The problem with application development is that new features tend to get tacked on over the years. Joe Idiot Manager says, "Ahh, it looks good, but can you make it do my laundry?" and all of a sudden, you're given a chice: either hack on a modification to make the code do something it wasn't originally intended to do, or rewrite it from scratch. The first choice is quicker the first few times through, but programs grow more and more buggy and cumbersome as more and more extra features are hacked into the code.
How common is it for the ORIGINAL developers to be the people doing the code rewrite? Rewrites are usually done because the new developers cannot understand how the original code works.
Lendrick and cpeterso are having a provoking discussion here. I appreciate it. As a manager of a small team of Web developers, I would put in my own two cents. My experience is that both of you are correct. Code does experience feature creep, planned or otherwise. So plugging in new features can require some ugly work unless the code is perfectly modular (and that's rare -- even if you deliberately make things modular, there is a good chance you won't anticipate every kind of need). Given years of development time, maintenance can become very expensive as new developers waste large amounts of salary trying to learn the code. And cpeterso is on the right track -- having green developers do the rewrites will doom the rewrite to repeat the same mistakes. Yet often the original developer is gone, or is wedded to his/her design and won't rewrite, or is bored of the code and has lost interest.
For me, I have this problem -- a codebase that is developer-hostile. I have one employee working on our intranet, and one working on our public site. I intend to swap the employees and have them rebuild each other's work. The advantages:
They will both still be on staff and communicating, so the "missing original developer" issues should be minimized.
They both will come at the code with a fresh perspective.
They will be able to leverage original code -- I am not mandating a rewrite from scratch, but a massive "refactoring" (as Joel puts it).
They are both very good, and I believe they will improve the developer-friendliness of the code simply because they will have to if they wish to gain control of a large, unfamiliar codebase.
As one of the only added-values that I think slashdot readers would ascribe to middle-managers, I will do my best to provide the developers with the history of the project and unanticipated issues, so that any new code has more wisdom behind it.
I get the feeling that the EFF is really rather busy dealing with Senator Hollings' bill (which was killed in the Senate, but persists in the House, I think). I think BNETD is something the EFF is doing because there are some free-speech/fair-use issues, but it's definitely not topping the list of priorities. I would encourage everyone who can to click the link in my sig and send even 10 bucks their way. It might help the EFF to remain focused on defending something that just got much more serious.
he wants to go back in time and warn his father, who died of cancer when he was 10, of the danger of cigarettes.
My God. A 10 year-old died of cancer? From smoking cigarettes? And this 10 year-old fathered a son before dying? And that son is now trying to build a time machine? What the hell kind of genes are running in this family???
Circular theory, here we come...
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 2
...if he really can build a time machine, then he doesn't have to. All he needs to do is wait for his future self to beam back the machine and viola! He's got a time machine. Which he can then beam back to himself.
LDAP is very scalable with an extensible schema, and can provide support for more then usernames and passwords.
I think Pat Jensen has really got some good advice here. At SST, we're slowing moving to a "universal login" system for our Web sites. There are about 5 internal & external sites, each requiring different usernames & passwords. Our solution is to set up a MySQL database with login data and nothing more, and then each Web site will check for a cookie (MD5 hash with IP addy, so the cookie is difficult to spoof). Since all our sites operate under sst.com, they should all be able to view the cookie and verify it.
However, and as an inevitable side-effect, people are now asking why we can't use that same system for NT logins and Outlook and yadda yadda. If we had chosen LDAP, this would have solved the issue, as LDAP can be plugged into a bit more than MySQL can. We will still do this, it just means we have to revise, revise, revise. I have yet to look into how well PHP and ASP support LDAP, and just how much LDAP can do, but it appears to be much more in line with our needs. Can anyone speak definitively about what PHP and ASP and NT and Outlook can do with LDAP?
I'm capped. I don't need karma. If it makes you feel better, please, mod this down to -1. I've got it to spare. EFF has been in my sig for about 4 months now. It's nothing new.
SUBTERFUGUE is a framework for observing and playing with the reality of software; it's a foundation for building tools to do tracing, sandboxing, and many other things. You could think of it as "strace meets expect."
Features
simple interface for writing tools
can follow, rewrite, and annul system calls
can follow, rewrite, and annul signals (with limits)
Yeeeaah! Do you think this is big enough to win back some numbers for Apache? I noticed that when PHP 4 came out, it got a pretty big jump in numbers (early-mid 2000). Apache 2 seems like A Big Deal that might punch up the Apache stats.
danheskett writes:
1) Microsoft is not on a crusade against Open Source, or Free Software. It is on a crusade against the GPL. Notice the BSD license is perfectly valid under this license.
Geekboy writes: 1) MS is trying to make OS illegal, by means of GPL. That's the easist target for them.
danheskett again: 1) MS isnt trying to make anything illegal that isnt already illegal.
As if the GPL is "already illegal." Absurd! Geekboy is right.
Consumers overwhelmingly chose netscape until MS made it a violation of their OEM license agreement to preinstall netscape.
Netscape was always a choice. It never went away. YOu could always choose Netscape
You're talking about downloads. Mjh is talking about preinstallation on computers with Windows. I remember this -- at one point Dell and Compaq would give you a system with Netscape's icon right on it, then suddenly they weren't offering that anymore, and IE came by default. I still have a 100mhz laptop from Compaq with Win95 on it, and it still has the Netscape that came preinstalled with it. Mjh is right. Microsoft blocked such preinstalls, and got in trouble in court for such activity.
It is unknown whether there was a technical problem at the hosting site or whether the site was merely bombarded with requests from IT managers clamoring for copies of the free papers on the site.
Oh yeah! Spin, baby! spin!
Couldn't this kind of almost-blatant lying (OK, OK, marketing spin) backfire? I mean, might this piss off the very people who are pounding the site? Instead of taking the site down, the black hats might instead leave the site running, but with banners such as "MS SECURITY HAS BEEN CRACKED"???
Whatever. If I were running a major public site, I might try to avoid exposing myself to crackers. I suspect a good security policy involves: patch, patch again, disable everything but the servers/daemons you need, and try not to paint a target on your ass.
Axe gave a valiant effort at explaining it. However, I think the humor is simply that jx100 is taking a swipe at this article here. I believe jx100 is making a rather sarcastic comment about how geeks dwell on semantics. I found it to be quite effective, although a bit obscure.
As a published poet, and a small press publisher, I understand the need to enforce copyrights in the digital age. The idea that a student might be copying all my work and turning it in for assignments, or that an ethically barren person might attempt to distribute copies of my work across the internet without compensating me for my effort and creativity -- well, those are serious issues.
However, it is also a serious blow to the economy that small press publishers such as myself have been waiting for DECADES for the work of long-dead writers to come into the public domain. E. E. Cummings wrote his first book of poetry in 1923, the oldest year still protected by copyright. And even then, it is only protected because of multiple copyright extensions. Because none of his books of poetry have fallen into the public domain, I have been perpetually waiting to distribute a print of his books. Not only are publishers experiencing a financial loss to protect the interests of dead writers, but the citizens of the United States are losing out on a large piece of culture and history that has been held under lock and key.
The correct way to resolve these huge issues is already here. The Berne Convention and traditional copyright laws have protected my interests as a writer admirably. But the laws have begun to swing far away from the public interest -- the Sunny Bono act in particular. The introduction of the CBDTPA only further erodes the traditional, Constitutional freedoms of fair use and the public domain. The CBDTPA forces technology to barricade creative works, but technology cannot THINK. Technology cannot expire itself after copyrights expire, because copyright expirations vary, and can be extended (or hopefully someday reduced). Technology has no way to "know" this. Technology cannot envision every possible case of fair use. Technology is not a judge, technology is not a jury. And by trying to make technology something it can never be, we are abdicating our own responsibilities -- reducing concepts such as "thou shalt not steal" from principles down to technological issues. The second that theft leaves the social realm and is reduced to the technological realm, you have empowered generations to think of honesty not as a responsibility, but as an algorithm to be defeated.
In addition, by placing the burden of developing and manufacturing this technology on the shoulders of Silicon Valley, the cost of repurposing millions of employees to this doomed task will result in staggering blows to the economy. Innovation will grind to a halt. US citizens will look to exports and black market devices, allowing nearly every other country on planet Earth to surpass us and enjoy massive gains at our expense. Prohibition will repeat itself all over again, including the political fallout.
I urge every member of Congress to hold fast to the ethical, human-centric notions that made the United States of America the great nation that is today. Do not join Hollywood in its battle to subjugate its own customers.
I liked the idea, from the story about Christian Scientists, of us "small guys" running ads on Google. So I put up a "recall Senator Hollings" ad which ran on any search of "South Carolina" -- but that was pulled after 600 impressions. I've revised it now to warn of the loss of fair use and expired copyrights, and it appears on any search including the words Hollings, SSSCA, or CBDTPA. It links to the EFF alert. I could only put $250 into this, so the ad will probably disappear after a week or so.
I hope others might consider "extending" my ad with ads of their own, especially if you can think of some smart keywords that might make the ad more relevant as people are searching. Or donate directly to the EFF. Or put your weight behind digitalconsumer.org (they've got some big names helping them out, so we're not alone here).
Let me repeat fetta's question with my +1 bonus, to see if someone will notice this and answer:
What's the downside of using the --no-g++-exceptions switch?
I know I would like to find out the answer to that one. Also, mav's comment about Linux From Scratch was terrific -- I'm now cruising through all the hints and really, this is quite a huge resource. I wish I had known about it earlier in my Linux life.
AFAIK in KDE 2.2 you cannot simply drag and drop to the "floppy device" icon in the desktop.
Just implemented this yesterday...
That's damn cool to have a developer pop in and say "yeah, we just added that." If I had a mod point, I'd be marking dfaure's post as "underrated" right now.
I really wish they would drop this whole redhat compatibility thing and just follow the LSB.
Garett Spencley is right! And while they're at it, it would be excellent if Mandrake dropped GCC 2.96 and either used 2.95 or 3.0.4 (or 3.1). Man, if they did those 2 things, I'd buy more frequently (so far, I've only bought 8.0, although I'm buying 8.2 if it's even close to stable).
...but please, please, please leave me a hole for Google's Usenet archive. Almost every programming question I've ever had has been answered 100 times on Usenet.
I'm wondering if anyone has any links to some nice games for Linux.
The one I'm enjoying right now is called Adonthell (which is actually just the engine, the "episode" I'm playing is called Waste's Edge). What's nice is that the game is in the tradition of Zelda, FF, and such -- RPG, kinda -- but not so lengthy. Supposedly Waste's Edge can be finished in a night, although it'll take me 4 or 5, cause I'm slow.
Slashdot Mirror
Lendrick and cpeterso are having a provoking discussion here. I appreciate it. As a manager of a small team of Web developers, I would put in my own two cents. My experience is that both of you are correct. Code does experience feature creep, planned or otherwise. So plugging in new features can require some ugly work unless the code is perfectly modular (and that's rare -- even if you deliberately make things modular, there is a good chance you won't anticipate every kind of need). Given years of development time, maintenance can become very expensive as new developers waste large amounts of salary trying to learn the code. And cpeterso is on the right track -- having green developers do the rewrites will doom the rewrite to repeat the same mistakes. Yet often the original developer is gone, or is wedded to his/her design and won't rewrite, or is bored of the code and has lost interest.
For me, I have this problem -- a codebase that is developer-hostile. I have one employee working on our intranet, and one working on our public site. I intend to swap the employees and have them rebuild each other's work. The advantages:
I get the feeling that the EFF is really rather busy dealing with Senator Hollings' bill (which was killed in the Senate, but persists in the House, I think). I think BNETD is something the EFF is doing because there are some free-speech/fair-use issues, but it's definitely not topping the list of priorities. I would encourage everyone who can to click the link in my sig and send even 10 bucks their way. It might help the EFF to remain focused on defending something that just got much more serious.
My God. A 10 year-old died of cancer? From smoking cigarettes? And this 10 year-old fathered a son before dying? And that son is now trying to build a time machine? What the hell kind of genes are running in this family???
...if he really can build a time machine, then he doesn't have to. All he needs to do is wait for his future self to beam back the machine and viola! He's got a time machine. Which he can then beam back to himself.
I think Pat Jensen has really got some good advice here. At SST, we're slowing moving to a "universal login" system for our Web sites. There are about 5 internal & external sites, each requiring different usernames & passwords. Our solution is to set up a MySQL database with login data and nothing more, and then each Web site will check for a cookie (MD5 hash with IP addy, so the cookie is difficult to spoof). Since all our sites operate under sst.com, they should all be able to view the cookie and verify it.
However, and as an inevitable side-effect, people are now asking why we can't use that same system for NT logins and Outlook and yadda yadda. If we had chosen LDAP, this would have solved the issue, as LDAP can be plugged into a bit more than MySQL can. We will still do this, it just means we have to revise, revise, revise. I have yet to look into how well PHP and ASP support LDAP, and just how much LDAP can do, but it appears to be much more in line with our needs. Can anyone speak definitively about what PHP and ASP and NT and Outlook can do with LDAP?
I'm capped. I don't need karma. If it makes you feel better, please, mod this down to -1. I've got it to spare. EFF has been in my sig for about 4 months now. It's nothing new.
In case of slashdot effect, here's the summary:
SUBTERFUGUE is a framework for observing and playing with the reality of software; it's a foundation for building tools to do tracing, sandboxing, and many other things. You could think of it as "strace meets expect."
Features
Yeeeaah! Do you think this is big enough to win back some numbers for Apache? I noticed that when PHP 4 came out, it got a pretty big jump in numbers (early-mid 2000). Apache 2 seems like A Big Deal that might punch up the Apache stats.
As if the GPL is "already illegal." Absurd! Geekboy is right.
You're talking about downloads. Mjh is talking about preinstallation on computers with Windows. I remember this -- at one point Dell and Compaq would give you a system with Netscape's icon right on it, then suddenly they weren't offering that anymore, and IE came by default. I still have a 100mhz laptop from Compaq with Win95 on it, and it still has the Netscape that came preinstalled with it. Mjh is right. Microsoft blocked such preinstalls, and got in trouble in court for such activity.
Well said.
Couldn't this kind of almost-blatant lying (OK, OK, marketing spin) backfire? I mean, might this piss off the very people who are pounding the site? Instead of taking the site down, the black hats might instead leave the site running, but with banners such as "MS SECURITY HAS BEEN CRACKED"???
Whatever. If I were running a major public site, I might try to avoid exposing myself to crackers. I suspect a good security policy involves: patch, patch again, disable everything but the servers/daemons you need, and try not to paint a target on your ass.
Axe gave a valiant effort at explaining it. However, I think the humor is simply that jx100 is taking a swipe at this article here. I believe jx100 is making a rather sarcastic comment about how geeks dwell on semantics. I found it to be quite effective, although a bit obscure.
Thanks for that link. Here is what I submitted:
As a published poet, and a small press publisher, I understand the need to enforce copyrights in the digital age. The idea that a student might be copying all my work and turning it in for assignments, or that an ethically barren person might attempt to distribute copies of my work across the internet without compensating me for my effort and creativity -- well, those are serious issues.
However, it is also a serious blow to the economy that small press publishers such as myself have been waiting for DECADES for the work of long-dead writers to come into the public domain. E. E. Cummings wrote his first book of poetry in 1923, the oldest year still protected by copyright. And even then, it is only protected because of multiple copyright extensions. Because none of his books of poetry have fallen into the public domain, I have been perpetually waiting to distribute a print of his books. Not only are publishers experiencing a financial loss to protect the interests of dead writers, but the citizens of the United States are losing out on a large piece of culture and history that has been held under lock and key.
The correct way to resolve these huge issues is already here. The Berne Convention and traditional copyright laws have protected my interests as a writer admirably. But the laws have begun to swing far away from the public interest -- the Sunny Bono act in particular. The introduction of the CBDTPA only further erodes the traditional, Constitutional freedoms of fair use and the public domain. The CBDTPA forces technology to barricade creative works, but technology cannot THINK. Technology cannot expire itself after copyrights expire, because copyright expirations vary, and can be extended (or hopefully someday reduced). Technology has no way to "know" this. Technology cannot envision every possible case of fair use. Technology is not a judge, technology is not a jury. And by trying to make technology something it can never be, we are abdicating our own responsibilities -- reducing concepts such as "thou shalt not steal" from principles down to technological issues. The second that theft leaves the social realm and is reduced to the technological realm, you have empowered generations to think of honesty not as a responsibility, but as an algorithm to be defeated.
In addition, by placing the burden of developing and manufacturing this technology on the shoulders of Silicon Valley, the cost of repurposing millions of employees to this doomed task will result in staggering blows to the economy. Innovation will grind to a halt. US citizens will look to exports and black market devices, allowing nearly every other country on planet Earth to surpass us and enjoy massive gains at our expense. Prohibition will repeat itself all over again, including the political fallout.
I urge every member of Congress to hold fast to the ethical, human-centric notions that made the United States of America the great nation that is today. Do not join Hollywood in its battle to subjugate its own customers.
Dude, that's highly funny, but I suspect you and I are the only ones that will get the reference.
I liked the idea, from the story about Christian Scientists, of us "small guys" running ads on Google. So I put up a "recall Senator Hollings" ad which ran on any search of "South Carolina" -- but that was pulled after 600 impressions. I've revised it now to warn of the loss of fair use and expired copyrights, and it appears on any search including the words Hollings, SSSCA, or CBDTPA. It links to the EFF alert. I could only put $250 into this, so the ad will probably disappear after a week or so.
I hope others might consider "extending" my ad with ads of their own, especially if you can think of some smart keywords that might make the ad more relevant as people are searching. Or donate directly to the EFF. Or put your weight behind digitalconsumer.org (they've got some big names helping them out, so we're not alone here).
Thanks Jonathan!
How would someone start such a recall?
Let me repeat fetta's question with my +1 bonus, to see if someone will notice this and answer:
I know I would like to find out the answer to that one. Also, mav's comment about Linux From Scratch was terrific -- I'm now cruising through all the hints and really, this is quite a huge resource. I wish I had known about it earlier in my Linux life.
That's damn cool to have a developer pop in and say "yeah, we just added that." If I had a mod point, I'd be marking dfaure's post as "underrated" right now.
Just three? Come now, let's aspire to something better than average. :)
Is that a standard install??? If so, that's great! Thanks kn!
Garett Spencley is right! And while they're at it, it would be excellent if Mandrake dropped GCC 2.96 and either used 2.95 or 3.0.4 (or 3.1). Man, if they did those 2 things, I'd buy more frequently (so far, I've only bought 8.0, although I'm buying 8.2 if it's even close to stable).
...but please, please, please leave me a hole for Google's Usenet archive. Almost every programming question I've ever had has been answered 100 times on Usenet.
The one I'm enjoying right now is called Adonthell (which is actually just the engine, the "episode" I'm playing is called Waste's Edge). What's nice is that the game is in the tradition of Zelda, FF, and such -- RPG, kinda -- but not so lengthy. Supposedly Waste's Edge can be finished in a night, although it'll take me 4 or 5, cause I'm slow.