Ah yes, the low bandwidth non-volatile variable writability storage medium once used by the Ancients. Interesting bit of trivia, it was originally designed to be written to using a voice to text slave device using a an amusingly termed process called 'dick-tation'.

I become a fan when there something that lets me do common tasks _much_ more easily and not have to wade through 5 different libraries for features that should have been included in the language.

Yeah, I might give it a try now that I can install an ad-blocker. Yes, I've noticed that Chrome (or maybe some of the websites I have open) keep using more and more memory and CPU to the point of the mouse stalling noticeably. I usually use Chrome and FF simultaneously so that I can be logged into two different google accounts at the same time, so will see how swapping Chrome for Edge goes.

I used AirVPN for a couple of years mostly for Netflix. Wasn't completely seamless, but got the job done. Was cheap enough, but no idea how trustworthy the guy is.

And they'll start looking for your replacement anyway since you've shown that you're disloyal.

If you make it, it'll only postpone the execution for 6 months. Don't kill yourself trying to achieve it, work as normal and start applying for jobs. Don't quit (unless you find another job). Employers like you to be already employed when you apply as it shows that you are employ_able_. Someone who has been out for 6+ months might mean bad luck or it might mean that you're trouble, and you have to undercut your competition to be given a chance.

It was one of the early forms of DoubleThink. You had to believe and say that the Earth was flat as that was part of the one true infallible word of the State Religion. But you would also know that it was incorrect. See also 'The Emperors new clothes'.

Are we also not including other non-numbered pages like the preface, contents, 'This page intentionally left blank' etc?

Sure. In government or military contracts. Mostly what we produce is a _huge_ pile of documentation showing how no taxpayers money was wasted (not including producing said huge pile of documentation). The unstated aim is to move money from the public sector into the private. An actual working product at the end is pretty much an afterthought. Or if it's a working product, then it's not what the users want - rather what the users bosses they _said_ they wanted several years ago, which leads to the next contract. That's not to say formal specs don't have their place. Many medical devices will have formal specs due to the risk that lives could be lost if there's a serious bug.

Sometimes it's better that the original developer doesn't write the (automated) tests. Sometimes all that means is that the developers misconception of the requirements gets written twice. OTOH, a test script that runs through all the expected interactions is useful, and yes, the basic test data for those interactions. That said, most place I've worked don't have dedicated testers - just user acceptance testers.

Quite late. Gave up bothering burning to DVD years ago. Found that I'd burn, file...and then the huge folders of discs would sit on the shelf for years untouched. Now I've got 8T of NAS space where stuff can sit untouched without me having to shuffle DVDs in and out. I guess that's one step forward in dealing with my hoarding problem?

Quite late. Gave up bothering burning to DVD years ago. Found that I'd burn, file...and then the huge folders of discs would sit on the shelf for years untouched. Now I've got 8T of NAS space where stuff can sit untouched without me having to shuffle DVDs in and out. I guess that's one step forward in dealing with my hoarding problem?

I'm paid adequately, so I'm a 'good enough' developer.

But we still use it on our corporate iPads now that a lock code is enforced as accessibility is more important than security for demo apps.

You'd need to offer something that FB doesn't offer that's compelling enough to make people want to use it...and that would take too long for FB to copy and you think is worth more than the $1 billion that FB would offer to buy you off with if they couldn't copy it. How about this? The 'perfect' matchmaker. Takes every single bit of information about everyone online, and picks the _one_ person on the internet that is (currently) your perfect romantic match....and updates it every time a bit of information is added, so it's a constantly moving target. People who put more personal information and more recently would get better recommendations. Call it 'THE ONE'.

Easier.

if(str.length() > 0) { str = ""; }

It's impossible filter for every single word that people may find offensive, so you need to get rid of them all. eg. "I like Ds. Big Ds. I like to think long and hard about Ds." Gets past pretty much every word filter there is.

I'd have to rack my brain to do this. Not that I don't know how, it's just been over 10 years since I last had to do bit shifting. No doubt someone fresh from college would do it off the top of their head because it's only been 6 months for them and would give them an advantage in test conditions.

That's who I'd for, but I'd add that most basic data structures have already got perfectly good implementations. You don't normally need to know how a HashMap works inside, only what circumstances that you should use it for.

Look Big, but start small. First get an overview of the what it's fundamentally trying to achieve. But then,look at a function/class at the bottom that needs a little maintenance and update it. Maybe only a little refactoring to make it clearer or updating the inline documentation. Then follow up into the calling classes and see what's happening there. Like pulling a piece of knitted wool, each tug takes you further into unraveling it until you've touched every part of the main codebase. And then review/throw away most of your changes. You had no clue what you were doing at the start.

I spent some time learning it, and then discarded it as being useless for my requirements. All it did was triple the amount of time it took to develop anything, as I'd simply be writing code to the same requirements twice and then debugging it twice. Sure, it helps if the requirements are set, but most of the time I have little idea what the final product will look like because the boss doesn't know what he wants either. Sure, I could make a prototype, but if I do that, the boss says 'looks okay, tweak that and that and you're done - I'll expect that by Friday then?' It also helps when the cost of failure is high. eg. a bank or publicly available software. The cost if my software doesn't work for a few hours? Pretty much nothing unless it screws up so badly as to corrupt the database.