I’ve also never seen any piece of software that would treat a single leading zero as octal
I thought JavaScript did that, but it turns out it doesn’t. I thought Java did that, but it turns out it doesn’t. Python did it until version 2.7: https://docs.python.org/2.7/library/functions.html#int. C still does it: https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/string/byte/strtol
I’m not sure if you’re getting it, so I’ll explain just in case.
In computer science a few conventions have emerged on how numbers should be interpreted, depending on how they start:
0b, so 0b10011100, so 01160x, so 0x8EIf your zip code starts with 9, it won’t be interpreted as octal. You’re fine.
they also pay 3000$/mo for a moldy apartment
the rule is flagging a false negative
false positive?
Yes, I know the field isn’t nullable in the database. I’m asking you what you are sending me, jack——
(Directed at a colleague)
Somehow I can tell that this story didn’t go down in the US.
I wouldn’t have thought that content suitable for talesfromtechsupport would be acceptable here. As the description says,
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
Customer support is not usually related to programming.
Hell, no. If I wanted to save bytes, I’d use a binary format, or just fucking zip the JSON. Looking at a request-response pair and quickly understanding the transferred data is invaluable.
I’m sad that there are people who call themselves developers who need to be told this.
I refuse to validate data that comes from the backend I specifically develop against.
Or even funnier: It gets parsed in octal, which does yield a valid zip code. Good luck finding that.
For those who don’t know:
Speaking at a software conference in 2009, Tony Hoare hyperbolically apologized for “inventing” the null reference:[26] [27]
I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965. At that time, I was designing the first comprehensive type system for references in an object oriented language (ALGOL W). My goal was to ensure that all use of references should be absolutely safe, with checking performed automatically by the compiler. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years.
Hey, IT, I imported this data set twice, and now there are a lot of duplicates. Is there something wrong with the tool?
– Yes, that happened.
Sure, Java can tell the difference. But that doesn’t mean that the guy writing the API cares whether or not he adds a key to the dictionary before yeeting it to the client.
In my experience it’s the other way around.
Speaking of rate limits: Github recently blocked me because I went over a ‘secondary rate limit’ by visiting the site for the first time in a month. Has anybody experienced this?
To anyone thinking, “We surived one term of Trump. How bad can another one be?”
Very bad, as John Oliver points out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYwqpx6lp_s
On average, we respond solely to voice pitch, tonality, body language and facial expressions, like a still developing toddler…
You wouldn’t believe how close you are.
[…Researches] recruited 684 Swiss students and asked them to rate pairs of politicians who had run against each other in the 2002 French parliamentary elections. Based solely on black-and-white photos of the candidates, they had to say who was more competent and by what degree. There were 57 pairs in all, and each volunteer rated just one.
They found that the students’ competence judgments predicted the actual winners of the run-offs with a 72% accuracy.
[A] group of children would be able to predict the outcome of elections in another country, based only on photos of the candidates […] is exactly what a recent study in the journal Science has found.
Swiss children as young as five years can predict which candidates are more likely to win French parliamentary elections.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-look-of-a-winner/
The children were just as good at predicting election results as the grown-ups were;
(first article again)
Yay, a likeminded person!
For Microsoft I fully understand that they’d rather have a subscription model for Windows. After all you’re getting updates every fortnight and critical patches ASAP. I wonder they let you buy their shit for so long.
Just in case someone brings it up—and someone will bring it up regardless—: I’m not defending their recent enshittification and “always online” mindset.
Node doesn’t.
> parseInt('077') 77https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/parseInt