never put in the fucking ticket, so fuck you with your "repair your reputation" bullshit.
god, i fuckiNG HATE THESESTUPOID ANWETLJAF SAJEWTKW BITCHFACEDUCKFUCKERS
Why the FUCK am I still fucking working here?
Right, because I've been burned out and dying so much I can't pass a fucking interview so I can fucking leave.
jasdkl;fk
ugh. Anyway. If you ever find yourself starting work at a Cali fintech company whose internal mascot is a very fine duck? Just run. I absolutely guarantee you will be miserable.14 -
Every step of this project has added another six hurdles. I thought it would be easy, and estimated it at two days to give myself a day off. But instead it's ridiculous. I'm also feeling burned out, depressed (work stress, etc.), and exhausted since I'm taking care of a 3 week old. It has not been fun. :<
I've been trying to get the Google Sheets API working (in Ruby). It's for a shared sales/tracking spreadsheet between two companies.
The documentation for it is almost entirely for Python and Java. The Ruby "quickstart" sample code works, but it's only for 3-legged auth (meaning user auth), but I need it for 2-legged auth (server auth with non-expiring credentials). Took awhile to figure out that variant even existed.
After a bit of digging, I discovered I needed to create a service account. This isn't the most straightforward thing, and setting it up honestly reminds me of setting up AWS, just with less risk of suddenly and surprisingly becoming a broke hobo by selecting confusing option #27 instead of #88.
I set up a new google project, tied it to my company's account (I think?), and then set up a service account for it, with probably the right permissions.
After downloading its creds, figuring out how to actually use them took another few hours. Did I mention there's no Ruby documentation for this? There's plenty of Python and Java example code, but since they use very different implementations, it's almost pointless to read them. At best they give me a vague idea of what my next step might be.
I ended up reading through the code of google's auth gem instead because I couldn't find anything useful online. Maybe it's actually there and the past several days have been one of those weeks where nothing ever works? idk :/
But anyway. I read through their code, and while it's actually not awful, it has some odd organization and a few very peculiar param names. Figuring out what data to pass, and how said data gets used requires some file-hopping. e.g. `json_data_io` wants a file handle, not the data itself. This is going to cause me headaches later since the data will be in the database, not the filesystem. I guess I can write a monkeypatch? or fork their gem? :/
But I digress. I finally manged to set everything up, fix the bugs with my code, and I'm ready to see what `service.create_spreadsheet()` returns. (now that it has positively valid and correctly-implemented authentication! Finally! Woo!)
I open the console... set up the auth... and give it a try.
... six seconds pass ...
... another two seconds pass ...
... annnd I get a lovely "unauthorized" response.
asjdlkagjdsk.
> Pic related.
19 -
micromanager: "Quick and easy win! Please have this done in 2-3 days to start repairing your reputation"
ticket: "Scrap this gem, and implement your own external service wrapper using the new and vastly different Slack API!"
slack: "New API? Give me bearer tokens! Don't use that legacy url crap, wth"
prev dev: "Yeah idk what a bearer token is. Have the same url instead, and try writing it down so you don't forget it?"
Slack admin: "I can't give you access to the slack integration test app, even though it's for exactly this and three others have access already, including your (micro)manager."
Slack: "You can also <a>create a new slack app</a>!" -- link logs me into slack chat instead. After searching and finding a link elsewhere: doesn't let me.
Slack admin: "You want a new test slack app instead? Sure, build it the same as before so it isn't abuseable. No? Okay, plan a presentation for it and bring security along for a meeting on Friday and I'll think about it. I'm in some planning meetings until then."
asdfjkagel.
This job is endless delays, plus getting yelled at over the endless delays.
At least I can start on the code while I wait. Can't test anything for at least a week, though. =/17 -
What's the difference between a wasp and single loose hair?
Apparently none till the wasp stings :/
Yesterday I thought I had a loose hair on my neck.. ok, I shrug it off.. later again the creepy feeling.. shrugs off..
I continue to work, sumberged in code, wanting to find the fucker (bug, not the wasp/hair).. lean in to the monitor... 10 cents away from the screen... Ok, maybe that's it! Feels the hair on my back, near shoulderblades again... shrugging again more violently to get it further down to fall out.. nothing.. ok, got the bug, threw myslef back in the chair with substential force & BAAAAM!!! Motherfucking hair bit me!! O.o
I scream in horror & on top of the lungs (it was late, after work hours so I didn't expect anyone else still at the office) PROKLETA PRASICA (roughly translated to goddamn female swine).. I previously saw some green bug flying around the office and I thought that nasty thing bit me (didn't know they bite soo, much more horror for me).. O.o
Anyhow, I jump up from the computer and see my coworker looking at me all baffled.. I proceed to franticly take of my headphones and hoodie..thinking about wtf should I do now, I cannot get undressed in front of him (not for my sake, bra is the same as top of the bathing suit for me, but still..I don't want anyone suing me for impropper behaviour of undreasing in front of coworkers..), how the fuck should I get to the toilet?! O.o
C: Are you ok?!
M: Um.. sth bit me..wtf?!
C: There was a wasp flying around somewhere some time ago.. are you alergic?!
M: um..not sure, I don't think so..we'll see soon..
I proceed to the WC, to take off tshirt & check/kill off the fucker.. on my way there (walking funny to not press the hair to my body again) I got another surprise, another coworker was working late..
C2: Are you ok?! O.o
M: yeah, sth bit me, probably a wasp..
Ok, finally on the loo..ok, do not lock self in in case it escapes and you need help.. don't even shut the door. Check.. standing between the doors I contemplate on how the fuck should I take my tshirt off without angering the fucker even more and getting bitten again.. O.O
I lifted the tshirt up my back to let it out.. nope, not there..the creepy felling of buzzing around between my shoulder blades continues.. crap.. what to do?!
I stood there & contemplated the task.. ok, roll up the tshirt to the shoulder blades, not against the body (duh) to prevent further stings..tighten the fabric, so it cannot escape, quickly remove the band from the body.. done..reversed the tshirt and straightened it.. bzzz... Fucker fell somewhere.. Dafaq?! Was it really just a wasp?! If yes, no problem...but what if coworker was wrong and I got bitten by that nasty green whateveritsname bug?! Eeeeewwww! Is it poisonous? Gotta find it & kill it for good.. waited a bit, than saw a goddamn wasp crawl from under the toilet.. wasp!! Yess!! Stopm stomp fucker!!
I get dressed & go back to my desk..
C: Did you terminate it?!
M: Yup, fucker went on a toilet paper trip down the drain!!
I sit down, starting to get my headphones back on and proceed to work.., but before I could, one last gem:
C: CTO would say, thank god it didn't sting you in your finger cuz you wouldn't be able to type anymore..
M: O.O so true hahhahahaaa
Disclaimer - I like animals, but I freakking hate wasps..especially if they get under my tshirt to sting.. :/7 -
While debugging some java code by our Senior Architect, I found this gem: 5000 padding done manually.
PS: Jr Developer here.
7 -
You wanted to hear more about my "glorious" teacher. I deliver. So get a cup of tea, take a seat and prepare for insanity.
As I already told in a comment my programming teacher is one special snowflake who lives in his personal bubble. We have final exams in less than a month and he spents at least half a lesson talking about vanishing bees and missing plants from his garden. Other topics he likes to talk about (and tries to turn every freaking conversation into at least one of these):
1. Other students and their stupidity
2. Diesel scandal
3. His sick wife
4. "Why does noone read newspapers anymore?"
5. Why he can't teach Java but really really really wants to and everyone hates him and forces him to do C#.
Even if I try to interrupt him he'll go on until he thinks we gained some "common knowledge" - this is how he justifies these topics.
Everytime he introduced us to a new command he compared it to Java and sometimes he even falsely corrects code because he confuses them.
We are only 6 people including me (another story for another time) and he is not able to help everyone during a 90min lesson. He normally sticks with one person for at least one hour and just talks to them or even do their tasks. This is really annoying if you have a simple question. He won't answer you until he's finished whatever he's doing.
Most of the time he doesn't seem to understand what he's talking about/trying to teach us. He's muttering statements from our textbook to himself switching halfway through to another sentence while drawing not decipherable shit on the blackboard.
Another gem are his "guidelines" for classtests. We are allowed to use any command we know. Except the ones we learned not in class. And the ones he doesn't like. And the ones he doesn't want to exist. And of course not the ones which make you're life easier. So basically we are bound to use his favourite commands or we won't get a good grade. Example: use an array. List is not allowed. Never.
He has some weird fetish with arrays.
I once presented him perfectly fine code I wrote in my freetime and asked what some warnings meant. (Was because of different Visual studio versions as I learned later.) He scolded me for using things he didn't taught us yet and ranted about how I'm pressuring him into rushing these things now - I never wanted to show this to my classmates nor was this anything else than a project for fun and learning something new. (FYI the "new stuff" where classes and objects because i was tired of kilometers of spaghetti code). His rant went on a good 20minutes and - obviously - he didn't answer my question. I asked my fiance that evening and he explained it to me.
This should it be for this time. I'm sure I have more stories to tell for another time!
Thank you for reading. ^^5 -
Found this gem in some old piece of code:
public static void printStackTrace(Exception e){
e.printStackTrace();
}3 -
Found this little gem today in some legacy code at work.
Apparently this is the best way to split a datetime (hh:mm:ss mm/dd/yyy).
If only there was a function that could split a string by keying off characters.
Oh wait there is....
I decided to give it a comment memorial.
7 -
!rant
I was fiddling around on a website for a bar near me with an arcade. Friends and I already discovered that you could input the konami code on the homepage and be brought to a little easter egg with a chance to win a free beer, free pizza, or nothing.
This evening I was looking at the site a little more and decided to try to find the js code they're using to manage this because I thought it was an ingenious idea. When Looking at the source, I found this little gem. I'm very pleased and wish I had built this site.
2 -
Found this gem of a comment in a code base written 4 years back.
/*
Invoke <Service Base URL>/asset/v2/details/<SN> to get asset details
Feeling very bad to include this call, but we really need to use this !!!
This call is gonna take ~20s to respond. I've even increased the overall timeout of this module, just for this call !!!
So, if you are looking to debug any performance issue, I wish you jump directly here,
remove this call and just use master data management (MDM)
P.S: It is not that simple, as MDM and this asset DB (both asset masters) has differences in how the asset is defined :(
*/
Still trying to understand how to remove this costly time-consuming call and replace with an efficient one !!
And, of-course, the original author left 2 years back :(3 -
Found this gem while cleaning up code:
.colorNavy { color: navy; }
This needs to be printed on a navy tshirt.3 -
TL;DR Pluralsight should be ashamed for taking 299 USD a year and writing some very low-quality quizzes.
I've always heard that Pluralsight is a great platform having some high quality courses, so I chose it as a benefit, as our company was giving us some budget for learning purposes. I've paid (or rather the company did it in the end) 299 USD for this year, which, I guess is not much for US standards, but it is a lot for Eastern European standards.
I didn't actually get to the point of watching any of the courses, but I started to use a feature called "Stack up", which is a long series of questions in a specific theme, like Java, Kotlin, C++, etc., accessible once a day. I must say, I'm amazed by the fact, that people pay quite a great amount of money and they get something so poorly made with a lot of errors and stupid questions.
Take the question from the included image for example. Not only that the 2 possible answers are repeated (and thus I failed to select the correct one from 2 equal answers), but the supposedly correct answer is also missing some type specifications. No Java compiler will compile it this way as far as I know. There would be at least 3 ways to fix it.
Then there is today's gem (should be included as first comment) as well, where the answer is wrong in both Chrome 96, Firefox 95 and Node v10. Heck, THIS IS one of the reasons why you should never use `var` in your JavaScript code, but always `let` and `const`!
So the courses on Pluralsight might be good, but I would be ashamed, if I were to release something like this. People might actually try to solidify their knowledge by solving these quizzes but instead of learning something useful, they will be left with some bullshit. I just don't get how could they release a feature with so much incorrect information and I am kind of disappointed, even if I didn't try the courses yet.
9 -
THIS FUCKING RECAPTCHA GEM! WHY THE FUCK MUST I DEBUG YOUR FUCKING PRODUCTION CODE AND WORK AROUND YOUR FUCKING BLUNDERS?
VERY LITTLE PISSES ME OFF MORE THAN SUFFERING FROM SOMEONE ELSE'S FUCKING STUPIDITY5 -
Damn frontend crap.
The fact that you have to mask all of the disease with processable versions of css, html & js is bad enough, but there are like 6 dialects of each bandaid, and every project has traces of each.
The the design kid tells me to run this grunt script, frontender number two screams "no, dont use grunt, we use gulp! or was it bower? I guess just run it through yeoman, it's easy!", after which the third fucking shitty hipster yells "No that's outdated, just edit the webpack file, and then run yarn install... oh but run npm upgrade --global yarn first"
Did you just fucking tell me to upgrade a fucking package manager with another package manager?
Composer, gem or cargo are not always without problems. But at least us backenders have our fucking shit together. The worst we have to deal with is choosing Python 2 vs 3, or porting some old code so the server can migrate to PHP7.
The next person to tell me they found this awesome tool to manage his other tools... I'll fucking throw your latte all over your wacom tablet.2 -
So I am managing some legacy code and I found quite the gem last week.
The code went something like this :
IF(methodA()&&methodB())
However, methodB returned ! methodA...2 -
SO MAD. Hands are shaking after dealing with this awful API for too long. I just sent this to a contact at JP Morgan Chase.
-------------------
Hello [X],
1. I'm having absolutely no luck logging in to this account to check the Order Abstraction service settings. I was able to log in once earlier this morning, but ever since I've received this frustratingly vague "We are currently unable to complete your request" error message (attached). I even switched IP's via a VPN, and was able to get as far as entering the below Identification Code until I got the same message. Has this account been blocked? Password incorrect? What's the issue?
2. I've been researching the Order Abstraction API for hours as well, attempting to defuddle this gem of an API call response:
error=1&message=Authentication+failure....processing+stopped
NOWHERE in the documentation (last updated 14 months ago) is there any reference to this^^ error or any sort of standardized error-handling description whatsoever - unless you count the detailed error codes outlined for the Hosted Payment responses, which this Order Abstraction service completely ignores. Finally, the HTTP response status code from the Abstraction API is "200 OK", signaling that everything is fine and dandy, which is incorrect. The error message indicates there should be a 400-level status code response, such as 401 Unauthorized, 403 Forbidden or at least 400 Bad Request.
Frankly, I am extremely frustrated and tired of working with poorly documented, poorly designed and poorly maintained developer services which fail to follow basic methodology standardized decades ago. Error messages should be clear and descriptive, including HTTP status codes and a parseable response - preferably JSON or XML.
-----
This whole piece of garbage is junk. If you're big enough to own a bank, you're big enough to provide useful error messages to the developers kind enough to attempt to work with you.
2 -
Refactoring/cleaning old code.. Found this gem:
$hour = substr($obj->hour, 0, - 3);
Turns out, hour was saved in the database as a TIME field(DATE was saved in another column) , and the previous genius dev was trying to output time in a H:i format...
No wonder php has such a bad reputation...2 -
I just woke up and on my computer screen there’s big announcement.
Github launching code package registry beta program.
Available repositories: npm, gem, mvn, docker, nuget.1 -
Another tale of the legacy app, so I'm redoing the user roles using the cancancan gem.
Hop into a meeting to go over why I'm re-doing the authorisation, currently, the app is using the rails-authorization-plugin, yes from Rails 2.0.
me: *explains why this is the way to do it*
other dev: "Can we just fix the custom code we have added in that plugin?"
me: "Well given that it's a massively out of date plugin and we have a ton of deprecations, probably not"
other dev: "so let's try and fix it"
Christ, why are we still clinging onto 10+-year-old plugins if were going to keep getting errors when we upgrade?27 -
Ah, the ancient art of copy-paste development – where originality goes to die and bugs come out to play. It's like a cursed incantation that tempts even the best of us into the dark abyss of shortcuts.
You think you're saving time by copying that snippet from Stack Overflow, but little do you know, you've just invited a horde of gremlins into your codebase. Suddenly, your once-cohesive architecture looks like a patchwork quilt sewn by a drunkard.
And let's not forget the thrill of debugging when you realize that the copied code references variables that don't even exist in your context. "Ah, yes, I remember copying this gem at 2 AM. What could possibly go wrong?"
But wait, there's more! Copy-pasting also introduces a special kind of chaos when updates are needed. You find yourself fixing the same bug in five different places because you couldn't be bothered to encapsulate that logic in a reusable function.
So here's a heartfelt salute to all the copy-paste warriors out there, bravely navigating the treacherous waters of borrowed code. May your future coding endeavors involve more thinking, less CTRL+C, and a lot fewer late-night bug hunts!1 -
(a bit late for wk73 but I wanted to post this anyway)
Back in my first year of university, we had to write a relatively simple (though it looked super complicated back then) C++ console application. I don't know what it's called, but it's that game where the computer generates a random 4 digit code and you have to try to guess what it is. Every time you try, it will tell you which digits are correct, which would be correct if they were in a different position and which are outright wrong.
Anyway, the program had a main menu with a help option that would output a short guide on how to play the game. Instead of hard coding it into the source code, the "guide" had go be written in a separate text file and then read and dumped to the screen when necessary.
Here came my great idea on how to read files. Instead of looping through the file until I reached the end, I counted the number of lines my text file had and wrote some gem of a piece of code like this:
for (int i = 0; i<11; i++){
line = file.readline();
cout << line << endl;
}
My teacher obviously took points off for doing such a stupid thing, and I remember complaining A LOT about it. I argued that 11 was a constant because I didn't plan on changing the text file, and that the teacher had no right to take points off for only reading 11 lines because the file only had 11 lines, so it was read in full.
Goddammit, what an innocent little brat I was. I'm glad my first programming teachers were good enough to stay firm and teach me how to do things the right way, even if it's the hard way. -
Hey all ruby devs! I've recently made a redux gem implemented in native ruby, that allows you to completely decouple state from your code. If any of you like the redux design structure and want to use it in your backend, check out https://github.com/alexdovzhanyn/...
-
Found another gem in the code-base I've been given to troubleshoot.
Let's call recv(), get the TLS encrypted message, and then call BIO_write() and SSL_read() instead of offloading it to OpenSSL.5 -
Another gem from my Database Fundamentals class, this time it's from the textbook:
So right now we're learning about data modeling with ERDs and the book is explaining a few things about attributes. I got to a part where the book was explaining when you should split an attribute into many (the book mixes up conceptual modelling and logical modelling). The first example the book gave was an address, splitting it up by street name, address number, city, postal code, etc. So far so good. Now we get to the second example: a phone number. The book split the the number 55 11 9784-8900 into four parts:
Country code: 55
Area code: 11
Number prefix: 9784
Number suffix: 8900
At this point I was like "WHAT?". Separating area and country codes from the rest of the number is ok, that's useful, but splitting the number itself in half? Why the fuck would you want to do that? Correct me if I'm wrong but the dash in the middle of the number is just used for "chunking", to make it easier for our brains to read the number. Why would you want to split the number in half? There's literally no reason to do it, at least not in the example the book was showing.
Every time I open this book I keep wondering why the hell my teacher chose it to be our textbook. He's a great teacher, his lectures are awesome, he explains stuff super well, but he chose this book. A book that's filled with shitty literal translations to domain-specific words and acronyms, shitty examples, and convoluted sentences.6 -
So when I started at my current company, I was the second developer in the company. My job is to handle the embedded development side of our product. The existing code base? Made in fucking China. All of the comments were in Chinese too. They had implemented Huffman compression incorrectly and AES CBC encryption incorrectly as well. It was seriously some of the worst code I've ever seen. I remember one gem I found:
Int header = *(*int) "MGIK";
😫1 -
Cleaning up some old. NET code and found this gem. At least it might be readable once it is rendered to the browser.
1 -
New guy taking over senior software developer since the last one seemed to burn out / got tired of all the bullshit. His coming replacement has a habit of making 'software walkthroughs' for every repository we have. The project organization is so badly managed and we only ever work on requirements when we have something concrete. After Outlook-declining one of the walkthroughs I get this little gem from him in an IM:
Guy: <Old Snr Dev> felt that you built the base for it and it would be good if you are there as you might take it forward is what <Manager> told me
Me: yeh but it is like so straightforward
and basically there are other projects on github which do the exact same thing
Guy: okay, just that I have not seen the code yet. Or anyone else to take it forward
Me: i think - go through it when you need to
if there are problems, then ask
WTF? You didn't even check it yourself and you want me to handhold you as a senior software developer? Totally nuts.2
Top Tags
Weekly Rant
View