Posts by Doctor Syntax

Refactoring whizz: Good software shouldn't cost the earth – it's actually cheaper to build

Re: Nothing new ?

"Charging for changes is a huge money maker."

And those changes being harder than they should to implement is a great money loser.

Rule 1. Development is the process of launching a product into maintenance.

Rule 2. Maintenance is the longest part of the product life-cycle unless the product was canned PDQ.

Corollary: Good development prepares the way for easy maintenance.

Rule 3. Forget the "You ain't gonna need it" stuff. You will. Sod's law variation no 286 says that if you don't have it you're going to need it even sooner.

Rule 4. Think of the most general problem you can of which the immediate requirement is an example and solve that problem. You might find it's no more difficult doing it that way; if the additional requirements come in while you're working and you were already meeting them it'll actually be easier than chopping and changing.

Rule 5. If you tailor your program to fit the requirements exactly the requirements will become your program's limitations.

Rule 6. Your program's limitations may well become its bugs.

Re: Lession lernt from HP

There's a lot of benefit in getting to know your users. I was fortunate in that I worked largely with in-house users so it was possible to walk over and talk to the actual users as well as their managers. That way you learn what's actually important and what's not.

Re: You must always go fast...

Or complains that the demo doesn't do this or that right so the team couldn't have been up to the job. I had a friend who suffered that one repeatedly - manglement couldn't get their heads round the fact that the demos were information gathering exercises.

Re: Not My Budget

Budgets only work to manage costs when there's somebody keeping an eye out on the overall budget and, in fact, on other stuff. I've seen maintenance type done n stupidly bad order, presumably by separate budget holders not coordinating so one operation comes along and craps on the new paint job that was just finished.

Re: And what about the proliferation of languages

"They know about data and code - and they are separate. It seems that this OO thing likes treating one equal to the other. "

Not in any implementation I've seen.

You program in C? If so you'll know what a struct is.

You define your struct. Somewhere, possibly somewhere else, you write the code that uses the struct. The code will have statements to allocate one or more blocks of struct-sized memory and pass pointers to other code that twiddles bits inside those blocks. You might accidentally pass a pointer to some other struct - shit happens. When you've finished with a block, if you remember, you'll release the block. When you compile it binary code goes into your library or program file. When the code executes and gets to the part that allocates memory for the struct that allocation takes place in the data space. As you say, separate.

Now take the OO case. You define a data structure something like a struct but in the same section of code you provide the code that operates on that data structure including code to allocate and release space for the data structure. You compile it and binary code goes into the library or program file and when you execute the statement to allocate space for an object it goes into the data space. There really isn't much difference except the terms used and the fact that it's a bit more difficult to accidentally point the wrong data structure to code.

OK there are some extra bits and pieces such as inheritance but in regard to keeping instructions and data separate any decent OO implementation will do the same thing as your preferred non-OO system.

OO is really an extension to the way we did things for years and the real problem is that its inventors had to follow the industry standard and invent an entirely new vocabulary and make it into a religion, then add a dressing of hype. It took me years to see through that and when I did I realised it was just an improved version of the familiar.

Re: Lession lernt from HP

"Firefighting on the helldesk and being responsible for the new code at the same time just doesn't work"

I read nothing about "at the same time" in the OP.

Re: SW .EQ. intellectual exercise .NNE. Intelligent

"There's an unwarranted assumption that coders are somehow inherently superior 'intellectual creatures' "

Certainly not inherently. I can think of a few counter-examples.

"As they do this, their change failure rate is significantly lower than slower organisations [and] they recover from errors much more quickly."

Unless, of course, the slight error managed to corrupt the live data. Or allow a breach that's been exploited and you have to have a conversation with the ICO. Or something equally nasty.

What's a billion dollars between friends? Uber tosses match on mound of cash in first results since going public

Re: This:-

I read today that a French company is now undercutting Uber in London. That's another risk to the "drive out the competition" strategy. Assuming you succeed before you've burnt all your money someone comes along and does the same thing to you.

Re: This:-

"That means they will continue to lose money hand over fist until every other form of transportation including ALL public transport and ALL delivery and trucking companies have been driven to the wall."

That assumes they can get hold of enough money. If not it's they who go to the wall.

DigitalOcean drowned my startup! 'We lost everything, our servers, and one year of database backups' says biz boss

Re: Why were they locked out?

"That's not a customer service fail, that's an Ops fail. Do not fuck with production, especially other people's production."

That's probably not how the thinking works. Your production - that's what pays the wages. Other people's production - their problem.

The post-mortem should be interesting. If it's just "Our checks had a bug that did such and such instead of that and that. We've fixed it so it won't happen again." that's not very good. The real question is why it was even possible to implement something that would cut off a paying customer without intervention.

It goes back to the comment I made on the Martin Fowler article. It's all very well being a fast mover and fixing your errors so your quality improves quickly; when there's an error it can do substantial damage in the course of discovery.

"the potential brand damage to his cloud biz"

How about potential brand damage to cloud biz in general? It's another illustration of the dangers of relying on other people's computers. Irrespective of whether or not Raisup had their own backups they're still going to be off-line for some time until they're restored and tested elsewhere and their customers pointed to the new location. And all because of of an script run by a hosting co. The poor response might have been specific to DigitalOcean but the risk of a hoster's automated whim must surely be generic.

Facebook ordered to open internal docs for investors livid about losing cash following data slurp scandal

Re: A Joy to Behold

"To my untutored eye it looks more than somewhat foolish"

You know what they say about fools and money.

Sex and drugs and auto-tune: What motivates a millennial perp?

"There is a theory that when a business decision or government policy does not make any logical sense, it can be explained by money or sex. "

Never underestimate the absence of logical thinking combined with the power of ego.

Planes, fails and automobiles: Overseas callout saved by gentle thrust of server CD tray

"However, in this scenario an RGB LED that the administrator can set to a specific colour or blink might be very useful."

AFAICR Dynix servers could be set to blink an LED on individual HDD carriers. But that was so last century.

Re: airport security

Maybe they couldn't decide between trombone and tenor horn?

'Evolution of the PC ecosystem'? Microsoft's 'modern' OS reminds us of the Windows RT days

Re: Presented at build and only interesting to techies?

"Windows has extremely tight integration between programming languages and the operating system."

Extremely tight integration is just what Unixers don't want. It's what raised objections to systemd. You make Windows sound even worse that that although I've no doubt that the systemd authors are doing their best to catch up.

Re: hmmm...

"It would be nice to not come into my office one morning and find that the machine rebooted over night and only recovered half the files I forgot to save on my way out the night before."

1. Don't want the machine to reboot overnight. A machine should reboot when I tell it and only then. Power failure can get in the way. A truly seamless update wouldn't need a reboot, of course but that concept is clearly going to be beyond the grasp of anyone weaned on Windows. To be fair I don't have that on Linux as yet for kernel updates although it does exist at a price.

2. Shut down applications you're not using. The only scope for data loss would then be applications you're leaving to chew away on a big task and in that case, see 1. above.

Re: I'm OK with all this crap

"it will be ready and waiting for that installation media."

More likely it will do its best to stop you installing it.

Re: hmmm...

"I've read this 5 times now and i still dont know what the f%&k they're talking about."

I think it means that they haven't learned anything from their attempts to graft an interface designed for small screens with touch onto an OS designed for big screens, mice and keyboards.

I think their reply would be along the lines of "Who cares about finding out what people want? We're Microsoft, this is what we want."

Black Wednesday: DXC hosting services wonky for almost 8 hours after core switches go rogue

"the clients that are leaving because they are not being looked after!"

How dare they? Clients expecting something for their fees? How can DXC run a business if clients keep doing that?

Perhaps they should outsource it.

Amazon's optical character recognition toy Textract is here but still a bit short-sighted

Re: Many other products

"ABBYY reader and Adobe Acrobat"

ABBYY is Windows only. Acrobat, a long time since I looked at it but only Reader was available for Linux. If it ain't cross platform it don't count.

How does it compare with Tesseract ( https://github.com/tesseract-ocr ) or GOCR ( http://jocr.sourceforge.net/ )?

Apart, of course, from having to send all your stuff to somebody else's computer?

Let's Pope mass upgrade of Vatican Library data centre is blessed with some of that famed infallibility

Re: "digital copies won't survive the collapse of our technological civilisation."

Add in a few land transactions and marriage contracts.

In the living room, can Google Home hear you SCREAM? Well, that's what you'll need to do

Re: Poor helpless kid

'Hello - this is Microsoft technical support'

This is an example of AI never doing anything useful. A good AI would switch the call through to Lenny or the like and then turn the speaker on for your entertainment. A better AI would handle the call itself, learning from past experience with similar calls.

Re: Forgive me my anti-ludditism

"I can change radio channels when they go to vox pop Rees Mogg love-ins"

If they were that good they'd do it for you automatically.

“This is not we were promised with devops, continuous delivery"

However, it is what some of us expected you'd get.

Any means of increasing the complexity you can manage will eventually be overwhelmed by the complexity it increases.

How do you like dem Windows, Apple? July opening for Microsoft's first store in Blighty

"Microsoft's stores are often located close to Apple's glass fronted altars, whether by accident or design [I'd say definitely design – Ed]."

OTOH Regent Street's that bit more up market than Oxford St.

We ain't afraid of no 'ghost user': Infosec world tells GCHQ to GTFO over privacy-busting proposals

Re: Food Standards Agency...!?

I suppose it's on the basis that it would be rude not to let them in given that everyone else has been.

"Are GCHQ that dense? Yes, yes they are."

No they're not. They just hope they can get away with it anyway.

They'll brain-wash the Home Sec to let them do it. And heaven help us if the current Home Sec. in the HO gets into No 10. The current Home Sec in 10 has been bad enough but the current Home Sec. in the HO actually wrote an article in the times describing himself going through the process without even being aware of what he was actually describing.

Egg on North Face: Wikipedia furious after glamp-wear giant swaps article pics for sneaky ad shots – and even brags about it in a video

It's that word "The". Terribly confusing if you use it in a business name.

"The ad agency even bragged about it."

If you pull a stunt like that the only way to get away with it is to keep quiet. An ad agency is about the least likely body to achieve that. Good to see they receive sufficient opprobrium to spill over onto their client. I wonder if their other clients will notice. Who was it again? Leo Burnett Tailor Made.

I wonder if Leo Burnett Tailor Made will get themselves onto first page on Google with this report.

Apple's privacy schtick is just an act, say folks suing the iGiant: iTunes 'purchase histories sold' to data slurpers

Re: No

Caveat bozo. Deserves an upvote in itself.

Re: This could be interesting

"if a set of data wasn’t believed to be useful, there wouldn’t be a market to buy it"

FTFY

Remember what I keep telling you, the only thing the advertising industry sells is advertising and this sort of thing is one of their products. It doesn't actually have to be useful, they only have to get clients to believe it is, probably by telling them that all their competitors are already buying it.

That's a hell of Huawei to run a business, Chinese giant scolds FedEx after internal files routed via America

Re: Future precautions

How is a package shielded from GPS not shielded from cell towers?

Re: The Dark Game ....

Not blank pages. That would be a wasted opportunity.

Re: And that, ladies and gentlemen...

So use your dog's eyelash instead.

Re: And that, ladies and gentlemen...

No difference. Any hair has a root and that root has cells and those cells have DNA and all the DNA in all your hair root cells is alike (give or take the occasional somatic mutation).

Re: I will not attribute your post to malice, never.

"Besides, the route that looks weird might be faster and/or cheaper "

Cheaper but seldom faster.

Re: I will not attribute your post to malice, never.

Have you considered the possibility that this might be just such an operation. There's nothing to say they couldn't do that and make some publicity capital out of it.

Re: "Inadvertently misrouted." Wow, that's what I call a spectacular display of contempt.

It's possible this could be a Concordski type of operation on their part.

Truth, Justice, and the American Huawei: Chinese tech giant tries to convince US court ban is unconstitutional

"an unsubtle move"

The best way. Subtlety isn't going to get through.

IEEE tells contributors with links to Chinese corp: Don't let the door hit you on Huawei out

Re: Simple solution - fork

I wonder how long it will take for currently US tech businesses to come to the same conclusion and shift their HQs. Just use a US franchisee to conduct any sales there. ROTW is a big place compared to the US so cutting yourself off from it isn't going to be a good idea.

Re: Ho hum

"so there is no reasonable reason for international committees to head over to the Swiss"

I take it you mean no reasonable reason not to etc.

Upvoted on that assumption. Done the same thing myself...

Know the enemy and know yourself: Walmart's new chief techie spent 15 years in the Amazon

Noting his previous logistics background before joining Amazon (i.e. none) it explains a lot. Such as the customer being the only one to notice that a product had gone into a distribution point and never officially left let alone not having left on schedule. Or their system going into confusion if an order didn't get delivered to a locker, treating it as a return and sending a courier to pick up up the non-received item from the customer who hadn't received it without having any notion that sending out a replacement PDQ would be a good idea. Or including a locker over 200 miles away in the nearby location list.

Let's hope they appoint someone who'll take a look at the whole sorry mess.

Re: Factual error....

"Upset that they're not managed to offload it" would be closer.

War is over, if you want it: W3C, WHATWG agree to work towards single spec for HTML and DOM

Re: Why not save the planet at the same time?

A long time ago I worked for a branch of a business that printed out its own invoices & things. Then there was an instruction from on high that all this sort of thing must be printed by some behemoth printer in a corporate data centre with which we otherwise had nothing to do. The corporate data centre had its own ideas about what the data it was to receive looked like irrespective of whether it fitted out requirements.

Somewhat less long ago I worked for a business that received and transmitted data via EDI irrespective of whether what was needed was a good fit with EDI message formats. If there were good tools for parsing EDI messages I never found them.

A little later I worked on a couple of projects which used XML. XML came with all the tools to transform one schema into another or even into non-XML formats. We could have our own private schema and not duly worry about what the customers' schemata were, all we had to do was knock up new style-sheets to transform them into what we wanted. By comparison with what had gone before it was like having a big light switched on. So no, I won't support your comments about XML.

Re: Not a joke

"From memory, a typewriter was a sort of printer attached to a monkey."

The monkey might well have had the disposition of an angry gorilla.