Modern programming languages and IDE’s are so complex it’s enough to put a lot of people off ever learning to program - it seems such a massive learning curve. There’s something to be said for learning Basic then assembly on an 8-bit computer, where everything is so much sampler and direct. Writing a value to memory and seeing a blotch of pixels change on the screen gives such a direct understanding of what’s going on inside the machine. And if you only have 48k of memory, you can genuinely understand everything the computer is doing.

The moon phase cycle is 29.5 days. The reported bug cycle is 49 days. Yet somehow, “Not strictly the cycle of the moon but close”.

With that sort of logical analysis ability, no wonder this guy struggles with stupid bugs.

I used to enjoy programming as a hobby in my spare time, but in two years I’ve opened the IDE on my personal machine no more than twice.

This is why I have never taken on programming as a profession. I earn more than I would ever make as a developer (even a very senior developer) leveraging my (average) programming skills to produce a personal suite of software tools and scripts that means I can do my chosen profession better, faster and with less effort than any of my colleagues or competitors. I have also developed small apps on a private/ personal basis that I have then sold to my employer for wider use in the company.

And I still enjoy programming as a hobby as much as I ever have. Don’t underestimate how much being able to program at even an average level can boost a career in another field.

Being the second tenth best language at everything

FTFY

I first saw this joke back in the days of 8-bit home microcomputers. Of course then it only needed 256 lines of code, and took up about 8k of your precious, precious RAM.

It’s not evolution, it’s an extinction event.

That can’t be true, because it’s never to late for management to edict changes to a project, even just on a whim.

But if they don’t know they have to knock “shave and a haircut” first, your job gets a lot easier and you’re dealing with a lot fewer nuisance password promptings.

Very good explanation. And the benefits are even greater, because there is absolutely no response until the entire secret knock is correctly used, the random guy trying to get in doesn’t even know if there’s anyone at that address. (In fact, set up correctly, they won’t even know if there’s really a door there or not)

If you want to go down that path, a password is only security by obscurity.

Port knocking is an extra layer of security, and one that can stop attackers from ever knowing your private server even exists. A random scanner won’t even see any open ports.

Always bear in mind that any random guy advising people not to use port knocking may be doing it with malicious intent. I’m sure there’s someone out there advising that random passwords are a waste of time, and everyone should just use monkey123.

Ha. Never a truer summary of Google’s competence in anything other than spamming adverts at you.

Google never stood for anything other than making as much money as possible. Sergio Brin and Larry Page only coined the whole “Don’t be Evil” shtick to fool people into thinking they had more privacy with Google than with Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Neither were any kind of moralist.

One problem solved. Three problems created. SOP.

Program in assembly, 40 columns is plenty. You just need an awful lot of rows.

Switch the computer off. It’s the only way to be sure.