Taco Bell Programming (2010)
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As someone who has had to cleanup the messes of people who started with this and built many hundred line dense bash scripts... please do not do this.
> I made most of a SOAP server using static files and Apache's mod_rewrite. I could have done the whole thing Taco Bell style if I had only manned up and broken out sed, but I pussied out and wrote some Python.
I feel sad for whoever inherited this person's systems.
"Write code as if whoever inherits it is a psychopath with an axe who knows where you live" is something I heard pretty early on in life and it's been pretty useful.
$ echo 'test $(foo bar) test' | xargs echo
test $(foo bar) test
$ echo 'test $(foo bar) test' | xargs python -c 'print(len(__import__("sys").argv))'
5
Not to say yay xargs is always great, just that this specific counter example doesn't hold up.
Of course. But that's with any language that's many hundred lines of dense code.
His point is if something can be done simply with built-in proven tools, use them until you need something more.
Most experienced programmers know a little bash and enough UNIX commands to get by. This is enough to write a script that handles the happy path, but not enough to handle all error conditions correctly. There are all sorts of tricks you need to know that are commonly skipped. (Forgetting to use -print0 for example, and that's an easy one.) The resulting script is probably okay if you run it interactively and check the output but will blow up or silently do the wrong thing for unexpected input in production. To properly review a bash script for errors you need to be an expert.
By contrast, Go programmers with a few months of experience typically know all of Go.
The older tool is not necessarily better if it has lots of obscure sharp edges that most people don't learn.
Just like Excel "programs", shell scripts can be easily mined for requirements for a real program though.
No builtins were used in the example, just core utilities deployed the way they were designed.
Rewriting the wheel is completely bogus, doubly so when you ultimately make calls to those utilities, as is common when 'admins-cum-programmers' start getting their hands dirty with Python.
I was bit recently by some pretty boring search and replace functionality differing between sed on OSX and on Debian. Like, I would have had to pass a different argument to sed based on the version of sed (So I switched to Perl for the task). But this is certainly an insidious category of bug where you don't discover it until to try to run the script in another environment and then you're potentially stuck debugging the script from the top down.
I'm actually strongly in favor of scripts; but the web is eating everything. If it has to scale, put it on the web.
Not really. Just to give an example of things that new Go programmers don't know: what the limits of json serialization are, how introspection works, the funcitonality and limits of the "virtual inheritance", how the GC handles stuff like Go routines... There might be a selection bias though
I had an intern a couple years ago. Nice guy, but he didn't listen when we said "Keep this simple". We had all the data from an A/B test he ran, and we needed to do the analysis. He broke out MapReduce on EMR and all sorts of other complexity. It was a few MB of data!
After his analysis went pretty poorly, I wrote up a shell script in a few hours (sed, awk, xargs, woo) and got us the data we needed. I'd never ask someone to maintain that madness, but I was able to break it down into simple functions, piped into each other, in a single file.
I remember being younger, doing things the way I found "interesting" rather than the way I found practical. Eventually for a project or two you end up with basically nothing for all that complexity because you're focusing on the wrong things, and I learned to start putting functionality first.
http://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2010/10/taco-bell-progra...
I could have done the whole thing Taco Bell style if I had only manned up and broken out sed, but I pussied out and wrote some Python.
I know this article was written over 5 years ago, but I still feel the need to say: expressions like manned up and pussied out are a huge turn-off for me. Regardless of the ideas surrounding them or the author's programming skills, the author loses a good chunk of credibility in my eyes simply by using them. Sure, it's a stylistic choice, but it's one that I feel is actively harmful to our industry, especially for those who are new to software development or interesting in learning.
So if you're reading this and you're one of those new or interested people: please don't let this turn you off from discovering and learning tools like sed or Python. One is not inferior to the other—they are simply different tools that can be used for a wide range of different things. Don't be afraid of using the "wrong" tool for the job (because even experienced developers do this sometimes), just keep on learning new tools and adding them to your own tool belt. Share your work with others, and then when someone tells you you're using the "wrong" tool, ask them to explain why and to propose alternatives. Lather, rinse, repeat.
>if I had only manned up and broken out sed, but I pussied out and wrote some Python
Sounds to me like the author was speaking about being tough vs being weak. It doesn't sound like he was referring to women at all. I wonder if we asked the author if he would say he was talking about how weak women are? Cause I seriously doubt that.
I suspect the author wanted to sound a bit rude, though.
And here's where we are in strong disagreement.
You know exactly what the author meant. I know exactly what the author meant. We both know that the author did not intend to offend anyone, and being a blog post, was speaking the way he would to himself or to his friends.
However, the way that I see things, is that yourself, as well as others in this thread, want to make-believe that the meaning was somehow lost because the author didn't use words and phrases from the PC playbook. This is where I believe I our argument lies (and I think you'd agree). Just because you are offended, or you think someone else was offended, doesn't change what the author meant, and it hasn't prevented you from knowing what the author meant.
In my opinion, the use non-PC language is a very effective tool of weeding out people who aren't good listeners.
But in any case, I was just trying to clarify English usage for someone who sounded like they might actually be confused. So explaining the meaning of words (including whether they are "rude" or "PC" or not, for some audiences) was on-topic for the subthread (though not for the original discussion).
Your idea about being intentionally rude and seeing who ignores it is an odd strategy for a writer; that's one step away from trolling, which is usually done to derail conversations.
Example, from my father when I was a boy: "Son, sometimes you'll be in situations where you just need to man up and go through it alone. I won't be there, your Mother won't be there. It will be just you and any wisdom you may have."
I'm not personally offended. But still, if you knew Spanish and someone gave their product a name that was rude in a common dialect of Spanish, you'd tell them, right?
Especially when the language is changing, not everyone is going to know, and opinions about what's rude sometimes differ. It's still useful as a writer to know how different people interpret things.
Thank the stars society has someone like you to interpret someone else's words and translate to all languages censoring and removing all ambiguity.
-Hombre
If my interpretation was correct, I wonder if it's sort of a 'niggardly' situation, where people stop using a word because it sounds similar to something vulgar.
Like all words its meaning depends on what most people think it means. I'm not all that surprised that you never heard of it. Maybe I just had rude friends when I grew up.
I think they meant "manning up" signifies to act like a man, while "pussied out" is use in a derogatory fashion to signify acting like a woman (especially since the term "pussy" is often used to describe a vagina). I could be wrong, though.
However, even though I am a proponent of equality (and know quite a few developers who are women), I don't find those expressions offensive (neither do they). Also, I don't even find LGBT (I'm gay) derogatory terms offensive. Being offended is, in my opinion, always a choice.
With all this said, I do believe that such language doesn't belong here, because this type of behaviour likely has deterred some people from being more active in this industry (it's irrelevant if they're "overly sensitive" or if the author lacks decency/respect/politeness/tact/diplomacy/whatever).
What credibility is the author losing? Credibility as a programmer? Credibility as someone who can speak to you personally?
How are phrases like "manned up" or "pussied out" harmful to "our industry"? I guess I'm living under a rock, because I had no idea that we were destroying the future of programming by using words that aren't on your approved list.
Your post has absolutely nothing to do with the content, the author, or the author's intentions. It has everything to do with your own insecurities. I sincerely hope that your post was actually sarcastic and I've simply jumped to conclusions here.
I truly hate this zero-tolerance generation (my own generation), and I have never met a man I respected that didn't curse.
EDIT:
To even further help remove that big rock. Using those phrases shows a lack of tolerance for diversity, because they're willing to use phrases that other people, ala diversity (not you), find offensive.
This is _EXACTLY_ why we have conferences now enacting a code of conduct [0].
"Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion, technology choices, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention."
The phrases used above certainly fall within the provision above.
In the Northeast and much of the West coast, being tolerant is not saying a thing. In the Southeast, it's saying a thing with humor or empathy.
Example: my friend makes a joke with an African American friend in Atlanta referring to a stereotype in a humorous manner.
In the Southeast, that plays like "we both know our friendship is solid, and yes, some stereotypes we're both aware of are amusing."
In the Northeast? Surrounding people (not the friend in question, mind you), "How could you even refer to a stereotype out loud? That just shouldn't be done."
Call me crazy, but I subscribe to the Mel Brooks theory of laughing at a thing is the strongest form of rejection.
You can reject his language, but not his right to use it.
Failure to see that your words are offensive to some people is a direct result of failing to empathize with the listener.
You are saying that I shouldn't call myself a pussy, because other people might get offended. That I should empathize with the fact that other people might get offended when I call myself names.
> if I had only manned up and broken out sed, but I pussied out and wrote some Python
Are you really suggesting that any given person should watch how they talk to themselves, because other people might get offended by how they talk to themselves?
This is lunacy. Absolute lunacy.
Censorship on how we talk to others is a joke in its own right, but now (when one puts your statements in context with the material being discussed) you are suggesting that failure to censor how we talk to ourselves represents a lack of empathy with the people who are listening in on our thoughts.
Is it so necessary that I defend my right to talk to myself how I please, that I defend the author's right to talk to himself as he pleases, do you honestly fail to see the absolute ridiculousness of getting offended over someone's inner monologue.
A blog post is not talking to yourself.
> if I had only manned up and broken out sed, but I pussied out and wrote some Python
It's very frustrating when people try to take an argument out of its context.
Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10831106
That isn't about an inner monologue, and my reply is not out of context.
> I stopped being a stupid ni _ _ er and smartened up
any well adjusted person would be offended by that statement. Even though I was referring to myself.
Do you really shovel snow?
Faggot and gay are really fantastic examples because they have gone from everyday words to offensive slurs to useful emotional expressions all in the lifetime of many people who are alive today.
Are we going down the etymology route only so far as it fits your argument? Are we going down the etymology route only until someone gets offended? Because if I wanted to play that line of reasoning I would just say a faggot is a cigarette and to be gay means to be happy. Now we both know those words don't mean those things anymore. But are we both willing to admit that when I call someone a faggot or say something is gay I am in no way referring to boys who like boys?
How did gay go from a positive word to a negative one? Because along the way it was used to refer to homosexuals, and lots of people hated (and still hate) homosexuals and want to distance themselves from that, and so everything else people hate becomes gay. Gay doesn't go from positive to negative without the hatred for homosexuals. Same goes for a word that means a cig or a bundle of sticks to become an insult.
Do words randomly change meaning over time? Sure. Are a disproportionately large number of them that have referred to homosexuals now all being used as insults? Yes, because of homophobia, and the continued use of these words as synonyms for bad is disparaging.
1. What's the point of getting offended over etymology? I could argue that no offense should be taken because of what the word "really" means.
2. I'm willing to admit that a word really doesn't mean X anymore. Are you willing to admit that the same word doesn't mean Y anymore?
2b. The same argument. I'm willing to admit that a word doesn't mean X when certain people say it (think British vs American use). Are you willing to admit that the same word doesn't mean Y when I say it?
You've ignored my entire argument and forced me to restate it. Please address my points.
1. Ok, here is why it's offensive. Let's use an example. Alice says: "Dota 2 is gay." That sentence only makes sense today because gay means bad. But why does it mean bad? Because gay also means homosexual. So it implies homosexuals are bad. And it is offensive because it is continuing to reinforce the association of gays to all that is bad. That's how it got its meaning after all. Same goes for faggot. She calls Bob a faggot over Skype not because she thinks he is attracted to men, but because no one wants to be a faggot or associated with faggots. Same goes for queer and all the other words that mean homosexual and are now being used as insults. Using these words in these ways is disparaging to gays because it implies they are bad.
2. Not sure what you are getting at because gay still means X and Y. It still means homosexual and it now means bad. Faggot is still a homophobic slur and now a general purpose insult. This is the very problem.
2b. I acknowledge that words have multiple meanings. Gay has multiple meanings and this is actually essential to my arguments above.
It's both. If you understand that someone else will interpret a word in a certain way, and you choose to use that word, then you are responsible for them receiving that meaning from you - since it was what you expected them to understand from what you said.
If you don't actually know that other people will interpret words differently from the way you mean them, then you can't be responsible for misunderstanding until you get feedback and have a dialogue to figure out the different on understanding.
And of course it's fine to speak however you like with people who understand that you don't mean to offend them.
But you do know that people will understand certain of your words as offensive, so when you choose to use those words with people you know will be offended, you are intentionally offending them.
So yes, you actually are trying to offend people - you just don't care about it.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/dec/21/the-gay-wor...
Not at all. You can be tolerant and socialized with a particular vocabulary. Same old arguments from the same old SJWs.
I want to increase the diversity in the field of "computers". I do not dislike either phrase.
There's a huge difference between wanting more variety and political pandering. They're only tangentially related, in fact. I actually don't want to work with the kind of people who get really upset at vernacular.
Your comment has exactly the same effect on me that its content warns people about. I'm not interested in an industry where people engage in policing other people's tone and word choices in such a harsh way.
For every imaginary person you claim who might be turned off from the industry when reading such terms, there's some other imaginary person who feels more connected and enjoys the atmosphere better maybe because it seems more honest and less "professional".
Feeling offended, are we?
His words no more harmed you than the original article harmed the person you're replying to, and they certainly don't have the force of police backing them up.
We all have the right to express our opinions, and we all should have the expectation to be called on it when we say stupid shit (like "pussied out" or "manned up", which are sexist in a time where at least some of us would like for our industry to be more diverse and welcoming to new people, especially people who aren't especially common in our industry, like women). The article said some stupid shit, surrounded by lots of good advice. It's OK to call out the stupid shit.
Take your own advice: Don't be so sensitive.
So, of course, my first amendment rights mean I can say those kinds of things, without fear of police knocking down my door and dragging me off to a gulag. But, I don't want to say them, because it makes some people feel unwelcome in the conversation. Who do you believe I've made to feel unwelcome in saying that those phrases are stupid? (If the answer is, "People who enjoy saying shit that contributes to a culture of misogyny and sexism, with no one ever calling them on it." Then, I'm OK with it. It there's some other answer, I'd sincerely like to hear it.)
Like you, I don't mind making people feel unwelcome who really are unwelcome; unlike you, I consider people who derail technical discussions ostensibly to complain about perceived bias (but really to attract attention to themselves) to be unwelcome.
There, it’s no longer theoretical.
http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more-shell-less-egg...
The point of both of these posts is more that Unix style tools are extremely powerful and expressive, to the point that writing more involved code for most simple tasks (especially one-off tasks) frequently isn't worth the effort.
Complexity doesn't improve things, especially when it doesn't add value.
http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more-shell-less-egg/
Knuth's was 10 pages of (very tightly/well written/literately documented) Pascal.
McIlroy's was tweetable:
tr -cs A-Za-z '\n' |
tr A-Z a-z |
sort |
uniq -c |
sort -rn |
sed ${1}q
Still, there's something about this I think should strike any developer. It seems we talk about reuse & composability a lot more than we see it done this well, and when it is done this well it's not just elegant but kindof shocking.
(And I bet the astute FP programmers see some familiar lessons at work here...)
Some examples:
> I have far more faith in xargs than I do in Hadoop.
Me too, but those things are very far from comparable. You can only compare xargs to Hadoop only if you have a Hadoop cluster with one node and I'm really not sure why would anybody use Hadoop like that.
> I trust syslog to handle asynchronous message recording far more than I trust a message queue service.
You mean you trust the protocol that sends messages over UDP and can silently truncate or lose messages?
Standard Unix tools are nice and I always try to use them first, but for some tasks, they are just not the right tools.
Not only are Unix tools nice, they also change over time like all tools that are in heavy use...
The programmer enters the UNIX command sort -n numbers
Or... those hooves could be a couple horses. Use the standard low effort solution of stepping out of their way. Redirect the energy that would have been wasted into something actually useful.
I was once asked to create a pie chart of the number of lines of code my team wrote every week. I still haven't figured it out.
Pray you never do. This is the sort of pointless "metric" that is used by clueless management to withold a raise for the "underperforming" programmer who spends his time tracking down critical bugs with minimal code changes rather than producing volumes of new code.
Most (all) programmers I socialize with seem to get paid for results, not lines of code.
For some reason though, a few of them build things that are way more complex than they need to be for no better reason (as far as I can tell) that they like doing so.
If you're going to download millions of webpages, you'll instantly saturate your network io. yes you can split and rsync, but you'll lose proper error reporting, and ability to systematically retry, dynamic scaling, machine failure recovery, along many others that a properly designed system would provide you.
It often depends on what you require and expect from your solution.
It still complexity in the end, but you just have to factor it all in - I bet you that 90% of those "big data" problems can fit in a small server's RAM. Most of the time is just people making shit up, so they'll have a job.
Another problem you'll hit is how to make sure that the machines are saturated. How many jobs should be running at the current time depends on what's being downloaded and how much room you have to run additional downloads.
Again, it all depends on what you need from the system and how much leeway you have.
https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/wget.html#Time_002d...
Generally, yes, there is some point at which wget would fall short of a purpose built tool. I think that point, though, is farther out than you're suggesting.
It doesn't keep the crawler state (which links have been visited, which links are discovered but not yet visited) persistently.
(You made it this specific by picking this particular example; my more general observation is that this is a common thing in command line/shell script constructs. They remain simple only until you start to care about such things.)
It does though. Just not in the way you're expecting.
The timestamp support would keep it from re-downloading anything already downloaded (though it would do an HTTP head for the comparison).
Or, it also has a "no-clobber" feature that would keep it from even trying to download.
Yes, both approaches are more limited than a specific state datastore, but there is state.