Re: Perhaps developers should work offline
My code has never been exploited and has never needed any updates, this simply because it was bespoke i.e. different for each customer and all written with the old computing definition of security in mind.
So... No repeat business, code insignificant enough that errors in the compiler aren't triggered by it, insignificant enough that changes to the OS don't cause any issues with it. Oh, and insignificant enough that ONE person writes it.
I can understand a lot of the bugs with MS stuff - their code has to support quite literally MILLIONS of possible hardware configurations. On top of that, there are millions of software configurations as well. The interaction between different bits of hardware or software, especially on complex programs, and sometimes that can throw up some serious surprises.
Of course, if you really did write code like you want us to believe, you'd know that what you have in your test environment may not match what your customer has in their RealLife environment, and any changes to their RL environment could well result in changes to the function of your code. Also, no matter what coders think to test for, no matter what we think is a "so stupid it will never happen", RL invents users who, on the first time just looking at your software, manage to break it in ways you never dreamed possible.
And that's before the next lot of updates to the OS, or other running software (what about all those deprecated system calls, API's that no longer exist, DLL's that have changed name or location on disk etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc?)
El Reg - an icon that represents a steaming pile of male bovine excrement would be much desired.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
