Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I don’t belong in tech

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 205 posts

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#171

Post by Illniyar »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #155
Illniyar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You just can't put a band-aid type solution on a problem created by a weird race condition" Oh yes you can, and do, often, in payment processing code. I've done it (with a simple sleep for x seconds I think), and I can assure you the higher ups couldn't have been happier.

You absolutely shouldn't need to do that often in payment processing code. Did you go back and fix it properly later?

The sleep was as good a solution as we were willing to do.

The race condition resulted in an error syncing between two datacenters, so when it happens it can be dealt with manually.

Also, to be clear, it did not affect customer waiting time as the delay was in a webhook which we used as a backup to the main payment process.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#172

Post by Illniyar »

Slartie wrote: post #119
Illniyar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You just can't put a band-aid type solution on a problem created by a weird race condition" Oh yes you can, and do, often, in payment processing code. I've done it (with a simple sleep for x seconds I think), and I can assure you the higher ups couldn't have been happier.

Oh, so maybe THAT is the reason why one of our customers had funny cases of thousands of his customers being double-billed on card payments by the payment processing provider! As a developer (of the cash register software, which wasn't at fault in this case), I was kinda amused by the whole thing. But I can assure you, the higher-up business people weren't amused at all.

Heh. We had tons of double billing from payment processors, we never could get a straight answer from the gateway as to why it happened.

Most of them came from.a gateway called CyberSource.

Also, lots of customers have weird banks where they see both an authorization (I.e. hold) and the actual capture, and they mistake it for two captures. Usually it helps to educate them about what is an authorization.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#173

Post by [deleted] »

Slartie wrote: post #119
Illniyar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You just can't put a band-aid type solution on a problem created by a weird race condition" Oh yes you can, and do, often, in payment processing code. I've done it (with a simple sleep for x seconds I think), and I can assure you the higher ups couldn't have been happier.

Oh, so maybe THAT is the reason why one of our customers had funny cases of thousands of his customers being double-billed on card payments by the payment processing provider! As a developer (of the cash register software, which wasn't at fault in this case), I was kinda amused by the whole thing. But I can assure you, the higher-up business people weren't amused at all.

[deleted]

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#174

Post by str33t_punk »

d0100 wrote: post #82

Anyone else bothered by her phrasing of "he’s trying to be helpful" followed by "Bless his little heart"? Why would anyone publicly address their SO in such a patronizing way? This just bothered me more than it should.

I think this is her problem --- I imagine she thinks she is always right, and when her team decided to make the project way A which was probably faster and easier to do than her way B, she got upset and wrote this article to 'correct' the tech industry

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#175

Post by Eridrus »

rm999 wrote: post #23

The author makes some great points that I initially wanted to dismiss, but I think are actually really interesting. Unlike many other types of engineering/craft, most experienced software developers have settled on an aversion to perfectionism. A good carpenter wants to build a solid house even if no one will ever see its frame. Ditto to an auto engineer at BMW, or a hardware engineer at Apple, or a mechanical engine…

The lament that software engineering is not real engineering because we eschew formal methods is one I've heard a lot (not from you), but in those fields testing and failure are very, very expensive.

In places where failures are expensive, such as high volume websites, we use techniques such as A/B testing to limit the scope of expense of failures and detect them earlier.

In cases where failure is truly unacceptable we take more drastic measures such as formal verification, restricting programmer freedom through coding standards, etc.

Even he dramatic story about having a wrong number read out on NPR you'll notice she is the one punishing herself; no-one really admonishes her, there are no negative repercussions. As economic pressures have increased in journalism, this attitude that everything must be fact checked has fallen by the wayside since it is not economically viable any more. This economic pressure coincides with mass adoption of the internet though, and the real cause may not just be their declining ad revenue, but the increased competition between news outlets to be first, since that's what drives clicks.

The saying that the perfect is the enemy of the good exists for a reason.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#176

Post by Illniyar »

Slartie wrote: post #119
Illniyar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You just can't put a band-aid type solution on a problem created by a weird race condition" Oh yes you can, and do, often, in payment processing code. I've done it (with a simple sleep for x seconds I think), and I can assure you the higher ups couldn't have been happier.

Oh, so maybe THAT is the reason why one of our customers had funny cases of thousands of his customers being double-billed on card payments by the payment processing provider! As a developer (of the cash register software, which wasn't at fault in this case), I was kinda amused by the whole thing. But I can assure you, the higher-up business people weren't amused at all.

If your using Java, there's a popular apache http framework[0] that automatically retries a failed request unless you specifically instruct it not to.

That bit us in the A$$ with double payments a few times.

0- https://hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client-ga/httpclient/ap...

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#177

Post by nathan_f77 »

pjmorris wrote: post #164
nathan_f77 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've got a friend who was frustrated about how little his PhD had to do with philosophy because there was no time for that, only time to publish. I don't understand. He studied philosophy but ended up writing a thesis that was only tangentially related to the field? Or he assumed that "Doctor of Philosophy" was related to the field of philosophy, and was disappointed that he couldn't talk about Plato while writing…

More like the later, but less extreme. Disappointed that there wasn't time to talk about the philosophical aspects of computer science in a degree named `Doctor of Philosophy'.

Oh, well that's not really what "Doctor of Philosophy" means. It comes from the same Greek word, which means "love of wisdom", but it's unrelated the field of philosophy.

I also think the philosophy of computer science is very interesting, though. I just saw that Oxford offers a course that combines computer science and philosophy: https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses-listin...

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#178

Post by nitrogen »

wycats wrote: post #102
dunkelheit wrote: post #7

Maybe she should quit doing user-facing stuff and try getting into systems programming for a change. Or some other area where sloppy solutions lead to tangible reduction of business value and thus are not tolerated. Tech is big, no need to quit all of it.

There is plenty of place for polish and deep understanding in the user-facing sphere. Apple is renowned for their work in this area. My company's product, Skylight, has made a virtue out of "all the little things" - understanding problems deeply and solving them well. I think it's reasonable for people to wish that more of user-facing software worked this way, even though it's out of sync with how Silicon Valley and…

The flagged sibling comment demonstrates how emotionally invested people can be in their technology choices. Similarly worded comments about other subjects would not have been flagged to death.

If anything, I think this demonstrates how talented Apple's marketing team can be, as well as how meticulous their UI team can be. I myself am a huge fan of attention to detail, and we need more of it. I've used Skylight before, and if I'm working on another project that could benefit from it I'd recommend it again, so thanks for paying attention to all the little things.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#179

Post by [deleted] »

dwaltrip wrote: post #153
s_q_b wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This piece literally begins with a person screaming a racial insult in the middle of Broadway. No logical person would conclude that outburst was free of gender or racial bias.

"I'm not a white man" is not a racial insult. You need to connect a few more dots for us.

[deleted]

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#180

Post by pjmorris »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #177
pjmorris wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like the later, but less extreme. Disappointed that there wasn't time to talk about the philosophical aspects of computer science in a degree named `Doctor of Philosophy'.

Oh, well that's not really what "Doctor of Philosophy" means. It comes from the same Greek word, which means "love of wisdom", but it's unrelated the field of philosophy. I also think the philosophy of computer science is very interesting, though. I just saw that Oxford offers a course that combines computer science and philosophy: https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses-listin...

Well, I think it's the 'love of wisdom' angle that I saw in my friend's frustration and the article author's distinction between problem understanding and problem solving. I think there's a place for knowledge for knowledge's sake, akin to Hardy's belief that mathematics is worth pursuing for its own sake, not just its applications.
Post reply on HN