In which I try to think of interesting things to mention, mainly to create a break in the constant posting of articles about videogames.
Some new terms
I recently came up with a couple of new terms to help me navigate the modern world of web development. Feel free to use at your own discretion.
- Fragile (adjective). Fake agile development. A situation where agile development is claimed to be in use by people who do not understand it. "Oh yes, we're an agile organisation - we have standups every morning".
- Fool stack developer (noun). A developer who claims to be an expert in both frontend and backend technologies (full stack) but actually is good at one but only marginally proficient at the other. "I trained as a Python dev, but HTML is basically just DIVs and paragraphs, right?"
A quick rant
I was registering an account with a website recently and after typing in my details and submitting the form an error message appeared: "your password is too long". Specifically, I had chosen a 33 character password, and the limit was 32.
My first reaction was annoyance at the apparent nonsense of such a limit (although I've seen lower). But after a bit of reading around the subject, I'm... well, still annoyed. Turns out there are lots of reasons why passwords might have a maximum length (maximum size of database fields, for example), but none of them are security reasons.
Dear the internet, you're doing it wrong.
Working in the office
I've been making more of an effort to go into the office recently, partly because my role has changed slightly and partly because my home wifi has been a bit patchy of late. A few weeks ago I managed to have a day that perfectly summed up all the reasons to both work at the office and work from home.
Firstly, the reasons to work in the office. I had a nice commute in, plenty of space on the train, good weather for cycling. My team had several meetings planned (including lunch) and there were plenty of other people I knew in that day that I was able to speak to and catch up with. And our office is fairly nice - although it feels increasingly like every available inch of space is being converted into some kind of meeting room, but we do need them.
A few things didn't work out quite so well. I was unable to join my team for lunch as planned (because good reasons) and ended up grabbing a quick sandwich at my desk while I worked. Towards the end of the day I became embroiled in an interesting technical bug and wasn't watching the time, which meant I missed my intended train home.
That in itself wasn't so bad, except when I arrived at the station to catch the next one I discovered that all the trains were either delayed or cancelled due to an incident on the line. When I finally managed to catch a train it had at least double the normal number of people on board and ran far slower than normal - meaning that my journey home took nearly three hours, and I had to stand for a good portion of that. And it was one of the hottest days of the year so far.
So... not great. The next morning I reflected on another reason I like working from home - however comfortable and modern an office is, it just can't compare to the familiar comfort of my regular home setup. In the office I always feel like I'm sitting at someone else's desk, no matter how much I adjust the chair or rearrange the monitor.
Some more puns
I've been having another season of trying to think of puns. This first one has almost certainly already been done, but I'm fairly proud of the second (although it works better when spoken).
- My Dad hadn't seen the result of the Grand Prix. I told him all the cars have a flat bit of metal across the back. Was that a spoiler?
- Apple have made a new device targeted at lumberjacks, but they've made it really ugly, it's kind of an i-saw.