Kicking the Can Down the Road
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I once had a boss that was hemming and hawing about a decision. Finally, after I got tired of waiting, I asked, "well, why not?" Since no good reason could be found I was given the OK. Maybe you should take that approach - "Why not?"
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
The main problem is that nobody wants to take on the task of implementing it in the apps they're responsible for. We have four devs on one (web) app, and the remaining six devs split their time among the other 11 apps. I am the lead on the team of four. My team is ready to jump on it, the other guys, not so much, because it means they'd have to actually do some work. The prospect of testing is what turns them off the most, I think, because implementation seems dead easy. In short, despite the need, nobody wants to put in the time. I think another problem is that they feel like I'm making them look bad by taking initiative where they wouldn't. I had a friend way back in the 70's that was in the Marines, who liked to say, "In the absence of other orders, attack." That's how I do it.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
If I was tasked with actually implementing a given piece of code, the commenting wouldn't be nearly as heavy as it is in this case. I'd put in intellisense for method/property prototypes and mostly leave it at that, and maybe a sufficiently descriptive narrative comment at the top of the file if the code task involves creating a moderately complex class. This particular code is unique, because it wasn't tasked, or even outright requested. I did it because there was a perceived need (truthfully, I identified the need three years ago), and I like to solve problems with code. I know the kinds of questions the other devs on the team will ask, and I hate having to re-explain stuff verbally, so what/why comments serve that role, and in this case, I actually had to back-up my thought processes. I'm not actually offended, I'm just old and set in my ways. BTW, I also tend to "over-comment" code I write for CP articles. In my most recent one, I actually included the recommended implementation of an interface as a comment block because people using the code may not recall where they got it, and it's nice to have info when you're re-implementing it blind and with no backward reference material.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013I'm glad I didn't offend you. I am not trying to change the way you do things, so much as understand them - even poke at them here and there to see if they bite. :laugh:
Real programmers use butterflies
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The main problem is that nobody wants to take on the task of implementing it in the apps they're responsible for. We have four devs on one (web) app, and the remaining six devs split their time among the other 11 apps. I am the lead on the team of four. My team is ready to jump on it, the other guys, not so much, because it means they'd have to actually do some work. The prospect of testing is what turns them off the most, I think, because implementation seems dead easy. In short, despite the need, nobody wants to put in the time. I think another problem is that they feel like I'm making them look bad by taking initiative where they wouldn't. I had a friend way back in the 70's that was in the Marines, who liked to say, "In the absence of other orders, attack." That's how I do it.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013Yes, I can see that being a problem. I am the same way - I seem to be much more proactive than others. I think it's mostly because I prefer to address issues before they become problems because there seems to always be enough problems to deal with.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Every time it's requested. :)
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
Wow, making it general enough for public consumption is going to take some work. We have considerations not normally encountered in the civilian ecosystem, and I have to make the code easy to implement in a way that makes sense to devs that have never been exposed to it before.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
I would like to see how you do this
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
The connectionstring when "at rest" is not assembled into a string. It merely exists in its component parts. When you call the "Get" method to retrieve the connection string, it assembles the parts into a connection string, and either base64 encodes it, or 256-bit encrypts it (programmer's choice) and returns that encoded/encrypted string. When you're ready to access the database, you simply decode/decrypt it when you send it to the SqlConnection object. (We don't use Entity Framework or any other ORM, so this approach is no problem). Any using base64/encryption is optional as well, you can have it return a string as plain text as well.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
I work for the government in the UK ( at local level ) so it definitely is of interest
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
While staring at the code trying to come up with a way to describe how it works, I actually came up with what I think is a better way to approach some of it, so code introspection is a "good thing" (TM). :)
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
If I was tasked with actually implementing a given piece of code, the commenting wouldn't be nearly as heavy as it is in this case. I'd put in intellisense for method/property prototypes and mostly leave it at that, and maybe a sufficiently descriptive narrative comment at the top of the file if the code task involves creating a moderately complex class. This particular code is unique, because it wasn't tasked, or even outright requested. I did it because there was a perceived need (truthfully, I identified the need three years ago), and I like to solve problems with code. I know the kinds of questions the other devs on the team will ask, and I hate having to re-explain stuff verbally, so what/why comments serve that role, and in this case, I actually had to back-up my thought processes. I'm not actually offended, I'm just old and set in my ways. BTW, I also tend to "over-comment" code I write for CP articles. In my most recent one, I actually included the recommended implementation of an interface as a comment block because people using the code may not recall where they got it, and it's nice to have info when you're re-implementing it blind and with no backward reference material.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013Comments are necessary for one simple reason, "I don't know what you are thinking when you wrote or changed this code". Documentation is removed from the code does not live with the code and can and will be lost. I don't know how many times I have heard, "We don't know what happened to the docs". Still don't think comments are needed? Ok then try this exercise. Write some code to solve a problem you have today. Ok now put the code away and don't look at it for 6 weeks. In 6 weeks go back to the code and make a change, fix a bug do something to it. Time how long it takes you to 'remember' how the code works and what you need to do to make the fix. Still not convinced? Perform the same process, but this time put comment headers in explaining what you were thinking when you wrote the code. Put the code away for 6 weeks and then perform the same test again only this time with the comments. Don't have time for all this process? What to jump to the result? In the first case, it will take you a fair amount of time reading and trying to remember what you were trying to do and how something worked. In the second case, you will find that you can make the update and or fix it in less than a few minutes. Now put yourself in someone else's shoes. If you went through this with your code and you wrote that code imagine how the next developer to pick up your code will feel? Ever wonder why the next devs end up throwing out, refactoring, or reworking lots of code? Guess what it's not as self-documenting as you want to think. I learned this lesson back in the assembler days. I wrote a one-off tool to solve the problem I had at the time. A week later (yes only 1 week) I needed the code again to solve the same problem, but it did not work on this 'slightly' different set of data. No problem I thought, I'll just fix the bug. Two hours later I was finally starting to understand how the tool was supposed to work and where the problems were. That was the last time I ever wrote code that did not have comments.
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Comments are necessary for one simple reason, "I don't know what you are thinking when you wrote or changed this code". Documentation is removed from the code does not live with the code and can and will be lost. I don't know how many times I have heard, "We don't know what happened to the docs". Still don't think comments are needed? Ok then try this exercise. Write some code to solve a problem you have today. Ok now put the code away and don't look at it for 6 weeks. In 6 weeks go back to the code and make a change, fix a bug do something to it. Time how long it takes you to 'remember' how the code works and what you need to do to make the fix. Still not convinced? Perform the same process, but this time put comment headers in explaining what you were thinking when you wrote the code. Put the code away for 6 weeks and then perform the same test again only this time with the comments. Don't have time for all this process? What to jump to the result? In the first case, it will take you a fair amount of time reading and trying to remember what you were trying to do and how something worked. In the second case, you will find that you can make the update and or fix it in less than a few minutes. Now put yourself in someone else's shoes. If you went through this with your code and you wrote that code imagine how the next developer to pick up your code will feel? Ever wonder why the next devs end up throwing out, refactoring, or reworking lots of code? Guess what it's not as self-documenting as you want to think. I learned this lesson back in the assembler days. I wrote a one-off tool to solve the problem I had at the time. A week later (yes only 1 week) I needed the code again to solve the same problem, but it did not work on this 'slightly' different set of data. No problem I thought, I'll just fix the bug. Two hours later I was finally starting to understand how the tool was supposed to work and where the problems were. That was the last time I ever wrote code that did not have comments.
If I'm heads-down in a project during a coding frenzy, I forget after just a few minutes a lot of times. :) Of course, I'm old, and I have to consciously put brain time toward trying to get to the bathroom in time, so unimportant stuff like what a method that I just wrote does takes a back seat to the more immediate need... :)
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
If I'm heads-down in a project during a coding frenzy, I forget after just a few minutes a lot of times. :) Of course, I'm old, and I have to consciously put brain time toward trying to get to the bathroom in time, so unimportant stuff like what a method that I just wrote does takes a back seat to the more immediate need... :)
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013Of course, there is the other school of thought I don't subscribe to personally. If the code was hard to write it should be extremely difficult to modify, and impossible change". From time to time get to work with SDEs that think this is the way code should be.
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I would like to see how you do this
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
The article's been posted: A Connection string manager for multi-environment ecosystems[^]
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
The connectionstring when "at rest" is not assembled into a string. It merely exists in its component parts. When you call the "Get" method to retrieve the connection string, it assembles the parts into a connection string, and either base64 encodes it, or 256-bit encrypts it (programmer's choice) and returns that encoded/encrypted string. When you're ready to access the database, you simply decode/decrypt it when you send it to the SqlConnection object. (We don't use Entity Framework or any other ORM, so this approach is no problem). Any using base64/encryption is optional as well, you can have it return a string as plain text as well.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
Of course, there is the other school of thought I don't subscribe to personally. If the code was hard to write it should be extremely difficult to modify, and impossible change". From time to time get to work with SDEs that think this is the way code should be.
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The article's been posted: A Connection string manager for multi-environment ecosystems[^]
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
That's my Friday taken care of - thanks John
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
We're going to add the code to one of our projects to see how it goes. Until i see it work in the intended environment, it's all prettty much just theoretical. The sample app works within the context of my dev box, but I wanna put it on a live server to make sure it will actually do what I want. If you're up for it, feel free to relate your experience in the article forum.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
Quote from - Real men don't use Pascal It was difficult to write it should be difficult to understand. But that was meant to be funny.
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
But if it was written and commented well, it will be relatively easy to understand.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
But if it was written and commented well, it will be relatively easy to understand.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
But if it was written and commented well, it will be relatively easy to understand.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
The main problem is that nobody wants to take on the task of implementing it in the apps they're responsible for. We have four devs on one (web) app, and the remaining six devs split their time among the other 11 apps. I am the lead on the team of four. My team is ready to jump on it, the other guys, not so much, because it means they'd have to actually do some work. The prospect of testing is what turns them off the most, I think, because implementation seems dead easy. In short, despite the need, nobody wants to put in the time. I think another problem is that they feel like I'm making them look bad by taking initiative where they wouldn't. I had a friend way back in the 70's that was in the Marines, who liked to say, "In the absence of other orders, attack." That's how I do it.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
