Articles tagged “short”

• The surprisingly bad PhpBB Ph­pBB al­ways sur­prised me. At every new ver­sion, [the pro­ject is rewrit­ten from scratch][1], which is a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to fi­nal­ly do the in­ter­ac­tion de­sign cor­rect­ly, and still, it's as bad as it was in June 2000 when the first ver­sion was…
  interaction-design 9 data-structures 2 short 50
• The cost of always-on, never fail It is not un­usu­al for the com­pa­nies of any size to or­der a web­site which should “nev­er fail”. Busi­ness-wise, this re­quire­ment is un­der­stand­able: if your cor­po­rate web­site is down, you're not giv­ing a pos­i­tive im­age of your com­pa­ny. The only is­sue is…
  reliability 2 business-continuity 1 short 50
• Ascending and descending representations of quality There are many pro­jects which start with very low ex­pec­ta­tions of the qual­i­ty of the source code and pro­ject or­ga­ni­za­tion. The idea is to get some­thing which sim­ply works, start to sell it, and then, ei­ther con­tin­u­ous­ly or in one bru­tal step,…
  management 34 quality 36 short 50
• Do you really care about security? A $25,000-scale pro­ject is or­dered by a large multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion. They claim they should be and are se­cure, since se­cu­ri­ty is cru­cial for them. Ask them how much of the bud­get of the pro­ject is al­lo­cat­ed to se­cu­ri­ty. They won't an­swer, be­cause…
  security 8 short 50
• Don't ask writing good code What a sur­prise. Af­ter be­ing asked for months to sim­ply write code as fast as pos­si­ble, with no think­ing or test­ing, man­age­ment sud­den­ly crit­i­cized one of the col­leagues, be­cause the code of a new, un­sta­ble fea­ture im­ple­ment­ed to­day con­tains long…
  management 34 quality 36 short 50
• Coffee maker Take a cof­fee mak­er. What is its pur­pose? Its only pur­pose is to make cof­fee. It’s the only thing it does and knows. It has only one but­ton, and every­body know how to use it. Now take the Boe­ing 787. How many but­tons are there? How many peo­ple can…
  rant 34 short 50
• Eyestrain A few months ago, I left the com­pa­ny, but it's only to­day that I un­der­stood why I of­ten had headaches and eye­strain at work, and I rarely have that when work­ing at home. At home, I un­con­scious­ly fol­low the next pat­tern: work for ten min­utes to an…
  workplace 7 hardware 11 short 50
• What's wrong with SQL Server's FILESTREAM? Mi­crosoft SQL Serv­er con­tains a fea­ture called FILESTREAM. For those who don't use SQL Serv­er, in short, this fea­ture al­lows to store very large chunks of data in a data­base with all the ben­e­fits and none of the draw­backs. Un­der the hood, Mi­crosoft…
  database 2 short 50
• 80 columns limit I re­call dis­cussing 80 columns lim­it a year ago with a friend of mine. It's fun to read this part now, to see how I changed, and to try to un­der­stand what could my friend tell me to con­vince me that I was wrong. This is the quote I'm talk­ing about: I…
  code-style 3 short 50
• Brooks's law in Agile projects I was re­cent­ly asked whether [Brook's law][1] ap­plies to Ag­ile pro­jects as well. By Ag­ile pro­jects, the per­son ask­ing the ques­tion means ac­tu­al, real Ag­ile pro­jects, the ones where can­cel­ing a pro­ject and re­sum­ing it sev­er­al months lat­er with a…
  management 34 agile 10 short 50
• Elaboration through sharing The risk of work­ing alone is that one may start to have a sim­pli­fied vi­sion of a prob­lem, and not be­ing able to see be­yond this sim­ple mod­el. This hap­pens to me a lot; to­day, I have an ex­cel­lent il­lus­tra­tion of the prob­lem. Every­thing start­ed with…
  stack-exchange 4 communication 27 short 50
• Interview questions I'm of­ten sur­prised by the low qual­i­ty of an­swers I get from the can­di­dates dur­ing in­ter­views. Tech­ni­cal ques­tions quick­ly show a deep mis­un­der­stand­ing of the ba­sic con­cepts, and I'm won­der­ing how could it be that a per­son who claims be­ing a…
  hiring 15 short 50
• Aren't we misusing YAGNI too often? OK, I get it, I'm over-think­ing and over-en­gi­neer­ing this app. I should KISS, be­cause YAG­NI. Great. I should not at­tempt to solve prob­lems I don't have. I should not at­tempt to solve prob­lems I don't have. Or should I? De­vel­op­ment is filled with…
  refactoring 12 rant 34 short 50
• Written in stone On most pro­jects, a huge amount of time is spent hy­poth­e­siz­ing about sub­jects which not only don't mat­ter, but of­ten don't have a de­fin­i­tive an­swer. I of­ten see pro­gram­mers ar­gu­ing about which one of two im­ple­men­ta­tions is faster and which one will…
  short 50 rant 34 performance 13
• Does it look like an XSLT-based website to you? The ar­ti­cle talks about the [source web­site][1], the web­site which hosts the source code of pub­lic pro­jects. Five years ago, I was chal­lenged with a prob­lem re­lat­ed to source code. I had to make it some­how ac­ces­si­ble from any­where, pri­ma­ry to make…
  interaction-design 9 short 50
• The documentation is the spec A prob­lem en­coun­tered by most de­vel­op­ers and teams is that any pro­ject re­quires to per­form a lot of tasks in par­al­lel. Writ­ing code im­plies do­ing a bit of de­sign, refac­tor­ing should be done at the same time, but there is also test­ing, and…
  short 50 productivity 36
• Stack Overflow make us lazy It is com­mon to think that the pur­pose of Stack Over­flow is to make the world bet­ter, and it does, some­how. I think that it in­creased the over­all qual­i­ty of de­vel­op­er-ori­ent­ed re­sources, pro­vid­ed a…
  rant 34 stack-exchange 4 short 50
• A few words about Solange project For near­ly nine months, I am work­ing on a pro­ject called Solange which con­sists of De­vOps plat­form which makes it pain­less to de­ploy new pro­jects in pro­duc­tion. Sur­pris­ing­ly, I haven't writ­ten too much about it, not be­cause it's a se­cret (the source…
  devops 2 short 50
• Comparing Java with C# I start­ed pro­gram­ming in Java a few days ago and im­me­di­ate­ly felt in love with Java. As a per­son who have used C# for sev­en years, I was afraid that I wouldn't ap­pre­ci­ate Java, would find that a lot of C# fea­tures are miss­ing in Java, and that in…
  java 2 short 50
• Simplifying systems by adding proper abstractions The orig­i­nal draft of Solange pro­ject de­fined a no­tion of pro­file and in­stance. Ac­cord­ing to the to­day's doc­u­men­ta­tion (re­vi­sion 1234): A pro­file is a gener­ic de­scrip­tion of a ma­chine, i.e. a set of con­fig­u­ra­tion items and op­er­a­tions which de­fine a…
  devops 2 short 50 refactoring 12
• Streaming input and output in Flask I al­ways found Flask painful to use when it comes to stream­ing bi­na­ry data, such as when I need to send a bi­na­ry file or re­ceive one. The of­fi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion is very sparse, ex­plain­ing how to re­ceive files sub­mit­ted through a form, how to send a…
  short 50 flask 2 python 5 performance 13
• Why do I need to install SQL Server for a simple Hello World ASP.NET MVC website? I need­ed to cre­ate a small serv­er-side web-based ap­pli­ca­tion. The ap­pli­ca­tion is ex­treme­ly sim­ple, just a few lines of code. Host­ing provider seems to sup­port only PHP and ASP.NET/ASP.NET MVC, and I picked the last one, since the ap­pli­ca­tion may…
  short 50 rant 34 user-experience 10
• Micro-services in a context of high complexity and low code quality One of the most prob­lem­at­ic things of a soft­ware de­vel­op­er is how to han­dle the in­creas­ing com­plex­i­ty of a giv­en code base and the de­creas­ing qual­i­ty of it. Code which, when orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten, was read­able and un­der­stand­able, looks com­plete­ly scary…
  short 50 productivity 36 quality 36 refactoring 12
• Cloud computing: a rather expensive alternative I was al­ways con­vinced that buy­ing own servers is the most stu­pid thing a com­pa­ny can do at the era of cloud com­put­ing. If I deal with servers, it is ex­clu­sive­ly be­cause: I love deal­ing with servers. This alone is enough. There are a lot of things to…
  hardware 11 datacenter 4 short 50
• Control Hu­man be­ings want to con­trol every­thing. Their lives, oth­er peo­ple, things around them, events which can af­fect them in any way. The il­lu­sion of con­trol gives them cer­tain­ty, the feel­ing of or­der, the…
  thoughts 6 short 50 management 34 agile 10
• Should students be using syntax highlighting? A few months ago, some­one asked a ques­tion on Stack­Ex­change, won­der­ing if there is a re­search pa­per in­di­cat­ing whether syn­tax high­light­ing helps or slows down the learn­ing process of fu­ture pro­gram­mers. The ques­tion was closed and delet­ed, so here…
  short 50 quality 36
• Linters and style checkers: how to save hours of painful debugging I'm al­ways im­pressed with the con­sis­ten­cy of screw-ups caused by the un­will­ing­ness of pro­gram­mers to fol­low ba­sic guide­lines. To be more spe­cif­ic, I'm talk­ing about my own screw-ups here. I've been con­vinced a long time ago that: Style check­ers and…
  productivity 36 short 50 quality 36
• Measurement: a two-edged sword Too of­ten, the prac­tice of mea­sur­ing things is used in place of ba­sic think­ing, and, log­i­cal­ly, leads to low cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and poor prod­uct qual­i­ty. The ma­jor rea­son for that is that in most cas­es, mea­sure­ment is de­hu­man­iz­ing. A cus­tomer,…
  short 50 performance 13 quality 36 rant 34
• Visual management and the everlasting tasks Near­ly a year ago, I de­scribed how I im­ple­ment­ed vi­su­al man­age­ment in my com­pa­ny. My us­age of vi­su­al man­age­ment re­mained rough­ly the same, but over time, I dis­cov­ered one as­pect I wasn't think­ing of when I wrote the orig­i­nal ar­ti­cle: the tasks which…
  short 50 management 34 agile 10 workspace 1 communication 27
• The harm of emotional response I can't stop notic­ing how emo­tion­al pro­ject man­agers can be, and how much harm could emo­tions cause to their pro­ject. A week ago, I had my­self an in­ter­est­ing case when my emo­tion­al re­sponse dur­ing a call with a cus­tomer led to a neg­a­tive con­duct on…
  short 50 communication 27
• Questioning the goal of the project Re­cent­ly, a friend of mine ap­proached me with a rewrite of a soft­ware prod­uct. A small com­pa­ny where she works has a small piece of desk­top soft­ware writ­ten ten years ago in WinDe­v¹ by an in-house de­vel­op­er left five years ago. The pur­pose of this…
  requirements 3 agile 10 communication 27 short 50
• Expensive projects are really cool Fol­low­ing my pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cle, a col­league told me a sim­i­lar but much more im­pres­sive sto­ry which hap­pened to him. Since he doesn't en­joy writ­ing too much, he in­vit­ed me to tell the sto­ry here. Six years ago, Nico­las was hired as a free­lance…
  communication 27 featured 8 management 34 short 50
• What this blog is not for This blog is a good place for rants and de­tailed analy­sis of spe­cif­ic sub­jects (but most­ly for rants), I al­ways found it a bad place for short tex­tu­al con­tent or con­tent con­sist­ing most­ly or ex­clu­sive­ly of me­dia. For in­stance, if I want to rec­om­mend…
  short 50
• XY-problem and project estimates A year ago, I was work­ing as an ar­chi­tect and IT con­sul­tant with a com­pa­ny on a large soft­ware pro­ject. The pro­ject was es­ti­mat­ed by their in-house lead de­vel­op­er, and I was asked to re­view the es­ti­mate to check if it's cor­rect. The only prob­lem was…
  communication 27 thoughts 6 short 50
• Blogging and plagiarism A few days ago, I was con­tact­ed by a CS stu­dent who want­ed my ad­vice on his on­line pres­ence. He had an in­ter­est­ing CV, a de­cent web­site, and a blog which had reg­u­lar ar­ti­cles—much more reg­u­lar than mine. I en­joy a lot work­ing with stu­dents who did…
  short 50 communication 27
• Users matter more than bytes and CPU cycles There is some­thing com­plete­ly wrong in de­vel­op­ers' na­ture to be ob­sessed with per­for­mance to the detri­ment of every­thing else. It seems even that this com­pul­sive ob­ses­sion is not some­thing we ac­quire with prac­tice, since it af­fects even be­gin­ner…
  interaction-design 9 short 50 rant 34 performance 13 optimization 2
• DRM, custom hardware and technical solutions to human problems A now closed ques­tion on Soft­wa­reEngi­neer­ing.SE asked about a way to pre­vent the users from get­ting screen­shots of an ap­pli­ca­tion. The con­text is an ap­pli­ca­tion show­ing sen­si­tive doc­u­ments in a bank. While the doc­u­ment is en­crypt­ed, it re­mains safe.…
  short 50 security 8
• “T-shaped” people model misuse In Hand­book for new em­ploy­ees (PDF, 4 MB), Valve in­tro­duced on page 47 a con­cept of “T-shaped” peo­ple. What it means that peo­ple who want to work at Valve are ex­pect­ed to be both gen­er­al­ists—“high­ly skilled at a broad set of valu­able things” and…
  management 34 short 50 thoughts 6
• Candy security The ti­tle of this ar­ti­cle is a term I dis­cov­ered through the book of Kevin D. Mit­nick, The art of de­cep­tion, page 79. It means that the com­pa­ny has strong se­cu­ri­ty perime­ter with the out­side world, but once you got through, noth­ing can stop you. In…
  security 8 short 50
• Kevin D. Mitnick's The art of deception Just fin­ished read­ing Kevin D. Mit­nick's The art of de­cep­tion. The first part of the book con­tains the sto­ries of so­cial en­gi­neers in ac­tion. The sec­ond part is a set of rec­om­men­da­tions. The sto­ries are fun to read; the rec­om­men­da­tions are some­times…
  short 50 security 8
• Identifiers in bug tracking systems One an­noy­ing as­pect of bug track­ing sys­tems is the iden­ti­fiers. In sys­tems such as Jira, every time a tick­et is cre­at­ed, an iden­ti­fi­er is as­signed to it. The iden­ti­fi­er is based on a num­ber which in­cre­ments every time. For ex­am­ple, I cre­ate two…
  interaction-design 9 user-experience 10 short 50
• Silencing a 2U UPS I have a home of­fice with a bunch of servers and net­work hard­ware. In or­der to pro­tect my­self against oc­ca­sion­al prob­lems with the pow­er grid, I had two Eaton UPS units, but a firmware up­grade bricked both of them, so I had to buy an­oth­er one. I…
  hardware 11 short 50
• Documenting types used in services SOA and mi­croser­vices trends caused the fren­zy where every­one start­ed to ex­pose every­thing as a ser­vice. Large and small com­pa­nies want­ed to re­place big sys­tems of com­po­nents with rel­a­tive­ly un­clear in­ter­faces be­tween them by big­ger sys­tems of…
  rant 34 microservices 2 short 50
• Lazy programmer fallacy There is, among pro­ject man­agers, a think­ing that pro­gram­mers are lazy. Pro­gram­mers—they say—don't want to work; they pre­fer play­ing games or just do­ing noth­ing at all. This is all but truth. Ac­tu­al­ly, many pro­gram­mers en­joy pro­gram­ming. They have…
  rant 34 short 50 management 34 quality 36
• Architecture without culture I was re­cent­ly watch­ing the Deep­Mind's Al­pha­Go doc­u­men­tary, which starts with sev­er­al views of Ox­ford, in­clud­ing a shot where half of the frame is filled with the out­side of The Shel­don­ian The­atre, the oth­er half show­ing the His­to­ry of Sci­ence…
  architecture (construction) 1 rant 34 short 50
• Silencing PWS-741P-1R power supply I have a bunch of Su­per­Mi­cro 2U chas­sis 825TQ that I use for the tasks which don't re­quire a lot of CPU pow­er. The orig­i­nal chas­sis makes a lot of noise. When I say a lot, I mean it. You can't pos­si­bly stay in the room when this thing is on. I…
  hardware 11 short 50
• Beyerdynamic T51p repair I own a Bey­er­dy­nam­ic T51p head­phones. I bought them in 2017, and a few months af­ter its war­ran­ty ex­pired, it start­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence a com­mon prob­lem for this mod­el: the right dri­ver would work only when the wire was put in a spe­cif­ic po­si­tion. A few…
  hardware 11 short 50
• How to fix VLC video freezes, audio continues problem This ar­ti­cle ex­plains how to fix the is­sue where VLC video freezes, but the au­dio con­tin­ues to play. When­ev­er you come across any type of is­sue while play­ing a video in a VLC play­er, then, first of all, en­sure that the VLC play­er is up-to-up­date. If…
  short 50 software 2
• Trimming strings Reg­u­lar­ly, I find in­ter­est­ing ques­tions on Stack Over­flow, that look ba­sic at the first sight, but ap­pear to be not that sim­ple af­ter all. To­day, it was a ques­tion on the Russ­ian ver­sion of Stack…
  refactoring 12 short 50 javascript 3
• This is what you get when you measure lines of code A few months ago, I wrote an ar­ti­cle about a tech­ni­cal leader who mis­un­der­stood how to mea­sure code qual­i­ty. Try­ing to im­prove things, his only achieve­ment was to make every­thing worse, be­cause of the…
  short 50 quality 36 javascript 3