-
Recent Posts
Archives
- May 2022
- April 2021
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- November 2019
- July 2019
- October 2018
- May 2018
- October 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- February 2016
- December 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- May 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
Category Archives: software
Corwin’s Tenth Law
Any sufficiently complicated distributed system program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Raft. With apologies to Philip Greenspun.
Posted in computer science, jokes, software
Leave a comment
ORMs model databases, databases don’t model objects
I was discussing the merits of a couple different ways to abstract some data common to multiple models at work, and my coworkers asked some questions that forced me to articulate exactly why I have such strong opposition to things … Continue reading
Posted in computer science, software
Leave a comment
How To DDoS Your Own Website With Python
Have you ever thought, “huh, I wonder how easily I could DDoS myself despite all the hard work of library and framework authors?” In that case, have I got news for you! In the vein of Uses and Abuses Of … Continue reading
Posted in computer science, pedantry, software
Leave a comment
Why Is No One Writing Language Runtimes?
A conversation with a coworker recently lead me to wonder why none of the innovation in writing software recently has been in terms of runtimes, or at least not pluggable ones. Before I get into that in any detail, I’ll … Continue reading
Posted in software
13 Comments
Programming Language Misfeatures With Little Comment
(An incomplete and unordered list) inheritance != === not in from python .. and … (flip-flop operators) implicit type coercion (except arguably short -> long style) null case fallthroughs non-exhaustive case statements the switch/case construct in general lambda‘s restrictions in … Continue reading
Posted in software
Leave a comment
A Poem (of sorts)
Once upon a midday sunny, while I pondered nothing funny, Over many a quaint and curious man page of forgotten lore— While I angered, nearly snapping, suddenly there came a bad ping, As if LVS was napping, napping though … Continue reading
NIH, Developer Infantilization, and Motivations
I recently read about the new face of NIH syndrome, and after sharing and discussing it with some coworkers (Hi, John!) I had some thoughts about how NIH (or what Freeman calls NPF) comes to be, and what it means … Continue reading
Posted in software
Leave a comment
Users and Accounts in Swift
(This will eventually be published on the SwiftStack blog) Preface: I am a developer at SwiftStack, where we work with Swift, which is in this context an open source distributed object storage engine, not the Apple language of the same … Continue reading
Posted in pedantry, software
Leave a comment
All Security Is Security Theatre
In light of the Ashley Madison leak, I wanted to tell, or perhaps remind, you that all security is bullshit. This applies to physical (e.g. home) security as well as digital security. The moral of this post will be: please … Continue reading
Posted in pedantry, software
Leave a comment
Secure, But Not Encrypted
I’ve been going to the doctor a lot lately (knee problem, boring story), and I had to sign a consent-to-being-emailed form. On this form, which I regrettably forgot to nab a copy of to post here, it was explained to … Continue reading
Clear, Simple, and Wrong 