WTF/min

by Jonathan in IT on Saturday February 9, 2008 at 2334hours

The only valid measurement of code quality: WTF/min
[from http://www.osnews.com/comics]

You may laugh, but I’ve experienced my fair share of WTF/min over the past 4+ years of programming. And when fixing them involves lengthy check-in procedures (Internship) or having to refactor other parts of the code (FYP), the joke’s on the poor soul who ended up doing Q&A / Code Review.

The problem is, the programming modules I’ve come into contact with don’t place too much emphasis on writing ‘good code’, instead aiming for ‘working code’. While I suppose ‘working code’ is the prerequisite to ‘good code’, by instilling ‘good code’ practices to begin with, you automatically get ‘working code’. Granted the initial learning curve might be a little steep, but the advantage of training students who are able to produce code that, simply put, don’t result in many (or any hopefully) WTF/min is worth the effort.

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Compiler Complaint

by Jonathan in IT on Thursday January 17, 2008 at 0012hours

HAHAHA!

Ok, geek post. But in other news, Sun bought MySQL AB for $1 Billion. Cool.

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re-evaluating mailto: « a cup of ruby java

by Jonathan in IT on Saturday December 29, 2007 at 0116hours

Came across a post by a friend regarding the use of ‘mailto:’ links to trigger the sending of email a couple of days back. (See re-evaluating mailto: « a cup of ruby java)

However, with the popularity of Web based email services increasing, is the mailto: link starting to be deprecated? I am sure most of us have used GMail, Hotmail or Yahoo mail before. There is no way to click the mailto: link and have your web based mail automatically start composing mail for you. If it does, think of the security risk!

Actually, there is. If you’re using Firefox, (and trust me you should be using Firefox) one option is to use Better Gmail. That extension will compose a new mail in Gmail when you click on a ‘mailto:’ link, among a host of other Gmail-specific features. Alternatively, there’s a GreaseMonkey script that provides that functionality for Gmail, Google Apps for your Domain and Yahoo! Mail users. For those who use IE, there’s an inbuilt option to open your mail in Hotmail. Can’t advise beyond that as I’m not using IE. Go Google it or something. =D

Security wise, I don’t see what so dangerous about this. Even if the mailto: link contains malicious javascript statements, Cross Site Scripting (XSS) or otherwise, the text is not parsed by the browser but instead inserted into the relevant fields (as far as I know). Thus, there goes the possibility of XSS.

Besides, there are many email harvesting bots out there that looks out for mailto: links and adds it to their spam list. Even social sites like Facebook generates an Image with not alt text to display your email so that bots can’t harvest it (OCR is out of topic here).

True, but I hate Facebook’s auto-generated un-hyperlinked email address image due to the simple fact that if I actually want to send off an email to that person (that IS why we put up an email address in the first place right?), I’ll have to manually type in the full email address into the relevant field (be it in a mail or webmail client). I’ve been using Email Protector over on my Corporate Contact Us page (http://corporate.jonaize.com/contact.php), along with a few other pages with success thus far (i.e, no spam mail to those addresses). Its slightly more advanced then your average anti-spambot scripts and definitely worth checking out.

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Hacknot - User Is A Four Letter Word

by Jonathan in Attachment, Programming on Saturday December 1, 2007 at 2117hours

Hacknot - User Is A Four Letter Word

Interesting read for us Interns me thinks. Especially as to how a ‘user-focused’ approach impacts software development.

Perhaps the most common ploy of the passive aggressive user is procrastination. When asked to participate in interviews or submit to any demand on their time, the user offers only perfunctory compliance, complaining that they just can’t find the time to put in greater effort, given the demands of their existing duties. They know that if they demur frequently enough, you will probably stop assigning them tasks altogether.

My this situation sounds mighty familiar. Could be the reason my code’s been sitting in the pre production environment for more then a week, only to have the users tell me, on the very same day that I’m supposed to get the Requirements Document signed off no less, that there needs to be some amendments to the logic and documentation.

And no, this is not the first time such as happened. I’m ranting. I know. Sue me.

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SITEX 2007

by Jonathan in IT, JE on Saturday December 1, 2007 at 2105hours

Not too interesting I would say, managed to cover the whole show in under 2 hours. Got silicon skin cover for my keyboard and my extra-special 8gb Sandisk. Like finally!! (although the Sandisk didn’t come from me =D )

Heh.

But other then the thumbdrive there really was nothing interesting going on. It (thumbdrive) wasn’t even on discount or promotion). Sigh. What’s happening to the state of IT Shows in Singapore?

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