Working in Development: Leaving sounds like a great decision.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Working in Development: Leaving sounds like a great decision.

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CPColin: Sep 9, 2003; Big ol' smile.

Cancelbot posted:

I completely agree. There's just years of institutional crap I need to clean up where people just hop onto production SQL for "quick fixes".

Thinking about this and the strategy of putting data-access logic in stored procedures so it can be changed without doing a new deploy of the code made me decide what my counter will be, the next time somebody advocates that strategy at me: "What's wrong with our deploy process that makes us so reluctant to go through it? And what can we do to fix that?"

Part of my motivation here is that I just added some fallback behavior for the code that handles the application configuration, which I was instructed to update to match what the team currently wants to do: store the configuration in a shared location, instead of in App.config. A noble effort! Get all those connection strings and server names into one place, so we can change them all at once. What's the central location, you ask? A database, of course! Where does the connection string for that database go? In App.config, duh!

Nailed it.

# ? Dec 4, 2017 23:50

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# ? May 9, 2024 22:27

Virigoth: Apr 28, 2009; Corona rules everything around me
C.R.E.A.M. get the virus
In the ICU y'all......

Clanpot Shake posted:

Doing my first ever production deploy tonight which entails changing the primary and foreign keys on ~100 million rows and changing the application services to use the new thing. Fingers crossed.

What happens if it stops at 43% changed? Asking for a friend.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 00:41

Clanpot Shake: Aug 10, 2006; shake shake!

Virigoth posted:

What happens if it stops at 43% changed? Asking for a friend.

We restore the database to the backup we took before we started.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 00:46

The Fool: Oct 16, 2003

I hope you test that backup

# ? Dec 5, 2017 00:52

Ither: Jan 30, 2010

When do you guys feel that method chaining gets excessive?

Like the following is fine

code:

foo.getBar().getBuzz()

But this makes my eye twitch

code:

foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().getStudent()

And this makes me want to scream

code:

foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().getStudent()
foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().getTeacher()
foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().setLocation(location)

It looks awful and its a pain to debug.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 01:19

freeasinbeer: Mar 26, 2015; by Fluffdaddy

Clanpot Shake posted:

We restore the database to the backup we took before we started.

Edit nvm.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 01:22

vonnegutt: Aug 7, 2006; Hobocamp.

Ither posted:

code:

foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().getStudent()
foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().getTeacher()
foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().setLocation(location)

It looks awful and its a pain to debug.

Each of those chained methods should return a unique error if it fails. If that's the case I see no problem with chaining.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 01:33

CPColin: Sep 9, 2003; Big ol' smile.

Knowing Java, they're all going to be NullPointerExceptions!

# ? Dec 5, 2017 01:41

freeasinbeer: Mar 26, 2015; by Fluffdaddy

The Fool posted:

I hope you test that backup

I bet it�s the cloud, so it�s probably fine.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 01:46

Clanpot Shake: Aug 10, 2006; shake shake!

Punkbob posted:

I bet it�s the cloud, so it�s probably fine.

It's okay, it is the cloud.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 01:50

MrMoo: Sep 14, 2000

CPColin posted:

Knowing Java, they're all going to be NullPointerExceptions!

The excellent developers at Reuters do this, or an exception with the error code embedded somewhere in a text string of dubious usefulness. Frequently the errors are reported asynchronously in a log file and the execution path silently craps out :350:

# ? Dec 5, 2017 01:52

Virigoth: Apr 28, 2009; Corona rules everything around me
C.R.E.A.M. get the virus
In the ICU y'all......

Clanpot Shake posted:

It's okay, it is the cloud.

Since you said this is your first prod deploy here are some things to think about :
Is your Ops guy going to be on the call with you during the work window if it goes sideways? It'd be good to get your infra/ops side of the house involved if you can.
Do you have a backup DB up and running that you can fail back to and keep your outage window smaller so you don't gently caress up your SLA and have a smaller mean time to repair if it does go pear shaped?
Double check your commands you have pre-typed out for the change you copied from your test run (you do have them all prepped right?) for typos and duplicates. You don't want to be like the AWS S3 guy who had a typo and took down half the internet.
Have your form of drug/booze nearby for when it's complete so you can celebrate accordingly.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 01:55

Clanpot Shake: Aug 10, 2006; shake shake!

Virigoth posted:

Since you said this is your first prod deploy here are some things to think about :
Is your Ops guy going to be on the call with you during the work window if it goes sideways? It'd be good to get your infra/ops side of the house involved if you can.
Do you have a backup DB up and running that you can fail back to and keep your outage window smaller so you don't gently caress up your SLA and have a smaller mean time to repair if it does go pear shaped?
Double check your commands you have pre-typed out for the change you copied from your test run (you do have them all prepped right?) for typos and duplicates. You don't want to be like the AWS S3 guy who had a typo and took down half the internet.
Have your form of drug/booze nearby for when it's complete so you can celebrate accordingly.

I'm actually not flying solo on this, which is nice, I just authored all of it. We've tested the migration and restore repeatedly in lower environments so I'm pretty confident it will work either way. It's also nothing nearly important as S3 as our site only really needs to be up during continental US hours. But yes I have everything written in a text file.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 02:02

Che Delilas: Nov 23, 2009; FREE TIBET WEED

MrMoo posted:

The excellent developers at Reuters do this, or an exception with the error code embedded somewhere in a text string of dubious usefulness. Frequently the errors are reported asynchronously in a log file and the execution path silently craps out

My company's product uses this classic pattern:

1) Every function implementation is wrapped in a top-level try-catch
2) Every problem, error, and non-success state throws an exception
3) The catch block from (1) logs the error to a single giant database table
4) The catch block re-throws the exception (or throws a brand new, different exception, and no there's no rules for this)

I hate this to an irrational degree, I think. I'm not a fan of using exceptions for non-exceptional behavior. I know this is debatable, but my view of an exception is that it should be use for exceptional circumstances. A user entering a special character that the system can't handle, a request timeout, things like that. "Invalid password" is not exception-worthy in my book.

The real problem in this code is probably the fact that very often, an error will get transformed so much by the time it reaches somebody's eyes that it's likely to be misleading or outright incorrect. When your errors are exceptions that get re-thrown, every catch block up the chain is an opportunity to lose data.

Typing this out, maybe it's not a bad pattern in and of itself. Maybe the problem is just that our code is the wild west and there's no consistency or guidelines on how to user or handle exceptions. Anybody agree or disagree with any of this?

Che Delilas fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Dec 5, 2017

# ? Dec 5, 2017 02:31

DELETE CASCADE: Oct 25, 2017; i haven't washed my penis since i jerked it to a phtotograph of george w. bush in 2003

Virigoth posted:

What happens if it stops at 43% changed? Asking for a friend.

you type "rollback" instead of "commit"

# ? Dec 5, 2017 02:51

Clanpot Shake: Aug 10, 2006; shake shake!

DELETE CASCADE posted:

you type "rollback" instead of "commit"

We're running everything outside of a transaction because the overhead of a transaction makes it too slow. :toot:

# ? Dec 5, 2017 03:56

Rocko Bonaparte: Mar 12, 2002; Every day is Friday!

CPColin posted:

Knowing Java, they're all going to be NullPointerExceptions!

I had to think about that for a minute because some languages are a bit better about chains like that than others. I think Python would tell you it couldn't find the getFizz() method for NoneType, which would take you right to getBuzz() returning null. I wanted to think C# did something similar but I think I was crossing the signals in my head there.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 06:43

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Objective C and some others just don't execute function calls on nil objects, which I found to be one nice aspect of the language. So, foo.getFoo().getBar().getBaz().doThing() will just do nothing past getBar if getBar returns nil.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 06:54

Rocko Bonaparte: Mar 12, 2002; Every day is Friday!

Volmarias posted:

Objective C and some others just don't execute function calls on nil objects, which I found to be one nice aspect of the language. So, foo.getFoo().getBar().getBaz().doThing() will just do nothing past getBar if getBar returns nil.

Seems like that trades one problem for another. Instead of ambiguous pants-making GBS threads on that line of code, you get ambiguous pants-making GBS threads later based on the assumption a thing was done that wasn't.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 08:16

leper khan: Dec 28, 2010; Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

Rocko Bonaparte posted:

Seems like that trades one problem for another. Instead of ambiguous pants-making GBS threads on that line of code, you get ambiguous pants-making GBS threads later based on the assumption a thing was done that wasn't.

At least it won�t surface those pants to the user though.

Modern C# has the ?. operator which does basically the same thing. It�s good, and hopefully soon I�ll be able to use it.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 11:06

pigdog: Apr 23, 2004; by Smythe

Ither posted:

When do you guys feel that method chaining gets excessive?

Like the following is fine
code:
foo.getBar().getBuzz()
But this makes my eye twitch
code:
foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().getStudent()
And this makes me want to scream
code:
foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().getStudent()
foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().getTeacher()
foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().setLocation(location)
It looks awful and its a pain to debug.

Law of Demeter. Does foo.getStudent() or at least foo.getFizz() make any logical sense? If so, add the chain behind it.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 11:22

ChickenWing: Jul 22, 2010

CPColin posted:

Knowing Java, they're all going to be NullPointerExceptions!

Methods chained that far trigger me because there is no way in hell one of those isn't going to be null on purpose at some point. Plus that's not meeting the java standard for verbosity, it should be more like

code:

if(null == foo) {
  log.error("no foo");
  throw new NoFooException("no foo");
}
Bar bar = foo.getBar();
// check bar for null value and throw exception if it is not present
if(null == bar) {
  log.error("Foo was missing a value for bar, which was required")
  throw new MissingRequiredBarInObjectShouldNotBeNullException("Foo must always have a bar object otherwise it violates null safety checks, see Confluence page [url]https://confluence.contoso.com/null-safe-foo-bar-checks[/url]");
}
Buzz buzz = bar.getBuzz();
if(bar == null) {
  throw new RuntimeException();
}
Student student = buzz.getStudent();

(naturally each of these null checks was written by a different person when testers triggered the relevant NPE)

# ? Dec 5, 2017 13:18

geeves: Sep 16, 2004

Ither posted:

When do you guys feel that method chaining gets excessive?

Like the following is fine
code:
foo.getBar().getBuzz()
But this makes my eye twitch
code:
foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().getStudent()
And this makes me want to scream
code:
foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().getStudent()
foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().getTeacher()
foo.getBar().getBuzz().getFizz().setLocation(location)
It looks awful and its a pain to debug.

It is and in bad hibernate setups - of which there are many - it�s mapped object hell just like this.

When we finally moved to gradle, we started getting a handful of NPEs right in the middle of a chain that never showed up before.

Instead of fixing the 20 or so odd places, it was decided that we just wouldn�t move that app to gradle. :psyduck:

# ? Dec 5, 2017 15:19

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

geeves posted:

It is and in bad hibernate setups - of which there are many - it�s mapped object hell just like this.

When we finally moved to gradle, we started getting a handful of NPEs right in the middle of a chain that never showed up before.

Instead of fixing the 20 or so odd places, it was decided that we just wouldn�t move that app to gradle.

Wtf? Was there some combo of dependency hell that did this to non pinned versions? Or what?

# ? Dec 5, 2017 15:20

CPColin: Sep 9, 2003; Big ol' smile.

I look forward to the next time I newly encounter a Java codebase and get to start all over again with adding @NonNull and @Nullable everywhere!

# ? Dec 5, 2017 16:08

Taffer: Oct 15, 2010

All you people whining about Java need to jump on the kotlin train :colbert:

# ? Dec 5, 2017 16:24

CPColin: Sep 9, 2003; Big ol' smile.

Rule of thumb: avoid programming languages that brag on their home page about not needing semicolons.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 16:29

Sagacity: May 2, 2003; Hopefully my epitaph will be funnier than my custom title.

CPColin posted:

Rule of thumb: avoid programming languages that brag on their home page about not needing semicolons.

Yes, I've also never understood why semicolons are so terribly bad. It reminds me of the insanity regarding the automatic semicolon insertion in Javascript.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 16:59

lifg: Dec 4, 2000; <this tag left blank>; Muldoon

You guys ever do that thing where you spend hours coming up with an extremely efficient algorithm for your data structure, only to learn that you�ll never have more than a couple dozen pieces of data, and the ugliest algorithm in the world would execute in approximately the same time?

That happens to me a lot.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 20:36

Bongo Bill: Jan 17, 2012

Some habits that can help protect against that:

Either know or ask the order of magnitude of the size of the data set
Start with whatever algorithm is simplest to implement at the time, and only improve it if and when your instrumentation reveals that its poor performance is a problem
Call it practice for your next job

# ? Dec 5, 2017 20:40

Rocko Bonaparte: Mar 12, 2002; Every day is Friday!

Yeah always write the shittier version first if that can be done cleaner. You can use it as a testbench against the optimized version.

Rocko Bonaparte fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Dec 5, 2017

# ? Dec 5, 2017 20:54

ChickenWing: Jul 22, 2010

I was told to, as a rule, never pre-optimize. Especially in my line of work (fintech lol :suicide:

) the payoff is rarely worth the effort.

That doesn't always stop me though :sun:

sometimes it's super nice to spend 45 mins thinking and come up with an O(n) solution to someone else's triple nested loop

# ? Dec 5, 2017 21:14

spiritual bypass: Feb 19, 2008; Grimey Drawer

Why would you ever rob yourself of the opportunity to write total garbage the first time and then come back and say "look how much I improved this bad legacy code"

# ? Dec 5, 2017 21:19

lifg: Dec 4, 2000; <this tag left blank>; Muldoon

I spent so long in college learning about time v space trade-offs in programming, but software development is all about development speed v correctness of new features. This little fact is something that didn�t really sink in until just recently when I read the Google SRE book.

Do other professions have this weird chasm between school and work? Is this like how lawyers (according to My Cousin Vinny) learn theory in school, and expect their firms to train them in practice?

# ? Dec 5, 2017 21:49

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

lifg posted:

I spent so long in college learning about time v space trade-offs in programming, but software development is all about development speed v correctness of new features. This little fact is something that didn�t really sink in until just recently when I read the Google SRE book.

Do other professions have this weird chasm between school and work? Is this like how lawyers (according to My Cousin Vinny) learn theory in school, and expect their firms to train them in practice?

Medicine? Especially if you�re an NP.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 22:14

comedyblissoption: Mar 15, 2006

lifg posted:

I spent so long in college learning about time v space trade-offs in programming, but software development is all about development speed v correctness of new features. This little fact is something that didn�t really sink in until just recently when I read the Google SRE book.

Do other professions have this weird chasm between school and work? Is this like how lawyers (according to My Cousin Vinny) learn theory in school, and expect their firms to train them in practice?

Learning about data structures and time vs space trade-offs improves your development speed and correctness. You'll know immediately why you should use a stdlib dictionary instead of a nested for loop of huge time complexity and spend 1 second thinking about it and move on.

# ? Dec 5, 2017 22:24

streetlamp: May 7, 2007; Danny likes his party hat
He does not like his banana hat

lifg posted:

Do other professions have this weird chasm between school and work? Is this like how lawyers (according to My Cousin Vinny) learn theory in school, and expect their firms to train them in practice?

I have a BFA in graphic design and it varies a lot from school to school but yeah classes were very much theory based with the expectation that internships and entry junior designer roles would fill out the practical side of things

# ? Dec 6, 2017 01:03

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

lifg posted:

I spent so long in college learning about time v space trade-offs in programming, but software development is all about development speed v correctness of new features. This little fact is something that didn�t really sink in until just recently when I read the Google SRE book.

Do other professions have this weird chasm between school and work? Is this like how lawyers (according to My Cousin Vinny) learn theory in school, and expect their firms to train them in practice?

Yes. Think particularly historical (Pre-1990) white collar jobs. You get your degree from school to show you can learn poo poo and then you get trained by the company you spend the next 40 years working for. The fact that you have a degree in Anthropology is meaningless to be a manager of widget makers.

# ? Dec 6, 2017 01:14

geeves: Sep 16, 2004

Hughlander posted:

Wtf? Was there some combo of dependency hell that did this to non pinned versions? Or what?

That�s what I track down when I have time or have to when we have to upgrade struts.

Just discovered that struts2-convention has been included that conflicts a lot with asm. I don�t know how I�ve missed it before but we don�t use it at all yet it�s been in our code for years.

so I�m hoping this takes care of this issue that decided to show up when we switched from maven to gradle over the last week. I should know tomorrow morning

# ? Dec 6, 2017 03:02

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# ? May 9, 2024 22:27

geeves: Sep 16, 2004

^^^^ Didn't meant to DP, but yep a dependency conflict that only appears with certain java versions and tomcat 8 was asm and struts.

The aha moment was working on something different and updating from struts 2.3.34 to 2.5.14 in the coming weeks - catalina.out basically exploded on start up which made it much easier to track down.

Taffer posted:

All you people whining about Java need to jump on the kotlin train

Our new API is written in Kotlin :dance:

geeves fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Dec 6, 2017

# ? Dec 6, 2017 16:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Working in Development: Leaving sounds like a great decision.

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