For what it's worth, they said much the same thing about heart transplants, liver transplants, lung transplants, etc etc. They said going to the Moon was impossible (and at the time, it was)...but technology won out.
Yes, I agree a brain transplant is *vastly* more difficult than any of those things, but I would never say that it is flatly impossible. It's not possible today, but in 20 or 50 years? I wouldn't rule it out.
Especially since the things that Rust does well (avoiding memory leaks and overflows) have absolutely nothing to do with the errors mentioned in the summary (SQL injection and XSS).
I've seen similarly bad tutorials about templating. The way they teach how to cut your basic HTML and CSS apart in chunks is complete nonsense. They're showing people to always copy a whole empty framework and call cut-out parts all over the place. And then inside those cut-out parts, call out other parts. I've seen this done five levels deep.
People learn not by memorizing but by looking at examples.
This very true, especially in programming. The result is that bad code gets propagated with the best of intentions.
I do fault many of the tutorial writers for not mentioning stuff like cleaning up form data and the like. They should learn what they're doing before they try to teach it.
I've come across countless tutorials that cover things like capturing and using form field input, but almost NEVER see a single word in them about sanitizing data, or guarding against bad, malformed, or malicious data.
It's just, "Here's how ya get the data, now go jam it in the database or print it right to the screen!" Fuck me.
And in all fairness, as a PHP user, I've seen a *lot* of PHP tutorials that were bad, stupidly dangerous, or just plain wrong. One of the most egregious was a "tutorial" that showed sending the entire SQL statement to the server as a GET parameter. That's right, some guy actually coded his shot so that it sent a live SQL statement in the URL, and then blithely processed the attached variables without so much as a how-de-do.
Later I saw code that did this exact thing used in various scripts (guestbooks, registration forms, comment forms), probably based on this epically flawed "tutorial".
My first programming language was Atari BASIC. It was okay.
I then fiddles with Visual Basic on an XT. After that it was perl for a couple of years, and then PHP. For all its warts and shortcomings, PHP has made me a mountain of cash over the years. Sneer all you want, but PHP has made my house payment for 15+ years as well as paying for cars and food and toys and vacations abroad.
Please feel free to tell me how terrible PHP is, as I get a warm, satisfying feeling inside whenever I hear people bitterly criticizing PHP. It's like hearing people complain that the really cute girl I'm banging is wearing shoes they don't like. Guess what? I'm not dating her for the shoes, lol.:)
iTunes is the single worst piece of shitware I've ever seen. Non-standard interface with a clunky UI, and half the shit is hidden under layers of craptastic controls. The other half is missing, like simple file transfer from A to B.
Wanna grab just one file off your iPhone or iPad? No, let's sync the whole fucking thing because you don't have anything better to do on a Saturday night.
"I am someone who likes to post improvement suggestions for different software tools I use on the internet."
TRANSLATON:
"I am someone who likes to post his half-baked ideas about how your software just needs feature X that I personally think would be SUPER DUPER MEGA COOL even though it's not really useful and would require YOU to code all sorts of shit for ME at my whim."
"Nice text editor, but why doesn't it include a window with NASA's live weather feed for Mars?? If you could just implement that, it would be AWESOME!1!!
Oh, I'm sure it was huge, but it made less of an impact than a BB hitting a battleship. I'm not exactly a stranger to the internet, but I never heard of it before this obituary.
Slashdot Mirror
For what it's worth, they said much the same thing about heart transplants, liver transplants, lung transplants, etc etc. They said going to the Moon was impossible (and at the time, it was)...but technology won out.
Yes, I agree a brain transplant is *vastly* more difficult than any of those things, but I would never say that it is flatly impossible. It's not possible today, but in 20 or 50 years? I wouldn't rule it out.
A huge multinational corporation like Amazon is dodging taxes? SAY IT ISN'T SO!
Yes, fine, I wasn't specific enough.
I forgive you.
"In Costly Bay Area, Even Six-Figure Salaries Are Considered 'Low Income' "
And that's one key reason why I won't live there (among many, many other reasons).
... that describe in loving detail how to construct ad hoc SQL queries using string concatenation and interpolation
There's nothing inherently wrong with that as long as you're sanitizing your inputs properly and/or using parameterized queries.
"Standard prices and simple discounts are giving way to far more exotic strategies, designed to extract every last dollar from the consumer."
You mean they want your money and will do anything to get it? Shocking, simply shocking.
Not yet, at least. They current sound like Robama and the Trumpinator.
Give it ten minutes of speech and I'll bet it's a hell of a lot better (more like the real voice).
This will only get better and better, and I'd hazard a guess that before long most of us won't be able to tell the real voice from the synthetic one.
Especially since the things that Rust does well (avoiding memory leaks and overflows) have absolutely nothing to do with the errors mentioned in the summary (SQL injection and XSS).
Exactly.
I've seen similarly bad tutorials about templating. The way they teach how to cut your basic HTML and CSS apart in chunks is complete nonsense. They're showing people to always copy a whole empty framework and call cut-out parts all over the place. And then inside those cut-out parts, call out other parts. I've seen this done five levels deep.
That sounds like Smarty. What an abomination.
Jeezus, I hadn't thought about Smarty in years. Now I need a Xanax.
Pfft. Like I'm one to talk. I make my living writing C++.
Ahh, C++...I have heard of it. A powerful yet little-known language with a couple of tricky bits, right?
People learn not by memorizing but by looking at examples.
This very true, especially in programming. The result is that bad code gets propagated with the best of intentions.
I do fault many of the tutorial writers for not mentioning stuff like cleaning up form data and the like. They should learn what they're doing before they try to teach it.
How do you figure that Rust will somehow be better? Bad code can be written in any language, including Rust!
^^^^ This.
Pick your favorite super-safe language (if it even exists yet) and I'll personally show you how to write bad code. Really, really bad, unsafe code.
I'm not saying that I've made every mistake in the book but I've probably added a few.
Ah, I see where they went wrong. They should have searched for "real mysql tutorial."
That's deprecated, now we use really really for sure this time mysql. It's webscale.
I believe it.
I've come across countless tutorials that cover things like capturing and using form field input, but almost NEVER see a single word in them about sanitizing data, or guarding against bad, malformed, or malicious data.
It's just, "Here's how ya get the data, now go jam it in the database or print it right to the screen!" Fuck me.
And in all fairness, as a PHP user, I've seen a *lot* of PHP tutorials that were bad, stupidly dangerous, or just plain wrong. One of the most egregious was a "tutorial" that showed sending the entire SQL statement to the server as a GET parameter. That's right, some guy actually coded his shot so that it sent a live SQL statement in the URL, and then blithely processed the attached variables without so much as a how-de-do.
Later I saw code that did this exact thing used in various scripts (guestbooks, registration forms, comment forms), probably based on this epically flawed "tutorial".
"Should Archive.org Ignore Robots.txt Directives And Cache Everything?"
No.
My first programming language was Atari BASIC. It was okay.
I then fiddles with Visual Basic on an XT. After that it was perl for a couple of years, and then PHP. For all its warts and shortcomings, PHP has made me a mountain of cash over the years. Sneer all you want, but PHP has made my house payment for 15+ years as well as paying for cars and food and toys and vacations abroad.
Please feel free to tell me how terrible PHP is, as I get a warm, satisfying feeling inside whenever I hear people bitterly criticizing PHP. It's like hearing people complain that the really cute girl I'm banging is wearing shoes they don't like. Guess what? I'm not dating her for the shoes, lol. :)
Every update of iTunes
Every version of iTunes ever.
iTunes is the single worst piece of shitware I've ever seen. Non-standard interface with a clunky UI, and half the shit is hidden under layers of craptastic controls. The other half is missing, like simple file transfer from A to B.
Wanna grab just one file off your iPhone or iPad? No, let's sync the whole fucking thing because you don't have anything better to do on a Saturday night.
"I am someone who likes to post improvement suggestions for different software tools I use on the internet."
TRANSLATON:
"I am someone who likes to post his half-baked ideas about how your software just needs feature X that I personally think would be SUPER DUPER MEGA COOL even though it's not really useful and would require YOU to code all sorts of shit for ME at my whim."
"Nice text editor, but why doesn't it include a window with NASA's live weather feed for Mars?? If you could just implement that, it would be AWESOME!1!!
"Microsoft Improves Gmail Experience For Windows 10 Insiders..."
Uh-oh.
I've had enough experience with Microsoft's 'improvements' to know that it's going to be a huge clusterfuck of usability and privacy problems.
"President Trump Misses 90-Day Deadline To Appoint a Cybersecurity Team After Alleged Russian Hacking"
That's because he's an imbecile, and because he doesn't want anyone looking into Russian hacking connections, because who knows what they might find.
There's something to be said for making customers a top priority,
If you have seed money to burn, sure. But otherwise the business of business is to make enough money to stay in business.
"Revenue was not a top priority"
Well there's your problem.
Tilt? Never heard of it, literally.
Oh, I'm sure it was huge, but it made less of an impact than a BB hitting a battleship. I'm not exactly a stranger to the internet, but I never heard of it before this obituary.
From the Book of Numpty, 3:16..."And they knew not their holes from an ass in the ground."
I rest my case.
But while we're on the subject, why doesn't god ever heal amputees?
Maybe they will mod you down for simply being a dick, too.
Dick or not, deep down they know I'm right and they can't stand it. :)