Well, for starters there was a cron to restart the webserver every morning.

The product was 10+ years old and written in PHP 5.3 at the time.

Another cron was running every 15 minutes, to "correct" data in the DB. Just regular data, not from an import or something.
Gotta have one of those self-healing systems I guess.

Yet another cron (there where lots) did run everyday from 02:00 to 4ish to generate the newest xlsx report. Almost took out the entire thing every time. MySQL 100%. CPU? Yes. RAM? You bet.

Lucky I wasn't too much involved at the time. But man, that thing was the definition of legacy.

Fun fact: every request was performed twice! First request gave the already logged-in client an unique access-token. Second request then processed the request with the (just issued) access-token; which was then discarded. Security I guess.

I don't know why it was build this way. It just was. I didn't ask. I didn't wanted to know. Some things are better left undisturbed. Just don't anger the machine. I became superstitious for a while. I think, in the end, it help a bit: It feels like communicating with an alien monster but all you have is a trumpet and chewing gum. Gentle does it.

Oh and "Sencha Extjs 3" almost gave me PTSD lol (it's an ancient JS framework). Followed by SOAPs WSDL cache. And a million other things.

I just do the Three-point estimation method: It's easy enough to remember and somewhat scientific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I made a spreadsheet a while back which serves as a template. I guess nowadays there must be at least one website with a fancy diagram no doubt..

Skyrim turned eleven today! 🎉 It was released on 11/11/2011!

A lot has happened since then.

Flexible working hours, Home Office, fair compensation, working on a greenfield product 🥰.

I was in a bad spot two years ago jobwise and I don't regret jumping the ship for a second.

I would never have guessed that flexible hours and WFH would be so beneficial to my mental health!

Not everything is perfect all the time, but it gets pretty damn close all things considered.

Today I learned that docker makes all ports publicly available by default on Ubuntu servers using UFW.

Why? Because for some reason docker bypasses the UFW and has done so since 2014.

Thinking about this, I'm a bit irritated to say the least. Infuriated about such reckless behavior would be another reaction.

Anyhow, in case you have docker running on some forgotten Ubuntu server without a dedicated FW/VPN see https://github.com/chaifeng/... for more details.

I normally don't post memes, but my god.. just look at it!

I was in a good mood until I read this weeks dev-question. I'm now having an existential crisis. Why do I do this? What's the end goal here? I don't know what my biggest dev career dream is. Maybe I should get a dog and live in the mountains. I think, I need another moment...

Markdown. It is now used by MDN Web Docs and supported by Google Docs. End users will slowly pick up. Then even more (proprietary) flavors of markdown and their accompanying JS-frameworks will follow. All with good intentions, but it can only to end in a big mess and confusion like USB or USB 3.2 Gen 1.

"housekeeping" or "refector" in commit messages..

Lets write the next big thing (tm)!

Rules: one line per post in any language.

I'll start:

while(true){

Creating a stripped down version of a product is a big red flag to me (e.g. "easy/light mode").
It means the main product is too complicated; it handles too many things. Instead, shift the focus back to the core of the product by removing features.

In the our day-to-day it is completely normal to stumble upon things that used to work but now have been changed: they have been deprecated.

Deprecating and removing features should be added to any product iteration. Thus being "normal" and a common occurrence in any changelog; just like features and bug fixes.

This gives non-tech product owners "permission" to remove bloat. Devs stop whining about "the big rewrite". And end-users don't suddenly have to learn yet another tool with "basic" features missing.

I think the best example is google (https://killedbygoogle.com/) and the worst is the amazon shopping website (what a mess!).

2021-11-30 13:42
how has this been around for so long?

2021-11-30 13:40
just look at it

2021-11-30 13:37
I still find Twitter highly confusing

It's well known that Amazon uses robots in their warehouses, but I had no idea that they stock them randomly? They just put new products wherever they fit best, scan the box (obviously) and once finished, the robot just drives off on his merry way to god knows where.

And since this is Amazon, they spend the time and money to optimize the entire process in every aspect so this *is* the most efficient way to store (and later pick) products in definitely.

It is kind funny, with all the precise machinery, optimized processes and 1984 like surveillance of their employees, it turns out that distributing things randomly is the most efficient way to run an Amazon warehouse. Like, no AI, or something based on ratings or on historic trends. Just random.

(Link to video https://youtube.com/watch/...)

Had to write a recursive MySQL query today and, oh lordy! It's not intuitive at all.

It works now so I'm happy, but I spend more time on it than I'm willing to admit...

(source: https://mysqltutorial.org/mysql-rec...)

Found this gem in my news feed yesterday and can't get it off my mind: catch exception, sleep, goto try-block and, well, try again:

$attempts = 0;
start:

try {
$attempts++;
// (...)
} catch (Exception $e) {
if ($attempts <= 10) {
usleep(100000);
goto start;
)
}

Did we go full-circle? Is "goto" the next big thing? Is this a late april fools joke? What am I missing here? This can't be real.

Source: https://blog.frankdejonge.nl/back-t...

Bad dev habit: code first, ask questions later.

Other than that I'm pretty much perfect <3

My favorite office prank is sending *VERY URGENT* emails to devs with ominous feature requests camouflaged as *FIX BUG ASAP* and then don't reply to followup questions for three weeks.

Works every time.

$ shutdown -h now

"I have learned 679 ways to render HTML. At least once or twice a year, I learn a new way to render HTML and at least 2.3 frameworks to help me on this journey."

This is from an article that popped up in my news feed yesterday. It's quite cynical and shouldn't be taken too seriously, but this HTML-part struck in an odd way.

All this fucking technology BS just to spew out some good old HTML.

I am sad now.

(href: https://blog.logrocket.com/develope...)

*happy nerd-noises*

With unlimited time, I would finally be able to brut-force each and every password in the world!

Also, I would take a nap <3

Imagine, not only did they cracked the cipher, they also found and fixed a bug in the original message after 51 years.

Absolutely brillant!

Zodiac code explanation: https://youtube.com/watch/...

Do you have any recommendations for API monitoring?

I'm looking for something along the lines of jetbrains or postman http-tests but for multiple environments + notifications (teams, mail, ...).

Doesn't have to be fancy (6 environments, ~25 routes with a couple assertions each).

I was thinking maybe https://assertible.com/?

I'm currently between jobs and have a few rants about my previous job (naturally). In retrospect, it's somewhat therapeutic to range about the sheer brainfuckery that has taken place. Enjoy!

First, let me set the scene: legacy B2B web app made with LEMP stack and sencha ext.js 3 + 4 (don't ask) and a lot of madness. Let's call that app "Alpha".

Alpha is a self made CMS build for typical ERP stuff. Yes, a self made CMS: entities are containers, containers have types and fields and values. Like so many legacy PHP apps, it does not have a dedicated FE: the HTML is rendered on the server and then spewed out to the browser.

Easy right? Coding like it's 1999! But there was a twist: Because everything is basically a container, the HTML-templates are saved in the DB. Along with the nessary JS and the CSS. And the translation variables. Why? Because fuck you! That's why. Who needs a git history anyways.

For some reason, Alpha was kinda slow.

There was also an editor, that allowed you to modify templates (web, mail, pdf) on the fly in prod. Because templates contain repeating data (header/footer), one template could contain additional templates. Much confusion. You could change templates via migration (slow, boring) or just ctrl-c/ctrl-v that sucker (fast, much excitement).

Did I mention Alpha was slow?

On with the rant: e-mails! How do they work? Noone knows. How to send mails asynchronous in PHP? Witchcraft is the only possible answer to that riddle. Here is your enterprise™ solution:
1. create mail
2. insert mail into DB
3. WAIT UP TO 59 SECONDS FOR A FUCKING CRON TO SEND MAIL

Why? "Because that way, we can resend mails in case the network is down :)"

Same procedure for the SOAP-API (db-queue + cron). You read that right: all requests to various other systems are processed once a minute.

Alpha slow.

Alpha was only one of several systems. Imagine a bunch of monolithic php apps, interconnected via SOAP, REST and GraphQL like a godamn intergalactic orgy. Image having to debug that cluster fuck.

Let's say there is a bad request. These things happen. No biggie. Remember the db-queue? Let's try to send the bad request a second time! And a third time! Still no luck? How odd. Let's create a specific file in a specific directory: a LOCK-file. Now, "the db-queue is on hold and no request gets processed :)"

Golly gee thanks Alpha.

Anyhow, did you know that MySQL has a join limit of 61 tables?

// example.json
{ "hasCustomerAgreedToTermsAndConditions": no }

Slightly irritated by my IDEs warning, I squinted back at my code. It took me a second too long to spot my mistake. First, I was baffeld at my own incompetence. Then I grew defensive about it. "Why not?!" I thought. "Less typing, so efficient, so much time saved, so wow!"

I realized at that moment, that it was probably best to call it a day and go to bed.

And so I did.

<blockquote class="blockquote"></blockquote>

thanks bootstrap

I have to create an account just so I can switch to dark mode?! wtf is this shit! My blood is already boiling.